This is part 2 of a 3-part article to create awareness of the pitfalls of toxic leadership and how to avoid it creeping into the organisation.

The Poisoned Well of Leadership: Identifying Toxicity Before It’s Too Late

Toxic leaders may present themselves as confident, decisive, and even inspiring. Yet, beneath the surface, they leave a legacy of fear, mistrust, and decay. Leadership toxicity creeps into organizations like a slow poison, seeping into every corner and contaminating the culture. It’s crucial to identify these signs before it’s too late.

Here are seven critical questions to help evaluate whether your workplace is suffering under the strain of toxic leadership—and how it may already unravel beneath the surface. By recognizing these signs, you can empower yourself and your organization to take necessary actions.

1. Do Our Followers Live in Fear and Guilt?

The Fear-Driven Empire: How Leaders Weaponize Uncertainty

“80% of followers are manipulatable.”

Imagine stepping into work every day with a knot in your stomach, unsure if today will be the day you’re singled out for failure. Toxic leaders breed this fear—relying on guilt and intimidation as tools of control. They threaten job loss, emotional punishment, and public humiliation. Under their reign, fear is not just a motivator but the only motivator. This not only affects the productivity but also the mental and emotional well-being of the employees.

These leaders create a groupthink and mindless compliance culture, drowning out innovation and dissent. Criticism is seen as a personal attack, while unquestioning loyalty is rewarded. However, fear as a leadership tool is short-lived, slowly eating away at trust and creating an environment of deep uncertainty and dependence.

2. Are Our Followers Worse Off Than Before?

The Legacy of Destruction: How Toxic Leaders Leave a Trail of Ruin

“Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge.” — Simon Sinek

Toxic leaders may claim to be driving progress, but they leave their followers emotionally and mentally drained. What begins as high energy and enthusiasm deteriorates into a culture of exhaustion and suspicion. The poison spreads through fraudulent values, undermining integrity and fostering mistrust.

They divide teams, promote incompetence, and create an environment where no one can thrive. People who were once motivated and inspired become shells of their former selves—living in perpetual fear and guilt. Worse still, the followers often never realize the leader is the cause of their misery.

The leader’s narrative is always: “It’s your fault, not mine.”

3. Do We Subvert the Structures of Justice, Transparency, and Excellence?

Breaking the System: How Toxic Leaders Undermine Accountability

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” — Abraham Lincoln.

Toxic leaders don’t just break the rules—they rewrite them. They surround themselves with loyalists, create opaque systems, and confide only in trusted cronies, often including the finance department, for manipulation. For instance, they might change the performance evaluation criteria to favor their allies or manipulate financial reports to make the company’s performance look better than it is.

The result? A growing culture of corruption, where fair processes are subverted for personal gain.

They disdain structures that promote transparency, often sabotaging performance management systems and replacing them with their arbitrary standards. This is where incompetence flourishes, and justice is sidelined for those who “cooperate” with the toxic regime.

4. Do We Use Dishonest Means to Justify Our Ends?

The Moral Freefall: When the Ends Always Justify the Means

Toxic leaders become obsessed with results—particularly those that bolster their power or increase the bottom line. Yet, in pursuing these ends, they cut corners, lie, and manipulate. Integrity becomes a casualty as these leaders mislead their teams, skew data, and obscure the truth.

In their minds, the goal—profit, recognition, or status—always justifies their dishonest tactics. This slippery slope leads not only to moral decay but often to the eventual collapse of trust within the organization.

5. Do We Treat Those at the Bottom with Disdain?

Exploitation in Action: The Disposable Workforce

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.” — Plato

How leaders treat those with the least power says everything about their character. Toxic leaders often see the marginalized as mere tools for their advancement, using them to bolster their image while offering little real support. Acts of kindness become nothing more than hollow gestures, part of a calculated PR campaign rather than genuine empathy.

Whether it’s the lowest-paid employees or those with the least influence, toxic leaders exploit these individuals, rarely showing them respect or dignity. Their only value is in how they can serve the leader’s agenda.

6. Do We Only Nurture Leaders of Our Kin and Kind?

The Dynastic Empire: Leaders Who Build for Themselves, Not for the Future

Toxic leaders are less concerned with creating a lasting, value-driven organization than consolidating power within their inner circle. They don’t invest in nurturing a diverse range of future leaders—instead, they hand-pick successors who will continue their toxic legacy, often favoring family members or loyalists.

Rather than building a culture of competence, they construct dynasties that benefit only themselves. And when they leave, the organization is often left in shambles, unable to sustain itself without their corrupting influence.

7. Do We Behave Like We Speak for God?

The God Complex: When Leaders Believe They Are Beyond Accountability

Perhaps the most chilling symptom of toxic leadership is the ‘God complex’—a delusion where leaders begin to believe they are infallible, acting as though they have divine authority. They invoke higher powers to justify their actions; accepting their position makes them right, regardless of evidence or reason. This creates an environment where questioning the leader is seen as heresy, and admitting mistakes is impossible. Toxic leaders surround themselves with enablers who reinforce this delusion, allowing the leader’s ego to expand unchecked. An example of this could be a leader who refuses to acknowledge a failed strategy, insisting that it was the right decision because they made it.

This creates an environment where questioning the leader is seen as heresy, and admitting mistakes is impossible. Toxic leaders surround themselves with enablers who reinforce this delusion, allowing the leader’s ego to expand unchecked.

Conclusion: Don’t Ignore the Warning Signs

Toxic leadership doesn’t just harm individuals—it devastates entire organizations. If left unchecked, it creates an environment where fear, mistrust, and dishonesty flourish, leading to a culture of corruption and dysfunction.

The questions above are not just warning signs—they are red flags that your organization may already be infected with leadership toxicity. In Part 3, we’ll explore the steps leaders and organizations can take to identify, confront, and eliminate this poison from their ranks before it’s too late.

The illusion that they are indispensable.