Introduction
Organizational success is dependent on leadership and management style utilized by top stakeholders. Apart from leadership, there exist other contextual factors that determine success or failure of a firm. However, a leader’s competence and decision making ability are more important. How a leader sees and interprets the environment around them contributes to whether he/she becomes an effective leader or a dysfunctional leader. Dysfunctional leaders are prone to mishandling situations and making decisions that fall short of requirements. Their mindsets make them believe that they have taken the best decision and will thus stick by it. Having a leader that makes poor management decisions takes away competitive advantage that a firm holds against other organizations. Effective leadership team is the most important asset that a company possesses. Competences in handling situations and decision making processes differentiates a firm from its rivals. On the other hand, a dysfunctional leadership team is the worst liability that a company can possess. Poor performance is occasioned by dysfunctional or incompetent leadership teams.
Background of Dysfunctional Leadership
A good leadership is necessary for the success of an organization. The leadership and management team are involved in formulation of a firm’s strategies as well as building of its resources. The resources include finances, people, and operations. Therefore, having a dysfunctional leadership is a disadvantage because incompetent decisions by the leadership team limits and prevents the firm from operating at normal levels of output (Savas, 2019). Dysfunctional behavior brings harm to an organization, its employees, and stakeholders. It can either be intentional or non-intentional. Dysfunctional leadership is also referred to as destructive or toxic leadership. Dysfunctional leaders possess destructive behaviors as well as dysfunctional personal characteristics and qualities that result in serious harm to organizations. The dysfunctional behavior is repetitive and involves violations of legitimate interests of a company (Rose, Shuck, Twyford, & Bergman, 2015). It involves actions that undermine or sabotage the goals, resources, tasks, well-being, motivation, effectiveness, and job satisfaction of subordinates in the organization. The organization is thus unable to achieve success despite investment in other areas that support leadership.
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Toxic leadership is expressed in various forms that include authoritarianism, narcissism, abusive supervision, and unpredictability. Authoritarianism is often associated with tyrants. Authoritarian leaders dictate what needs to be done to employees. They also indicate how it should be done. The leaders have little regard for employees, and therefore, offers them less autonomy as well as space to promote employee creativity (Savas, 2019). The leaders use a rigid hierarchical structure that offers no flexibility. Even though they bring short term gains, they often lead to destruction of an organization through loss of talent that translates to reduced output. Narcissists show a strong preference for their selves and will thus show little value to others (Savas, 2019). They lose touch with other people due to egocentricity and self-imposed glamour. Such form of self-esteem is dangerous and can cause harm to other people in the organization. There are other instances when leaders display hostile behavior to their subordinates in the form of verbal and nonverbal behaviors (Estes, 2013). Unpredictability also result to instances of stress among employees having behavioral traits and mood swings that are inconsistent. The behaviour makes it complicated for other staff members in the organization to act or react in particular ways.
Causes and Effects on the Organization, Employees, and Performance
Dysfunctional leadership has significant impact on culture, employees, as well as the performance of organization. Particularly, it leads to an alteration of the positive culture of an organization. The values and vision of a leader contribute to culture of an organization. Firms are dependent on culture for good performance. It is the identity that unites the organization to resist external forces that may harm effectiveness of a firm. Organizational culture is important in shaping the behavior of existing and new employees. Dysfunctional leaders often interfere with a positive culture and introduces behaviors that make an organization become less efficient (Savas, 2019). Dysfunctional leadership behaviors are encouraged in organizations that places emphasis on results while neglecting means used to attain the results. Leaders will introduce practices that are harmful to the subordinate to push for performance. The subordinates in such organizations complain of abusive supervision. The hostile environment leads to loss of talent. Most workers quit and look for employment in other companies. The loss of a pool of skills, knowledge, and experience leads to reduced organizational performance.
