How To Deal With Toxic Leadership

Bad bosses are a sad reality of working life. Hopefully, you’ve never had to deal with toxic leadership. But if you’re reading this, you probably have. It seems like toxic leaders are far too common in organizations of all sizes. And there’s some evidence to explain why that is.

Researchers at Ohio State University recently experimented with leaderless groups assigned to work together on a set task. As the researchers watched the groups interact, they noticed a disturbing trend. Most of the groups had a tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident members to leadership roles. Lacking any evidence of competence, groups tend to mistake blind confidence for leadership ability. And toxic narcissists are more likely to display that confidence.

The end result is a plethora of bad bosses promoted for their confidence but lacking real leadership competence. And for you, that means an increased likelihood of having to work for a toxic leader at some point in your career.

So in this article, we’ll outline six ways to deal with toxic leadership-and we’ll save the most obvious tactic (leaving) for last.

Set Boundaries

The first tactic to deal with toxic leadership is to set boundaries. You can’t control everything (or even most things) about toxic bosses but you can decide what the…