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    Transforming Toxic Leaders
    Transforming Toxic Leaders
    Transforming Toxic Leaders
    Ebook307 pages4 hours

    Transforming Toxic Leaders

    By Alan Goldman

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    About this ebook

    Unlike other books written on "toxic leaders," this book takes issue with the predominant view that "toxic leaders are bad" and destructive to their companies. Rather, the author argues that even highly productive leaders have some toxic qualities central to their success story. The book redirects the conversation about toxicity in a more productive direction, as toxic leaders are not just viewed as villains and liabilities, but are also considered as potential assets, innovators, and rebels.

    Working on the premise that "toxicity is a fact of company life," the book provides organizations with a model and blueprint on the advantages to be gained from skillful anticipation, control, and handling of troubled and difficult leaders. In contrast to dysfunctional organizations that ignore toxicity or dwell on the perceived destructive impact of toxic leaders, successful companies come up with resourceful, innovative strategies for turning seeming deficits into opportunities.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStanford Business Books
    Release dateJul 24, 2009
    ISBN9780804772570
    Transforming Toxic Leaders

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      Book preview

      Transforming Toxic Leaders - Alan Goldman

      Continuum

      1

      Demagogue to Dialogue

      Bentley Pacific Engineering and North Country Solutions

      Like the two-faced Roman god, Janus, the leader must always be looking both inwards and outwards, a difficult position . . . concentrating solely on one or the other is a more comfortable position but it undermines the role of the leader, and thus the strength of the institution’s representation in the outer world.

      —A. Obholzer, The Unconscious at Work

      DYSFUNCTIONAL DOWNSIZING INC.: BENTLEY PACIFIC

      Late one Friday afternoon as engineers and staff were about to depart for the weekend, an e-mail terminating 273 employees suddenly appeared on monitors throughout Bentley Pacific Engineering, a firm based in Seattle, Washington. (As noted in the Introduction, I have changed the names of companies and individuals throughout the book to maintain client confidentiality and personal privacy.) Shock waves of disbelief welled up as deeply committed aerospace designers and administrative assistants attempted to grasp the full brunt of their dismissals. They were to pack up their belongings and move out of their offices before the start of the next workweek. The traumatic effect of the downsizing extended beyond those terminated to the remaining employees, who assumed that they would be next. Their colleagues had been the victims of a sudden act of organizational sabotage. How could they ever trust leadership again?

      Monday afternoon in a hastily called meeting, Bentley CEO Cal Burton gave an obligatory, politically correct speech hitting on all of the cost-containment buttons. Burton’s speech was an act of shallow showmanship, pure cliché, and only served to deepen his employees’ wounds and mistrust. It was all about bottom lines, with no discussion of human capital or recognition of the emotion of his audience. Immediately following the CEO’s talk, twelve managers informed members of their respective divisions that the downsizing was still in progress, with further cuts inevitable. Meanwhile, both professionals and staff received an edict that they would be expected to rise to the occasion and perform at 125 to 150 percent of their usual levels in an effort to make up for the losses in productivity anticipated after the downsizing.

      When the new rules of the game were questioned by angry and traumatized engineers, divisional managers were directed by CEO Burton to put down any rebellion by whatever means necessary. A number of verbal altercations occurred throughout the company, highlighted by a screaming and pushing match involving Burton and three remaining engineers from the R&D division. Grievances were filed against the CEO, with litigation pending. Further investigation involving consultation with the Bentley employee assistance program (EAP) director and an external management consulting group yielded that Burton was an easily agitated man for whom tantrum-style outbursts were not uncommon. His anger issues and temper resulted in increasingly turbulent behavior in the workplace.

      PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE CEO

      The consultants collectively considered whether Burton’s individual behavioral patterns could be untangled and separated from the painful realities of a downsizing. Perhaps the downsizing was the true cause of all the Bentley conflict and agony? Clearly, companywide policies and unpopular but necessary fiscal decisions were major drivers of a dysfunctional system. Discussions determined that since there was no way of neatly separating a leader from the organizational system it made good sense to isolate Burton as the lowest-hanging fruit in this corporate debacle. All roads appeared to lead back to Burton. Why not determine whether he was the nexus of the crisis and do something about it?

      After much deliberation, the Huntington-Bolger Management Consulting Group in conjunction with the Bentley EAP concluded that Burton’s issues required more in-depth mental and emotional assessment, and he was referred to Dr. Alexander Silverton, a leadership coach with a unique combination of management and clinical psychology expertise. Faced with a growing avalanche of grievances and lawsuits, both Bentley Pacific and the Huntington-Bolger Group were hopeful that individual leadership coaching and psychological assessment of Burton could yield insights into some companywide damage control. After three weeks of extensive coaching and assessment, Dr. Silverton reached a DSM IV-TR diagnosis of intermittent explosive disorder (American Psychiatric Association 2000, pp. 663–67; also see glossary). Apparently, Burton had both a brilliant and a dark history as a leader who was a mover and shaker, a CEO who was able to pull a company out of the dumps and into almost overnight profitability—but at the serious cost of demeaning and traumatizing scores of subordinates. With a fiercely hierarchical and authoritarian leadership style, Burton had a reputation as a mercenary and soldier of fortune; he had served as a downsizing shark and a one-man cost-containment militia for five companies over the previous twelve years. Curiously, Burton’s predisposition to extreme, exaggerated, and repetitive public displays of anger had been painfully apparent to a growing number of colleagues at Bentley Pacific, but the official diagnosis was not revealed to the company by Dr. Silverton. Although Dr. Silverton was hired by Bentley Pacific via a referral, Burton was legally protected by confidentiality and privileged communication provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act as it applies to psychological and psychiatric diagnoses.

      Burton continued with his leadership coach and eventually resumed his full-time duties as Bentley’s practicing CEO. Since Dr. Silverton did not diagnose Burton as being either a danger to self (DTS) or a danger to others (DTO), he was given clearance to resume his duties as CEO, pending additional and ongoing

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