Dysfunctional leaders prefer to remain distant from other people and thus become disconnected from the organization. They are often not easily accessible by their subordinates. The disconnection creates a loss of touch with the reality since they are mostly in contact with a close circle of managers (Rose, Shuck, Twyford, & Bergman, 2015). Their decisions are based on the ideas expressed by the circle of managers or consultants that they interact with frequently. There is usually no input from employees thus making it difficult to incorporate customer needs, issues and priorities. The employees are often scared of sharing their opinions freely and with confidence as the leaders might retaliate if the ideas are not in line with their thinking. They also do not take risks or engage in personal initiatives for fear of annoying the leaders. The avoidance of risks leads to low levels of innovation and creativity in the organization. It thus results in stagnation as well as a delay in adapting to the new trends in the industry.
Subordinates that work in dysfunctional organizations feel that they are constantly under threat, oppressed, emotionally drained, and that they are not valued. Dysfunctional leaders place intense pressure on workers, thus, triggering internal conflicts that lead to creation of an unhealthy working environment (Estes, 2013). The workers do not have trust in one another and, therefore, fail to collaborate in execution of tasks. Lack of trust among employees’ leads to unhealthy organizational conflicts, which reduce level of motivation and engagement in work processes. There will also be lack of accountability and results. Organizational conflicts reduce performance of workers as they are constantly involved in organizational politics. In effect, the level of productivity also reduces leading to a loss in revenues.
Dysfunctional Leadership in Real World Examples
Uber, an online taxi service, provides a good example of damaging effects of dysfunctional leadership. Uber has had problems due to its refusal to resolve its dysfunctional culture and leadership. The company displayed dysfunctional leadership when it failed to act tough on a case of sexual harassment of a worker by a manager (Weissman, 2017). The human resource department chose to give a warning to the manager because he is one of their best performing employees. There are illegal behaviors that go on in the company but the leadership ignore infractions made by top performers. The leadership problems lead to creation of conflict where workers are pitted against others. Apart from destroying the image of the company, Uber also experienced a loss in revenues due to boycotts.
Lessons Learnt
Organizations should identify dysfunctional behavior during early stages, prior to emergence of discontent and toxicity in the organization. It is often difficult to hide dysfunctional behavior. Therefore, some early signs will be visible such as insufficient attention to employees, declining organizational climate, increased politics, and instances of self-interest (Savas, 2019). Failure to address dysfunctional leadership at early stages may lead to huge consequences that may not be easily solved. Organizations should, thus, put in place mechanisms that help in early identification of dysfunctional behavior.
It is important for organizations to implement effective leadership to reduce the damage levels caused by toxicity. Dysfunctional leaders should be provided with necessary guidance, coaching, as well as close attention (Rose, Shuck, Twyford, & Bergman, 2015). It assists them in realizing their mistakes and subsequently correcting them. There are instances when dysfunctional leaders are oblivious of what is happening in organization. Guiding them helps in opening their eyes thus enabling them to understand their environment. It leads to creation of leaders that are responsible and sensitive to other workers’ needs. The disunity caused by ineffective leadership is ultimately resolved.
Conclusion
Dysfunctional leadership interferes with performance of an organization. It cannot thus effectively compete with its rivals in the market. In most cases, dysfunctional leaders mishandle situations by making poor decisions. It leads to creation of conflict in an organization with the employee motivation and commitment going down. The level of productivity is affected leading to loss of revenues. It is important to address dysfunctional leadership during its early stages so that it does not generate into a big problem that cannot be solved by the organization.
References
Estes, B. C. (2013). Abusive supervision and nursing performance. Nursing Forum, 48(1), 3-16.
Rose, K., Shuck, B., Twyford, D., & Bergman, M. (2015). Skunked: An integrative review exploring the consequences of the dysfunctional leader and implications for those employees who work for them. Human Resource Development Review , 14 (1), 64-90.
Savas, O. (2019). Impact of Dysfunctional Leadership on Organizational Performance. Global Journal of Management and Business Research , 19(1):
Weissman, C. G. (2017, Feb. 27). This Is What Caused Uber’s Broken Company Culture. Fast Company . Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3068475/this-is-what-caused-ubers-broken-company-culture .
