Kets de Vries, Lipman-Bluman, Padilla, Kellerman Tourish and others have written extensively on the subject of destructive/toxic leadership. Educational administration literature is rather silent on the topic. Eugenie Samer in her works, "Trust and Betrayal in Educational Administration" and "Secrecy and Tradecraft in Educational Administration' has broken ground on the subject, but it's pretty rare to find further works on the topic. Specifically, I'm looking at how the environment--governance qualifications, organizational performance measures or the lack thereof (BTW not referring to student achievement here) contribute to senior leader moral disengagement, toxic leadership and organizational 'tribalism' to the detriment of organizational goals. This problem has a very real face in school districts, but has not been covered in the literature outside of school-based leadership challenges, or examinations of senior leadership behaviour in institutes of higher learning.
I wish I could help in this very unique and interesting research. Toxic leadership is indeed an issue and studies focus more on 'how' and 'what' aspects of the issue, ignoring the 'why' aspect that you are focusing on. You won't find much on this in the literature. However, I can advice you two areas that might throw some light for you to move forward.
First, look at the the appointment process of people in the leadership positions first. In my experience, a large majority of people move to the leadership positions on the basis of being 'senior' person in their institutions without being trained for educational leadership positions. It is assumed that just by being in the system for enough number of years, they are capable of being good leaders as well. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in many cases.
Secondly, I would look at the leadership training institutions itself and look at the process of training leaders. Surely there are aspects which will shed light on what is expected out of the leaders and how they are trained to be effective in their jobs.
I may also like to add that the personal traits and attributes definitely play an important role, apart from the training and experience.
Regards.
I have some contributions to the study of Administration of Education. Specially on the quality of trust beteween directors and their followers. I consider that toxicity is linked to interpersonal trust. The way how leader trust the others and be trusted by them is fundamental to avoid toxicity.
Seco and Lopes (2014) Between Compassionateness and Assertiveness:
A Trust Matrix for Leaders. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management
JIEM, 2014 – 7(3): 622-644 – Online ISSN: 2014-0953 – Print ISSN: 2014-8423
http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1046
First, I want to thank Noman, because you have touched on two areas where I'm looking deeper--recruitment, screening processes, and performance measures for senior educational admin leaders. And, as you've noted, and Dennis Tourish has written, there are some gaps in the leadership curriculum that need to be addressed on the dark side of leadership; otherwise, the leadership pedagogy may very well be part of the problem.
Victor, I have downloaded the article you recommended, and thank you for the reference. :)
Hi Wendy,
You raise some very important questions. The following papers may be of some help. Best wishes for your project.
Article `Blended Leadership': Employee Perspectives on Effective Lea...
Article Prozac Leadership and the Limits of Positive Thinking
Article Dichotomies, Dialectics and Dilemmas: New Directions for Cri...
Chapter Critical Leadership Studies
Article Teaching Leadership Critically: New Directions for Leadershi...
Thank you SO much for the articles, David. I have cited your and Dennis' Tourish work in my studies at Roehampton as I've tried to address the problem of dark side K-12 executive leadership. What I truly wish is that one day the principles and the issues you have raised regarding business school leadership pedagogy could one day cross over into the educational leadership curriculum. Leaders are people first, and as such their membership card to the human race has frailty written all over it. One is not exempt from the dark side of leadership simply because one is an executive in public education. Many thanks again!!
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