 Well, good morning, everyone. There we go. I'm George Ray. I'm the Dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. And let me begin by stating how honored I am to be in your presence today. It's always good to be back with old friends, but it is truly a good day for me when I can be locked in a room full of people that are interested in leadership. So if you will just pretend that you're really interested in leadership for about the next hour, we're going to have a great time together. I want to talk to you today about some of the darker shades of this construct that we have built around leadership. I'm going to be talking to you about concept of toxic leadership. So the game plan is for about 45 minutes, I'm going to throw out some ideas for you to think about. And then for about 15 minutes, we're going to have a Q&A. So I want you to be thinking about some questions and answers. And then we're going to have a panel up here where we're going to challenge you even further to think perhaps in different ways than you have thought about leadership in the past. The thing about leadership in most military organizations, certainly in terms of our doctrine, is that it is pitched as a universally positive construct. Leadership is good, leadership is good, leadership is good. That's the mantra. Good leaders do that. Good leaders have this kind of impact on an organization. And in any military organization, I can almost guarantee that there will be two solutions to any problem. One is leadership. If something goes bad, it's a leadership problem. The other one is training. So if we can't lead our way out of a problem, we can certainly train our way out of a problem. That is the level of importance that is attached to the notion of leadership. The problem is that not all behavior that's done in the name of leadership is positive. And some of it is, quite frankly, rather horrid. So we're going to shine some light on that particular corner today. So these are the three constructs that we're going to be playing with today. The first one is leadership style. What's your style? Have you thought about that? What adjectives are being used in relationship to the pattern of behavior that you exercise in your organization over time? Leadership style is the pattern of behavior as perceived by the targets of influence. You don't get to tell me what your style is. You can think you know what your style is. You can tell me what your intentions are. But when it comes to leadership, leadership is ratified in the hearts and the minds of the followers. So your followers, the targets of your influence get to tell you what your leadership style is. Second construct, organizational climate. Organizational climate is how it feels around here. And that's different from organizational culture, which is deep, relatively unchanging over time. It's learned behavior that's passed from generation to generation. So organizational culture tends to be rather stable. Organizational climate is rather surface level. It changes pretty quickly. And my example for organizational climate is, how many of you have played sports? Played on a sports team of one type or another. Okay, you got most of you, okay. Well, you've won all your games all season. And you're getting on the bus and you're going to go to the state championship. What's the bus feel like? Yeah, a lot of, yeah, a lot of tension, a lot of anxiety, a lot of excitement. You're going to the big game. You're getting up for the big game. So you go to the big game and you play and you lose. What does that bus ride feel like on the way home? That's climate, okay, that's climate. So climate is relatively changing, impacted very fairly easily. Culture much more enduring and hard to change. Then the last one, organizational effectiveness, which is the sine qua non of military service. It's what matters most is getting the job done, being effective. My question is, what's the relationship between the three? And is there a relationship? And for our purposes today, what style got to do with it? Which is a blatant rip off of a pretty good I can Tina Turner song, right? What's got to do with it? All right, so that's what I'm interested, the relationship between those three variables. So we start off with this problem. This is a distribution of leadership style or impact, if you will, over time. And on one end of the spectrum, we have all of these good words here. Wonderful leadership, inspiring, confidence building, constructive leadership behaviors. And there are a few of us in any organization that are just off the hook good, genius level good. And that's why this is a normal distribution here, because not all of us are there, but there are a few that are just genius leaders. Then most of us are pretty good. We're right here in the middle. I think Martin, the great philosopher, Martin Cook once told me that the only thing that the behavioral sciences can really say about ethics is that most of us are average, right? Well, statistically speaking, that's what the distribution's all about. And then over here on this far side, we have what I'm kind of interested in, which is awful belittling destructive and demotivating behavior. They're all in the same spectrum. Most of us are to the positive. A few of us down here, a couple of standard deviations to the left are awfully bad. They're the ones that I'm interested in more than anything else. Let's talk a little bit about why people do what they do. Why are you in this organization right now as opposed to someplace else? Why do you, when you have the ability to, why do you choose to affiliate with organization A versus