Toxic Leadership Habitats

Volume 33: Telling it Like it Is - Toxic Leadership Habitats

Organizational success is dependent on teams that work well together. When the problems start at the top it can be felt all the way through the workspaces and places. If leadership teams struggle, they cannot create a clear vision, strategy execution becomes difficult, engagement declines and dysfunction takes hold.

To make this more fun let's look at how human leadership behavior can mimic that of the animal kingdom. How do you run your team? Do you have a Chicken Coop, a Chimpanzee Exhibit or a Sloth Sanctuary? If so, I'll share some suggestions. I would love to hear your take as well.

The Chicken Coop:

Chickens quickly establish a “pecking order.” where individuals fight to determine their rank within the flock. Higher-ranking chickens have priority access to food and other resources. Fighting can involve pecking, chasing, and wing flapping. Know any people like this? On a chicken coop team, people are pecking for personal gain, power or recognition rather than working together for the common goal. This situation can turn toxic quickly as decisions are often made through power struggles or the loudest voice always being heard.

The Chimpanzee Exhibit:

Chimpanzees live in complex social groups where decision-making often involves consensus, especially when it comes to group movements or hunting parties. While dominant individuals (like alpha males) have significant influence, they often rely on grooming, vocalizations, and other social behaviors to build consensus within the group. When hunting, a group of chimpanzees typically engage in a coordinated effort that requires planning and agreement among the participants. What this looks like on a team, is that healthy debate and constructive conflict disappear. Everyone is trying so hard to get along, they avoid any confrontation or challenge in order to keep the environment peaceful. While this might sound glorious, it can impact decision making and innovation because nobody wants to disrupt the status quo. Think of it this way ... as a leader ... what if you never addressed performance issues? Just food for thought.

Sloth Sanctuary:

Sloths are solitary creatures that spend most of their time alone in trees. They move slowly and have very little interaction with other sloths, except for mating or raising young. They do not compete or collaborate with others for food or territory. How this shows up in the office wild, is team members who neither challenge each other to be or do better or team members who prefer not to work together and avoid activities that require collaboration. This is usually a sign that the team is complacent - with a we have always done it this way, or our past successes will sustain us attitude.

How do you fix it? Simply -because we only have a few minutes for reading:

Chicken Coop Leaders need to identify the conflict makers, set clear expectations for behaviors and remove people whose destructive behaviors don't change - what they should not do is promote people to their own level of incompetence.

Chimpanzee Exhibit and Sloth Sanctuary Leaders may need to restructure their team by first determining the skills needed to align to organizational outcomes, figure out who displays the desired leadership skills and can help lead the team to a healthy balance of behaviors that encourage innovation, decision making, action, and collaboration in a non - toxic, empathetic and uplifting way.

If you want to fix it - first, you have to be able to diagnose the problem. Once you have done that - you need a clear vision, strong role definition and established behavioral expectations and norms. If you are going to tell me, you don't have the time to do it- I will tell you that you don't have the time not to.