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A BASIC ASSUMPTION about establishing a values-based safety culture is that topmost management is supportive and drives down needed changes. Lovelace (2012) agrees:
Society romanticizes the idea of leadership and its influence on the organization and its members. With minor exception, the majority of researchers who examine leaders, their behaviors and the outcomes they produce focus on the positive, while ignoring the negative and even destructive behaviors and influence of certain leaders.
Yet not all organizations have CEOs or vice presidents who foster a supportive leader-development environment; some are dismissive or even hostile (Winn & Dykes, 2017). But much worse and working under the radar of this romanticized ideal of leader development are toxic leaders who work for themselves or against the goals of their parent organizations, resulting in a poisonous, dysfunctional environment.
When the toxic leader creates a hostile workplace, it results in negative but pervasive consequences that trickle down and create a stressful environment that adversely affects the subordinate's professional and personal life. This covert, destructive behavior is a stressor that costs organizations billions of dollars worldwide in disability claims and lost productivity. It also causes susceptible individuals real stress. According to the stressor-stress-strain model, the connection between toxic leaders and destructive behaviors necessarily begets many negative consequences (Barling, 2007; Bowling & Beehr, 2006).
One danger is that rising safety professionals and engineers may be especially susceptible to toxic leaders. Millennials will compose 75% of the U.S. workforce by 2025. While these incoming professionals may be altruistic and idealistic, they have little work experience when they begin their careers. This naivete may allow them to buy into the ethical relativism offered by toxic leaders. In addition, Millennials may be less inclined or less able to counteract the effects of their toxic surroundings until they are trained in simple resilience techniques offered by several authors (Duckworth, 2016; Trickey & Hyde, 2009; Winn, Rozman & Dean, 2015).
The purpose of this article is to:
1) help all levels of management understand how conditions in their organization may allow some leaders to act in their own interests (i.e., become toxic) and how organizations may tacitly acquiesce;
2) help senior management identify and root out toxic leaders, thus reducing psychological and physiological stressors in their systems;
3)...