organization B, C, or D? That's the kind of affiliation that we're interested in here. So I have a theory about that. It's called READS 4F affiliation theory. It's called READS because I made this stuff up. And in the academic game, when you make stuff up, you publish it and you get tenure and it's a really good thing. So that's why it's READS 4F affiliation theory. The 4Fs will become apparent. The first F is funds. And let's not underestimate the importance of funds because it is the way that we get our survival needs met in a modern society. In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, this is almost a survival need. So we gotta get money so we can get the basics. And if you don't have enough money to pay your mortgage, you don't have enough money to pay your car payment, it's a problem, okay? It will occupy your attention. It will divert you from other things that this organization deems are important. So funds are important, but it's insufficient to explain a lot of behavior. Explain some behavior, but we're not all as straight up economically rational as others might have you believe. Because in my case, for example, what I do, who I do it with has always been more important than how much money I make. Isn't that evident by the fact that I had 27 years in uniform and now I'm an academic? Neither one of those are particularly high paying positions, right? So it was about money, then a different line of work would be appropriate. And if there's one thing I know about the people in this room, you're not driven exclusively by money. There's something else in play that we must take into account. The second F is fund. Fund. We don't talk about fund nearly enough. Fund is an important motivator. There is a social wage associated with having a good time and enjoying what you do. It is important. And people will stay in a job where they could get paid more someplace else if they're having a good time. And sometimes what we need to do as leaders is remind our people that they're having a good time. We do, we have to remind them of it. How many of you have seen master and commander, far side of the world? Oh yeah, naval audience, okay, stupid question. I just did this in a group of students recently at the Air Force Academy. They have not seen your movie, okay? They have not. But it's a great movie and I use it to demonstrate leadership principles all the time. I like to teach leadership through film. And there's this one part in the movie. Check me out on this and see if you remember it. They're being chased by the much superior friendship and they're about to be sunk and the dark is coming on them and they create a decoy that they feed out behind the ship and at the right moment, a young lieutenant pulls off the covers to the lanterns on the decoy as they douse the lanterns on the ship. And then he jumps in the water and they haul him back aboard. So he's up on the deck, he's shivering. He's scared to death because cannonballs have been splashing all around this thing while he was out there riding on it. He's up on the deck, he's half-drowned, he's freezing to death and what does Russell Crowe say to him? He leans down, he says, now tell me, lad, wasn't that fun? Yeah, okay, it's fun, it's adventurous. And in this business, you and your people get to do things other people don't get to do. Sometimes you get to jump out of airplanes, you get to operate multi-million dollar pieces of equipment, you get to blow stuff up. I mean, come on, it's a hoot. Give yourself a break and acknowledge the fact that there are times where it's okay to have fun. It's important. Now I work with law enforcement as a military police officer for so long, I speak to a fair amount of law enforcement groups. And when I start talking to them about fun, I get pushed back. Unlike you who are all attentive, facing forward and they will cross their arms, further browse, lean back and say, now, George, don't denigrate what we do. This is serious business. It's lives and livelihoods, it's protection of the community. And I say, okay, I'll give you that. And I certainly don't mean to denigrate. I said, but let's talk about high-speed chases for a second, shall we? Okay, so you're ripping up the interstate 110 miles an hour, you're chasing the bad guy, the stop sticks come out, the tires explode, it goes sideways into the median. The guy jumps out, it's a foot pursuit. You sick the dog on him, the dog eats him for a while, you run up, you hit him with some OC spray, you get him down, you handcuff him, you stand him up and it's high fives all around with your buddies. You want to tell me that's not a good time? I'll say, okay, you got me there. Yeah, that part's fun. Yes, of course it is, and acknowledge it and accept it. The third F is fellowship. Fellowship, by fellowship I mean social cohesion, the bonds between shipmate, the bonds between soldier and battle buddy. Those types of, I got your back, you got my back, camaraderie things that are a heartbeat of military service. And I tell you, of all the things that I miss about being in uniform is that. Because my academic colleagues will tell you that academia is more like a loose confederation of independent contractors on its best day. There's not a lot of team and camaraderie, right? I miss that and it's important, it motivates some extraordinary behavior and I'll give you an example in just a second. The fourth F is feeling, a feeling that you are a part of something that's bigger than self, which I believe is a fundamental human drive. We are not house flies. We do not become birthed and consume, defecate, procreate and die. That's insufficient for