On Being a Toxic Leader
Last week on one of the “Become New”[1] video’s, John Ortberg mentioned an article that creatively described “Ten rules for succeeding in academia through upward toxicity.”[2] A quick Google search and I found the article. Each rule, with tongue-in-cheek, describes heroic-solo leadership at its poisonous worse. I laughed as I read each one, but I also had a sharp jab to my conscience for the ways and times that I have behaved as a leader like the tyrant the author describes. Every spiritual leader who is honest with himself or herself knows this temptation to toxic leadership.
As you read each of these slowly and carefully, make “a searching and fearless moral inventory of” your life.[3] Pray this simple prayer of examen. “God, show me ‘me.’ The real me. Not the me I want to be, should be or ought to be. Show me ‘me.’” Or, pray David’s prayer from Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV): “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Ask the Holy Spirit to point out any ways in which these toxic traits are at play even in faint ways in your leadership. And if and when the Spirit prods you, repent. Turn from even a hint of this kind of dangerous leadership and turn back to the spiritual leadership we see in Jesus. As you read these “ten rules,” you’ll need to translate them from the world of academia to the world of ministry. Here we go!
Cultivate powerful friends. Gain power over as many publication organs and scholarly bodies as possible and use them to promote your clique.
Do nothing for anyone unimportant.
Find a less successful scholar who will fear and admire you. Flatter them into becoming your sidekick and count on them to denigrate your colleagues and defend your reputation.
Crush the confidence of students with the potential to surpass you. Or sleep with them. Or both.
Manipulate students and employees into feeling they owe you, long after you no longer have power over them. Make outrageous, unethical promises they will feel bad about accepting or refusing.
Promote a zero-sum model of success. Anyone else’s gain is your loss. Claim your students’ work as your own and reassign their best ideas to your favourites. Collaboration is for losers.
Systematically badmouth your colleagues so you can improve your own standing. Shut out the students of rival scholars. Mock those rivals for having less successful students.
Gaslight and spread misinformation about anyone who stands up to you. Complain about the “rumour mill” and “witch-hunts”. Accuse your critics of jealousy.
Ask loudly why no one is willing to come forward officially to substantiate the rumours of abuse against you. If someone overcomes their terror, call them crazy.
Lie brazenly. Accuse others of lying.
““Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my whole will, all that I have and all that I possess. You gave it all to me, Lord; I give it all back to you. Do with it as you will, according to your good pleasure. Give me your love and your grace; for with this I have all that I need.””