Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Army

Abstract

The extent to which toxic leadership exists in the U.S. Army is a question that demands a thorough examination. While most publications on military leadership focus on the positive aspects of good leadership, this project examines the current literature on destructive leadership styles. The paper sought a definition of toxic leadership, consolidated expert views on the personal characteristics of toxic leaders, and compiled a taxonomy of 18 types of toxic leaders. The project serves as a review of toxic leadership in the U.S. Army. It derives insights into toxic leadership in the Army, why it exists, why it is tolerated, and what impact positive leadership may have on this phenomenon. The author discusses a number of personal characteristics that experts have attributed to toxic leaders, from least significant to most severe: incompetence, malfunctioning, maladjusted, sense of inadequacy, malcontent, irresponsible, amoral, cowardice, insatiable ambition, egotism, arrogance, selfish values, avarice and greed, lack of integrity, deception, malevolent, malicious, and malfeasance. The author then goes on to describe the 18 types of toxic leaders: the absentee leader, the incompetent leader, the codependent leader, the passive-aggressive leader, the busybody leader, the paranoid leader, the rigid leader, the controller leader, the compulsive leader, the intemperate leader, the enforcer leader, the narcissistic leader, the callous leader, the street fighter leader, the corrupt leader, the insular leader, the bully leader, and the evil leader.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 37 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.