human beings. We want to have a legacy, make a difference, have an impact that is enduring. I believe that to be fundamental human drive. So the issue with this and something that I want you to think about is, what if you have a deficit? What if you have a deficit in one of those Fs? What if, I don't know, maybe it's a deficit of funds? Well, my suggestion is that you work on the other three. If you want to attract and maintain high quality, talented people need to be thinking about all four Fs. Because if you're in a job where you're not having any fun, you're not making any money, you don't like the people that you're with and you don't think it makes any difference, what's the only rational thing to do? Anything else, right, exactly. All right, there we go. Now here's my example of the power of fellowship. How many of you have heard of Ross McGinnis? One, two, oh, there's more than usual. I'm pleased to see that there's so many people out there who are insignificant that we hear a lot about through the modern popular media. But Ross McGinnis is a person of importance and I want to tell you his story real quick. The picture on the right was taken three days before he was killed in Iraq, so it's not a happy story, but the way he died is important for illustrating our point and I think it's a tribute to him in the telling of it. So that picture on the left is his induction photo. The picture on the right, he's interact with the Third Armored Cavalry Squadron, he's on patrol, it's an urban area, you can see that by the background. That picture was captured by a Stars and Stripes reporter, like I say, about 72 hours before he was killed. On patrol, an insurgent throws a grenade, the grenade hits McGinnis and then goes into the open ring mount of the up armored Humvee that he was riding in. So at that point he had a fateful decision to make. Do I bail out of the vehicle to almost assured safety or do I go after the grenade to almost assured self-destruction? It's nothing we train, he went after the grenade. He yelled, grenade, it's in the truck. There were three other people in that vehicle, including his immediate supervisor who was behind the wheel. He yells, grenade, it's in the truck. He goes after it, locates it by the radio mounts toward the back of the vehicle. The sergeant who was driving the vehicle turned in time to see McGinnis cover the grenade with his chest. The grenade went off, McGinnis was killed instantly, but all three other people in that vehicle are alive and walk in the face of this earth today due to an instinctive decision that was made by that young man. Now we know as much as we do about it because he was awarded posthumously the Medal of Honor and his parents received that medal on his behalf in ceremonies at the White House. So the event has been very well documented and if you wanna go to the Medal of Honor website you can see the story. His parents said something very interesting at those ceremonies. They said, our son was average. You believe that? Our son was average. He certainly wasn't average on that day. But why did he do what he did? How do we explain that? Funds, do you think it was funds that provoked that kind of behavior? Not enough money in the world. No, it's not about money. Fun, it's not fun, although he was funny. People in the unit talked about his sense of humor. I mean, think about the job that you enjoyed the most. You probably laughed a lot. McGinnis had an ability to make other people laugh. He had a rise sense of humor that other people in the organization appreciated. How about fellowship? Ding, ding, ding, right? It's all about fellowship. And the interesting thing is he wasn't in the service that long, right? He was a junior enlisted person. He didn't have a lot of time to inculcate the values, but he sure did as translated into his various obvious actions. A feeling, I don't think Motherhood and Apple Pie is what gets you to do something like he did. I think that might get you into the recruiter's office. But that thing there, that I got your back, you got mine, since we began studying actions on the battlefield, we know that it's care for the person to the right and to the left that drives that kind of behavior. Ross McGinnis. Now, why do I talk about the 4Fs? I'm interested in the question, and it's a legitimate question, as to whether or not leadership style really does matter, because do you have to be happy in order to do a good job? The literature says no. Depends on how you define organizational effectiveness. So if all we're interested in is getting the job done, the last mission or the next mission, maybe morale doesn't matter that much, maybe happiness doesn't matter that much, because if you're a professional, I mean a real pro, and you really care about what you do, does it matter if you have a bad boss? I mean, maybe it shouldn't matter, but we've been looking at this for a while. And this short-term mission accomplishment, just I'm only focused on the next task without being concerned of the long-term health and welfare for the people in the organization, kind of has some negative ramifications in a large and complex organization. So we're gonna talk a little bit about those. This is where we get to do a little interaction, okay? So I'm gonna ask you the question, how many of you have left a position or seriously considered leaving a position because of the way you were treated by your supervisor? Can I see a show of hands? Stick them up there, okay? Be proud, be proud, okay? You're the survivors, okay? What do you think that is, about a third? About a third of the audience? Okay, okay. Rough, non-scientific