Are You a Toxic Leader Without Realising? | Leadership Coach Joanna Howes

0:00Joanna Howes:Okay, so a big question for you. Are you being a toxic leader without even realising it? Toxic leadership has been something that I've been studying for a while now through my personal experience of being bullied in the workplace. It's something that I'm very passionate about seeing what can we do to make a difference here. And through some of the interviews I've done and the research I've done, I've put together a pyramid of the impact of toxic leadership. and what's come to light is some of the behaviors that I see every day and it's hard to say some of the behaviors that I was doing and can maybe still fall back into trap of doing that made me go oh my god that is toxic leadership as well and there's so many of us that don't even realize that every single day we're doing toxic leadership and we have no awareness of it and the last thing we would have ever called ourselves was a toxic leader so let me take you through what they are.

0:55Joanna Howes:Now, the first one is being a fixer. This is so, so common and it can come with really good intention. You want to help, you want to fix your team's problems, but the toxicity behind it is that they become completely reliant on you. It means you still have full control, which is what we like to hold on to as a leader. We find it very difficult to let go of control and trust others. When you keep fixing, you're stopping your team from growing. They stop thinking for themselves and you ultimately become a reliant leader. And all this does as well is you'll just always feel you've got so much on your plate that your frustration will just boil because the things that you want to get to, you can't.

1:44Joanna Howes:So you're impatient and everything will rise, which means you're moving more into toxicity. Now, I know this one's probably really hard to hear because I think the majority of people listening to this are fixers. And so to look in the mirror and go, oh my God, that's toxic behavior. I know it's really tough. I've been there myself, but it is the first sign of some toxic traits to be aware of. The second one is micromanagement. And again, you might not like the idea that you micromanage, but please take a moment to just notice in a week how often you end up doing something for somebody else and not letting them do it themselves or watching over their eye or signing something off that really you shouldn't be signing off anymore.

2:31Joanna Howes:Micromanagement, again, links back to the control pattern that we have and it needs to be let go of to allow people to feel empowered and trust. So micromanagement as well is a toxic trait. The next one we then moved into avoiding conflict and again so so common and I know the majority of you listening we're going I don't like conflict I you know we go into people pleasing we go into our accommodator roles we want to smooth over tension and it comes from this whole need of wanting to be liked and it's learning that being respected is way more important in your leadership than being liked. So if you're avoiding conflict, that is another sign and build up in the pyramid of toxic leadership.

3:20Joanna Howes:I know this is all incredibly confronting, but all the research and what I'm reading is showing me this. The next one, you'll now be more familiar with knowing this as a toxic leadership trait, is passive aggression. It took me a long time to actually really understand passive aggressive behavior. It wasn't until I experienced it myself, I was like, oh my God, that is just cutting and it really hurts. It's actually very unnecessary. The hardest thing was when I realized I was doing it. And now luckily I can catch it and I can stop myself immediately and go, I'm really sorry, that was actually quite passive aggressive.

3:57Joanna Howes:And we're human and it comes again from emotions. And if you haven't checked out my episode yet on being emotionally fit. I highly recommend you do if you notice you have some passive aggressive behavior yourself. What this really requires is self-awareness and the willingness to look in the mirror, not to avoid and think, oh no, that's not me. Because it's every chance it is. It's very normal. It's very common. It's about recognizing it so we can do something about it. And then we move into the last one where it's full blown bullying. Asserting power over somebody else. Direct intimidation without any consequences of the impact that could have to the other person.

4:37Joanna Howes:So bullying is right at the top of the tree. I have been bullied myself. I know I haven't bullied, but I do know the traits underneath bullying. I have done all of them. And it's about making sure we can manage and catch those behaviors before it goes into full bullying behaviour. So I wanted to take you through this. This is work that I've put together to just start to bring awareness of what really is toxic leadership and how can we unpack it so we can make it really specific and recognise the areas where we all need to do our own work on. So please share this, please use this so we can really start to stamp out these toxic behaviours in the workplace because we all deserve to be able to go to work and to be able to show up and perform with our full potential.

5:28Joanna Howes:Thank you for listening and I hope this has helped. If you've been enjoying the Courageous Leaders podcast, we'd love it if you'd subscribe to our YouTube channel. Your support helps us keep creating quality content and reaching more leaders like you who are ready to grow and make a real impact. We fund this podcast ourselves so that every subscription truly makes a difference and allows us to support courageous leaders like you. Thank you for being part of the journey.