Horrible Bosses

It's almost a cliché to say that people don't quit a job, they quit a boss.  As you would expect, it's not quite that simple - I've even read that it's the biggest lie in HR!  Most of the research I've read can be summarized by three points:

1. People leave bad leaders and managers, but it's usually not the number one reason why people leave organizations.

2.  Leaders and managers can make a huge difference in "good organizations."

3.  Good or bad leaders and managers make very little difference in people's decision to leave "bad organizations."

I've mentioned Lt General Hal Moore in the past (see my post "We were soldiers once...") and his excellent leadership book, Hal Moore on Leadership: Winning When Outgunned and Outmanned.  In his book, Lt General Moore developed a rather lengthy list on the different types of "toxic leaders" that he encountered during his long and distinguished career in the U.S. Army.  He defined "bully leaders" as leaders who inflict emotional pain, deliver threats and ultimatums, hurl insults, and invalidate the opinions of others.  What's important is that this particular type of "toxic leader" has far-reaching implications, even after an employee leaves.  

I came across what I thought was an important study in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology titled "Scarred for the Rest of My Career? Career-long effects of abusive leadership on professional athlete aggression and task performance".  The investigators in this study looked at data obtained from professional basketball players and coaches in the NBA between the 2000-2001 and 2005-2006 seasons (693 players and 57 coaches).  They conducted an extensive leadership analysis of each coach (who held a coaching position for at least one full season during the period of study) based on publicly available descriptions of their leadership style.  They then rated each coach using a validated scale of abusive leadership.  Analyzing player performance was much easier due to the abundance of statistical data available.  Player performance was based upon a composite measure (previously validated) based upon points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, field goal percentage, free throw percentage, etc.  Player aggression was based on the number of technical fouls that each player received.  

Controlling for tenure, salary, team winning percentage, and absence due to injuries, players who were exposed to an abusive coach were more likely to be aggressive as well (based on the number of technical fouls received) for the rest of their careers, even after leaving the coach.  Similarly, players who played for an abusive coach also performed worse for the duration of their career (compared to their performance before playing for the abusive coach).  

While playing professional basketball is different from, say working in a hospital or business, I think at least some of the findings are transferable to settings different from sports.  First, there are at a number of studies outside of professional sports that suggest that working for a toxic leader leads to worse job satisfaction, lower motivation, and worse performance.  Second, though I suspect there are not a lot of studies to answer this question, it is possible that working for a toxic leader can lead to toxic behaviors in the future.  Toxic leaders create a toxic work environment and culture (that has been shown consistently).  In addition, we often model our behavior based upon what we have been exposed to in the past.  If we've worked for a toxic leader in the past, it's not a stretch to say that we may be more likely to exhibit some of these toxic behaviors in the future.  

There is a dark comedy with an all-star cast about toxic leaders, called "Horrible Bosses".  One of the main characters says, "We were all working at pretty terrible jobs for some awful bosses and we just thought, if we ever got a chance to be our own bosses, that we'd do things differently."  Hopefully that is the case, but it wasn't necessarily what happened in the movie nor in the study discussed above.  

Whether you leave or stay in an organization with a toxic leader is a difficult question and probably one that you can only answer for yourself.  However, I've found some great advice for how to cope with a toxic leader: "Surviving a toxic leader's influence while remaining a strong leader yourself, is a never ending task. Wherever you find a vacuum of leadership, step up to the plate and provide the real thing. Not by opposing others but by showing them a different way. Remember to take care of yourself and stay positive."