sampling there, but nonetheless, a lot of you have had this experience. So what bad happens when you have a bad boss? We'll call it a destructive leader or toxic boss. I'll define it in a minute. But what bad happens? Just throw out some ideas, throw up a hand. Tell me some negative impact that happens when you work for a bad boss. Come on, be brave. Demoralized, it's humiliating and belittling. How many of you have ever been chewed out in public in front of your subordinates? Raise your hand. That's almost a litmus test for toxicity. I think the same people raised their hand both times. What's up with that, right? But nobody likes that, okay? It's humiliating, it's demeaning. And so that tends to be suppressed. What else? What other bad happens, bad impact from working for a destructive boss? Communication shuts down, why? Well, not only communication, but I would say innovation and creativity shuts down because it's too risky. Because if you go out of your way and you do something creative, look, the failure rate of experiments is about 75%. Okay, so if you're gonna try something new, then you have to have a relatively high tolerance for failure, okay? Because the likelihood is, statistically speaking, you're more likely to be wrong the first time out of the gate than right. But if you're working for a toxic boss, if you're working for a human blowtorch, you don't wanna step into the flame, you wanna keep your head down, you wanna be reserved, you wanna do what the boss tells you, and therefore you're not as likely to exercise the risk-taking behavior that's necessary to create and innovate. And that can be a narcotic to looking at things in new and different ways. And let's face it, the work that you do is hard work. It's hard enough as it is. But under a toxic boss, the tendency is to comply. To comply. So you do what they tell you to do because it hurts too much to do otherwise. But that does not equal commitment. In order to be committed, you have to be able to take some risks. And commitment tends to be suppressed when you work for a bad boss. How about this one? You think you drink more or less if you have a bad boss? Higher levels of attendance or higher levels of absenteeism if you have a bad boss. Domestic violence? You think you're more prone to have more domestic violence or less if you're working for a bad boss? All right, these are things worth thinking of. And here's some ideas. I talked about the 4Fs for a reason. Because when it comes to toxic leadership, when you're working for a bad boss, there are some known impacts. The first ones are, it's no fun. It's no fun. Matter of fact, it not only does it impact the workspace, but it carries out into the family as well. And family dynamics can suffer when you're working for a bad boss. Fellowship, some research that I and some colleagues have conducted indicates that all forms of relationships tend to degrade when you're working for a toxic leader. Now, you would expect that relationship with superiors would degrade as a result of that. That makes perfect sense. But why would relationships with peers also go down in terms of quality when you work for a bad boss? Guess what they do? We've measured it's statistically significant correlation. How about relationships with subordinates? Yeah, that goes down too. It goes down too. There's not a direct reason perhaps why it should other than people tend to be very unhappy when they're working for a bad boss and that tends to translate into relationship behavior. And it's hard to realize that your work is noble and worthwhile when you feel as though you're being taken advantage of, demeaned, humiliated and abused. So feeling is also degraded. Okay, organizational citizenship behavior is a concept that goes to that issue of commitment that I talked about earlier. Organizational citizenship behavior is from the managerial sciences and it is a construct that explains what happens when people do more than they are required to do, OCB. So my example for OCB is you're walking across the post here and you see a piece of trash off to the side of the sidewalk. No one sees you, no one's telling you what to do but you see the trash. Do you pretend you don't see it and keep on walking? Or do you walk 20 feet out of your way, pick it up and throw it into the trash can? The walking over, picking it up and throw it in the trash can would be defined as organizational citizenship behavior because you don't have to do it but you choose to do it. Well, what we know about toxic leadership is when you have a bad boss, they don't go pick up the trash, right? So they comply but they don't exercise that extra. Satisfaction, no matter how we choose to measure it, is negatively impacted when you have a bad boss. All levels of satisfaction. Even satisfaction with pay and allowances because the perception is they don't pay me enough for this. So it does translate even into the funds aspect of things. At least the perception about funds. Student of mine, Lieutenant Colonel James Dobbs, now on the faculty of the Air Force Academy did his dissertation on the relationship of toxic leadership and cynicism. Cynicism, which is different from skepticism. Skepticism is when you question everything and I would submit to you that's a good thing. We call that critical thinking and I want you to be questioning. I want you to be skeptical about everything I say today. Skeptics don't get suckered, okay? That's a good thing. Cynicism is when you impart a malevolent purpose on just about everything that happens and that's not a good thing. That is, I'm walking down the hallway and my boss comes down the other