Why positive leadership is so important.
My passion is to explore how leaders drive performance by building strong teams. So, in my work, I focus on what is needed to develop the kind of leadership that makes a positive impact.
I sometimes forget why a positive approach to leadership is so important. Catching up with the literature on destructive leadership made it clear to me why developing positive leadership matters.
The core of destructive leadership is when a leader acts destructively towards their subordinates for an extended period of time. This behavior violates the organization's interests, as it involves intimidating, belittling, or humiliating subordinates.
Consider the research snippets below.
(1) Longitudinal data gathered from 30.314 employees found that destructive leadership negatively correlates with work engagement (-0.42) and positively correlates with turnover intention (0.35) and burnout (0.30).
(2) Research with 522 nurses demonstrated that toxic leadership (the worst kind of destructive leadership where leaders disregard employee well-being, threaten employees, and abuse their power) has a strongly negative correlation with nurse performance (-0.87).
The above research findings make one thing clear: destructive leadership can and will damage your organization's performance by scaling down the potential of your employees.
Future-proof organizations are those that work hard to develop positive leadership, one learning at a time.
Sources:
Li, P., Yin, K., Shi, J., Damen, T. G., & Taris, T. W. (2023). Are bad leaders indeed bad for employees? A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies between destructive leadership and employee outcomes. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-15.
Farghaly Abdelaliem, S. M., & Abou Zeid, M. A. G. (2023). The relationship between toxic leadership and organizational performance: the mediating effect of nurses’ silence. BMC nursing, 22(1), 4.