Toxic Leadership: The Mental Health Mandate

A mentally impaired leader with the ability to reach a lot of people can cause as much destruction as an oil spill in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The greater the potential reach, the more devastating the outcome.

The impact of toxic leadership on families, corporations, and countries the world over is much like thick crude oil blanketing sea life. The deterioration is slow, stifling, and painful. With rare exceptions, the dysfunction resulting from emotionally impaired leaders is extremely destructive.

How could it not be?

Subordinates may love, tolerate, or fight against a leader. Regardless, an unspoken imbalance of power exists between leaders and those they lead. That imbalance is seldom, if ever, overcome. Whether leaders are mothers, politicians, or executive managers, they sustain a consistent power differential that keeps them in charge.

Personal character seated inside a good mind is the only force strong enough to overcome this imbalance of power. Strong character serves as a guard rail that guides the conduct of leaders in a way that rules and laws simply cannot.

Leaders become dangerous when they ignore their mental health maintenance and their sacred responsibility to nurture the gift of power. Because of their positioning at the top of the pyramid, mentally unstable leaders can easily affect those they lead.

Leaders shape how we experience the boundaries and freedoms that form our everyday lives, from the boardroom to the living room. It is a poorly kept secret that today’s workplaces are overrun with men and women leading from an imbalanced mental health state.

Impaired leadership is an expensive problem. According to research by the Blanchard Company, poor leadership costs companies the equivalent of 7 percent of yearly sales.

I know a CEO of a large company who invested $40,000 in a major training initiative. She told me, “I can’t understand why the morale of the team is so low. They just received a 6 percent raise last year, and the benefits here are amazing.”

In an independently administered evaluation, over 70 percent of the team said the CEO’s erratic and degrading leadership style made the workplace a stressful and unpleasant environment. More than half reported they would be willing to take a pay cut if it meant they could work in a healthier environment.

The CEO was a hard-driving, Type-A personality. She was also suffering from unmanaged bipolar disorder. If she had invested a few hundred dollars a month to see a therapist and learn some emotional management techniques, she would have saved the company at least $40,000 and an enormous turnover rate.

Mentally sick leaders in organizations force employees to redistribute their time and talent into ongoing efforts to cope with the toxic culture that has been established. The unnecessary utilization of sick days, distraction at work, fear-based interactions, and physical illness are just a few manifestations of this toxicity.

I once treated a woman who took three months of paid time off to escape her boss’s demeaning weekly rants. In her absence, a major contract fell through. My client eventually returned to the job, then resigned. Emotionally stunted leaders can be too exhausting to bear.

One of my clients, a CEO, will not promote employees into advanced leadership roles without a comprehensive evaluation from other team members. Each candidate is evaluated based partly on their attitude, emotional intelligence, and ability to connect with diverse groups who share differing points of view. I consider this client to be one of the most innovative, mentally balanced organizational leaders I know.

Healthy leaders create cultures where teams flourish, and energies are freed up to help the company grow.

Whether we’re following the laws of the U.S. Constitution or the curfews enforced by our parents, in one way or another—for better or worse—we follow leaders from the cradle to the grave.

A few years ago, I received a call from a friend who was panicked yet relieved. “I’m so lucky! She called me before she did something nuts!” she said.

She told me that her 17-year-old daughter had fallen in with a new group of kids and that her attitude seemed to change for the worse overnight. As it turned out, these new friends were into drugs. One night, the teenager called her mother to say: “Mom, I’m in trouble. I need you to not ask questions, and please come and get me. I kept thinking about what you said about trashing my body.”

I told her mother, “You weren’t lucky. That call happened because you’ve been leading by example all her life.”

Over the years, my friend had shown her daughter how to love and respect her body by modeling self-care. In moments of disappointment—when many parents would have gone ballistic—she modeled self-control, paired with firm and fair responses. Her emotionally balanced leadership, built on a foundation of trust, was rewarded with a moment that likely saved her child’s life.

We cannot lead beyond our personal capacity. Cultures of distrust lead people to hide vital information out of desperation.

Early in my psychotherapy practice, I recall naively asking a man in his mid-40s, “Your father’s behavior is clearly toxic. Why do you allow him so much emotional control over you?”

His answer, and the crestfallen look on his face, spoke volumes about the reasons why leaders are obligated to tend to their mental health. He replied, “My dad has a certain power over me. It’s crushing.”

A domineering, rage-filled father created a boy who became a clinically depressed, deeply insecure man who was chronically existing on the edge of suicidal ideation. He had spent the better part of his adult life in therapy, trying to make sense of his father’s cruelty toward him.

We inherit emotional dysfunction from our family members.

Sadly, leaders of states and countries are not immune to driving while mentally impaired, with nervous passengers strapped in for the ride.

The famous businessman and writer Max De Pree once said, “Leaders don’t inflict pain; they share pain.” Toxic leaders inflict pain because they are frequently out of touch with how their energy, disposition, vision, and communication style affect the whole. Mental health begins with a basic level of awareness, and by saying to oneself, "How I function impacts those around me."

History has provided thorough instruction about the perils of toxic leadership when left unchecked. Card-carrying members of the mentally compromised leaders club include Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and too many others to mention. These psychologically broken leaders shared a dangerous, common characteristic: support from followers who empowered their cruel, dysfunctional, and often sadistic leadership.

In spite of all the widely available lessons about the fragility of civilization, I wonder if we could stop the likes of a deranged Hitler today.

Tiny and wounded, people do grow in power and strength when fed.

A client of mine once recounted Hitler’s rise to power during a session. She told me her grandmother’s account: “We were baking bread, tucking our children in at night, and not overly concerned with the rumblings—then the unimaginable happened.”

Evil has no interest in mindful awareness. At the heart of it, atrocities are born out of mental health neglect.

A 15-year-old girl living with emotionally abusive parents once sat in my office and sobbed, “I feel trapped! I have no say-so in what happens!”

I taught her some powerful mental health coping strategies and shared, “You do have a say-so—in about 36 months.”

She issued her parents a no-confidence vote after her high school graduation, enrolled in college, and never looked back. Today she is a successful, happy attorney, in touch with—yet distanced from—her abusive parents.

In the mental health profession, therapists are legally obligated to inform clients, “If you are at risk of harming yourself or others, this is considered an emergency situation, and it must be reported.”

At day’s end, when leaders refuse to take care of their mental health, we are obligated to protect them from harming themselves and others by all available means.

Whether in a family, an office, or a democracy, it is your birthright to live free and unencumbered by the devastating impact of toxic leadership.

Copyright: Sheila Robinson-Kiss, MSW, LCSW