side and she said, George, that presentation you did last Tuesday, that was fantastic. Good job. And my immediate thought is, oh geez, here it comes. She's buttering me up. Something bad's getting ready to happen. What's this all about? Boy, this is gonna hurt. That's cynicism and that's not particularly helpful. And the thing about cynicism is there's different types. There's individual cynicism and then there's organizational cynicism. Organizational cynicism tends to be a particular problem with toxic leadership because the targets tend to think not only that their boss is bad under those circumstances, but they also attribute that badness to the organization. So instead of my boss is an abusive supervisor, it's the Navy sucks. Okay, that's how that gets translated. Why? Because, well, the organization obviously knows this is a bad person and they're putting them in charge of me. Therefore, the organization is complicit in this problem. And I call it the head slap phenomenon. Whenever one of these toxic leaders gets promoted to a high level of responsibility, there's a collective head slap in the organization and people go, oh my God, I can't believe they did that. They promoted this guy or this gal. Can't believe they did that to my organization. That's a fairly common phenomenon. Cynicism is problematic. Retention. Well, I'd love to stand up here and say that talent flees toxicity. That's what I wanna say and some studies have suggested that but it's a little bit more complicated than that. That the decision to stay or leave is a complicated one moderated by factors such as do I have a better opportunity, right? What's the strength of the local economy? Those types of things tend to impact that. So in some cases, people that suffer under toxic bosses leave. In other cases, they just stay and stay disaffected. And then the poison spreads. But it's complicated because we did a study of senior military officers, Lieutenant Colonel's and above, and we found that they experienced toxic leadership at significant rates, at least as they do experience a fair amount of bad leadership but they don't leave. There is no correlation with inclination to remain in service. Now why would that be the case? Well, they've been around for a long time so they have perspective. They've had good bosses and bad. They know that the bad bosses leave and the odds are they'll get a good one the next time because there's more good leadership in the organization than bad overall, okay? Maybe it's also a matter of identity because typically very senior officers totally identify with the organization. What they do is who they are. It's totally ingrained. And so they're not gonna let a bad supervisor mess that up because they're all in. So we said that's really interesting finding not what we thought we were going to find. Let's go talk to some junior officers now, people that have been in before 10 years. Guess what? They're out of here. There is a strong correlation, statistically significant between having a bad boss and leaving the organization. And here's a question for you. Who leaves the best and brightest or the ones that couldn't hack it in the first place? The internal narrative is sometimes they left and therefore they couldn't cut it. But there's another possibility there and it's that we may not be retaining our best and brightest. I know that's a hard thing for this organization, this group of people here to hear, but you are the survivors. That's what you are. You are the survivors in this room. So retention is a little bit more complicated. How about suicide? I am unwilling to say that there is a connection between toxic leadership and suicide. But there is a gentleman out there by the name of Doc Matsuda, an anthropologist who was tasked to do a study of suicides in Iraq. It's interesting because it's one of the few studies done in a combat zone. And what Matsuda did was he looked at eight individual cases of suicide and in all eight cases found a person or a group of people who was making the life of the person who committed suicide miserable. And he asserts that there is in fact a relationship. That's a small end. There has to be a whole lot more study done before I'm comfortable making that case. But I will pose to you that it's an interesting question. The reason I'm not convinced is some people commit suicide who work for extraordinary leaders, outstanding exemplary leadership, and they still make that fateful decision. And there are some who work for miserable stinking rotten leaders who do not commit suicide. So I'm unwilling to say, I think it's a much more complex phenomenon. But look at some of these productivity numbers up there. Will you, when we look at toxic leadership and we look at the impact, that's a study that was published in the Harvard Business Review by Porath and Pearson. And look at some of those numbers. They're looking at behavior after a toxic experience. And any enterprise leader of any organization is gonna look at those kind of productivity numbers and say, gulp, that's not something I wanna mess with. I don't want that kind of impact in my organization. I have too much work to do. I have too many important, dangerous things that need to be done to have 48% decrease work effort. That's, those are real impact numbers right there. And then we have the problem of stress. I know it's very difficult to come and talk to an audience like this and tell you that stress is bad because you have it for breakfast. You thrive on stress and it's true. Stress can be positive or it can be negative. It can have a positive impact or a negative impact. But long-term, chronic exposure to high levels of stress have very well-known physiological implications on the human body. I mean, it's well established. It's, so the problem with having a toxic boss is it's a slightly different kind of stress. There's a stress associated with an adrenaline inducing event. Somebody shooting at you or a high stakes experience. The problem with toxic bosses is that it's, it doesn't go away. And it's almost a sense of betrayal because you've been told all these wonderful things about having great leadership and you're doctrine on leadership. You're what is written about it is outstanding. Peter Drucker said that the best thing he ever read about leadership was the Army Field Manual on Leadership, FM 22-100 at the time. And when I first heard that, I was a faculty member at the Army War College and I said, oh hell, I better read this thing. I never had. But if Peter Drucker's gonna say it's a great thing, I'll go pick it up and I'll read it. You know what? Our doctrine, what we write about leadership is extraordinary. It really is good. And it sets up an expectation that it's gonna be good. And then when it's bad, it feels like betrayal. It feels like organizational betrayal. So some leaders add energy. They come into the room and the place is uplifted. Some drain energy. And they are what I call sweat grenades. They walk into the room, everybody bursts into sweat, right? And they have names. We could throw names out here and you'd probably recognize some of them. By the way, toxic leaders typically have nicknames. They have nicknames like the Zapper, I don't know. You know the nicknames. White Tornado, one guy was called. One guy I ran into was called Nukum because he nuked people in place all the time and so just had the personality of a blowtorch. So yeah, they had nicknames. But does our system of performance evaluation permit or encourage the promotion of those who are toxic at a similar rate as those who are not toxic? In other words, does our performance evaluation system distinguish between those two types, the one who adds energy and the one who takes energy away? I submit it doesn't necessarily do a particularly good job of that, right? Which results in the head slap phenomenon. And here's the real problem I'm interested in. Some have an interpersonal style. Now this has nothing to do with competence. They can be equally competent, but just by virtue of how they treat other people. Some people have a style that's so disruptive. They do not add value. As a matter of fact, the job gets done in spite of them, not because of them, but because they rotate every two years. The implications of their actions do not catch up with them. You get compliance in the short term and somebody else usually comes along later to clean up the mess. So here's my definition of toxic leadership, three-part definition. The first one, an apparent lack of regard for the welfare of subordinates. So these people are typically very receptive to missions, very responsive to their supervisors, no job too hard, no task can't be done in no amount of time at all, and they just don't care about the welfare of their subordinates. There's this famous dichotomy in leadership studies. On one end we have task-oriented behavior that's getting the job done, hard driving, mission accomplishment. On the other hand is taking care of people, that relationship-oriented behaviors. So what we really want are people that are high drive and good at taking care of people, but that's a tall order, not everybody does that. Many of us tend to value one side or the other. So if you're all about task orientation and have no focus on relationship behavior, it looks like a sweatshop. Highly effective, hard driving organization, but broken people left in the wake. On the other hand, if all you have is relationship behavior without any focus on getting the job done, that's a country club, right? Where everybody's concerned about everybody's feelings, but the work doesn't get done. Both of those are unacceptable. The second element is an interpersonal style that drives down organizational climate. So if you have those two things, we probably have a toxic leadership problem. And notice that the key element of the definition is impact on the organization. Climate is driven down. Now, you can drive climate down by being a tyrant, being the bully boss, but you can also drive climate down by being a timid, unengaged, uninvolved leader that lets bad stuff happen on your watch. Can you see how that would have a negative impact on climate as well? See, so they're both bad in that case. Why? Because they have a negative impact on the organizational climate. Now the third element, a conviction by the subordinates that the leader's motivated by self-interest that is getting ahead at their expense, that makes it worse or better. Better because remember I mentioned Newcombe before? Newcombe was a human blowtorch. He was a very difficult person to work for. He had one attitude, it was bad, and he had one volume and it was high. Okay, that was just that kind of human being. But all of us who worked for him and around him knew that he was completely selfless. There was no self-aggrandizing behavior at all. He wasn't trying to get ahead at anybody's expense. He was simply trying to get the job done in a large complex organization that was lumbering and lethargic. So he acted like Tyrannosaurus Rex because he felt he had to in order to have an impact. Now none of us liked it. None of us would volunteer to go to work for him again, but we didn't hate him because we understood what it was he was trying to do. But if people perceive that you're getting ahead at their expense, that you're just working for your next fitness report and your next duty station, they tend to resent it. And that tends to magnify the problem and make it worse. All right, how do you know if you're working for one of these? I try to avoid using profanity in my presentations because it represents the lack of vocabulary and that's a problem academics should not have. But I was in the military for 27 years and I do understand the baser notes of the human vocabulary. Robert Sutton wrote a really good book called The No Asshole Rule. He's from Stanford, pretty prestigious university, so he can use the word, I'm gonna use the word. Test one, after talking to the alleged asshole, does the target feel humiliated, de-energized? I did not pay him to use that word, but it's a good word, fits in with the presentation, or belittled by the person. Does the target feel worse after the exchange? And secondly, two-part test. Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than more powerful? A key characteristic of toxic leaders. They kiss up and they kick down, which explains perhaps why they tend to be perpetuated in the organization. They look good to their bosses. They look good to the boss, looks down and says, wow, you know, when George says jump, everybody jumps. When George says he's gonna do something, by God, that thing gets done, I like George. Of course, you don't look to see that they gotta put bars on the windows to keep the subordinates from jumping out, right? Because their perspective is completely different. One of my favorite Beatle Bailey cartoons, the men are having a going away party, sorry, because Sarge is going to an advanced course, wins the party as soon as he goes away. I've been to those parties, I've organized those parties, where the celebration is not what we accomplish together, but the fact that there is light at the end of the tunnel. This guy knew something about leadership. You don't lead people by hitting them over the head, that's assault, not leadership. And he did some pretty difficult things in his career. Now, this is a very important caveat that I have to throw out there for you. Just because your boss barks at you, just because a person has a loud and demanding personality does not necessarily mean that they're toxic. Remember, three-part definition to toxic. Lack of apparent regard for the welfare of subordinates, negative impact on organizational climate, and a perception makes it worse if the boss is getting ahead at your expense. So just because you're hard driving doesn't necessarily mean that it's a toxicity problem. There's a place for every kind of behavior, we call that situational leadership. So if the building's on fire, I'm yelling and screaming and you're moving and everybody's happy. You know, when the enemy's inside the wire and you're handing out the last rounds of ammunition, it's not the time to call a focus group, right? I don't need to hear your opinion about whether or not this is a good idea. I'm telling, you're moving, okay, we're executing here. There's a place for that. But that same behavior in a different situation is going to be completely inappropriate. Even a broken clock is right two times a day. So if you only have one style, you only have one default approach to leadership, sometimes the situation will match up with that and it'll be the right time, right thing to do. But a lot of the time it won't be. So the responsibility is on the part of the leader to change their style based upon the needs of the followers and the demands of the situation. So sometimes it's a hug and sometimes it's a boot in the keister. But it's the art of leadership in determining which one is appropriate, which one will have the most positive organizational outcome. That's the art of it all. That's why it's not reducible to a formula. All right, so I submit that this is an organizational problem. And one of the issues I have when I'm making a case to the Army, Navy, Air Force Marines and Coast Guard that toxic leadership is a problem that should be addressed in their organization, that it has negative impact and therefore it ought to be dealt with as a developmental matter. I get this response. The higher I go in the organization, the more likely I am to get this response. You know, George, you're right. I hear what you're saying. 15 years ago we had a real toxic leadership problem but it's a whole lot better now. Oh, it's a completely different game now than it was then. And I say, yeah, for you, there's less people to poop on your birthday cake at your level of the organization. Go talk to these guys. Never confuse your place in the organization with a generalized institutional perspective. So it may be really good for you but we know life is different for an 04 than it is for an 01. It is different. And so don't confuse where you sit and what you see as an institution-wide because the folks at the bottom of the organization say it's just as bad as it ever was. So here's some questions that you may wanna worry yourselves with. From an institutional perspective, if it is an organizational problem, are we creating toxic leaders? You saw how many hands went up at the beginning of the presentation. Are we creating these people? What are we doing that is manifesting in this way? All right, we know there's a bunch of them out there because you've had the experience. Are we tolerating them too much? And if that's the case, what should we do about that? These are the questions that stewards of the profession will worry themselves about and think about. I have a few ideas just to get us started and thinking about some solutions. One of them is to name the problem. So we've done that. We're doing the work right here, right? So we know that if there's this thing, we're gonna call it toxic leadership. We've created a construct and that gives us a vocabulary to talk about it because who here wants that badge? Nobody wants to be rated as the toxic leader, right? It's not something we aspire to. That's behavior inducing in itself. That may be the start of developing some culture around this idea. So name it, talk about it. And in our literature, in our documents, let's not be so focused on the positive aspect of it. Let's at least leave ourselves open to the possibility that people in positions of authority may engage in behavior that is not in the finest traditions of leadership. Just because you have the position doesn't mean you're a leader. And I know some people don't like that idea. Right, man? I am the whatever, therefore I am a leader. No, you're not. You have a position. Your leadership is ratified in the hearts and the minds of those who follow or those who choose not to follow. You've seen some of the other ones up there. I like the no asshole rule. And the no asshole rule goes like this. I don't care how brilliant you are. I don't care how well you drive a ship. I don't care how well you drive a plane. If you're an asshole, I don't need you. And I had this problem, I had to do a search, a faculty search, and I had some faculty members that argued with me about this. They said, no, George, wait a minute. This is an academic institution. Don't we want to have people here who do great research, who get grants, who do wonderful academic things, they're brilliant. But so what if they're a little quirky? Don't we want to have a place for them? And I thought of it for about a half a second and I said, oh, hell no. No, tenure is for life. These people are joining my family. I'm gonna have to put up with them for the next 15, 20 years. Are you out of your mind? Of course not. No, I vote no. And the rest of the committee kind of saw it the same way that I did. But there's certainly a counter argument there to be made. And if you're thinking critically, I hope you're thinking about that argument right now. How about 360 degree feedback? I'd like 360 degree feedback. It could be done well. It could be done poorly. What some military organizations have done in recent years, however, is not good practice. What they have done is put all of these instruments at the disposal of people and you're expected to go online, complete the surveys, evaluate yourself, have other people evaluate you. And then given the data, the assumption is that you will make behavior change just by being exposed to the data. Wrong. That's not how people change. Change is difficult. There has to be an accountability mechanism. So simply giving them the data that points to their flaws, here's what a toxic leader will do. They will discount the opinions of subordinates. Oh, they don't understand what I'm up against. They don't understand this thing and they become dismissed. Toxic leaders are very skilled at dismissing subordinate feedback. So it is a very little impact. What is effective? Here's the hopeful part. Toxic leaders are influenceable from the top down. So if a supervisor looks them in the eye and says this behavior will be unsuccessful, your career is about to terminate if you don't change your behavior, guess what? They will. They will change, at least for the short term. You won't change their personality, but I don't care about personalities. I care about behavior and behavior is influenceable from above. This is one where you have to attack the problem from the top down. And by that I mean a toxic chief petty officer is a problem. A toxic admiral is a tragedy because of the wake that is cast behind them, because of the example that they represent to the organization. So when you promote a toxic leader to a very senior position, you're basically telling the rest of the organization this is what success looks like. And there are more than enough to look at that example and say I know what I gotta do. And that transmits the problem. That's part of the problem, not part of the solution. All right, now it's 916. I promised myself that at 915 we would go to questions and answers and have a little dialogue. But before I do that, this is the kind of bottom line. What kind of leadership do the people in your formations on your ships and planes and units deserve? And what is expected of them, what is expected of you as leaders by the American public? Now I'm a father and a taxpayer, a former member of the profession. I still use the word we all the time. I hope you'll forgive me for that. It's a hard habit to get out of. But nonetheless, I care about the profession. This additional weight that I put on in this facial hair, that's all part of my disguise to infiltrate the system of higher education. Underneath all of this beats the heart of a soldier still to this day. I want you to understand that up front. But what kind of leadership do they deserve? Well, as parents, we know that we give you our sons and daughters. And we also know that there is no guarantee that you can assure their safety. We go into that with eyes wide open. But we do demand that they be treated with dignity and respect. I don't think that's particularly negotiable. And also that is part of the fundamental underlying values of your service. No matter which branch that you're uniform that you typically wear. Fundamental values include respect and dignity. So that's my pitch. Now what I want to hear now are some questions. So let's have