Assessment Task 3: Assignment

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Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................................3

Clearly explaining what the issue is and why it is significant to you..........................................4

Make a clear link to theory/research or model relevant to this unit that is drawn from at least
one academic journal...................................................................................................................6

Provide a practical example you could implement as a leader....................................................7

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9

References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction

Leadership is all about value and behaviour. The judgments of optimistic people in positions of
authority have been marked by a long list of horrific insults in the field of corporate, political,
spirits, or other matters. These events pose concerns regarding the very purpose and substance of
leadership and the perpetrators as to whether they are conscious mistakes or the result of inept,
cruel officials. Leadership instability has been prevalent from its creation within organizations
and communities. Unfortunately, a frustrating yet undeniable fact is a poisonous leader in many
companies such as Wells Fargo. They create a discontented, demoralized workforce with their
dangerous behaviour and unstable interrelations. Toxic followership is a problem that in
leadership or follow-up literature has not properly addressed. The report focuses on toxic
leadership with context to Wells Fargo which is a multinational financial company in America.
The report focuses on the concept of Toxic leadership and theories and models to overcome it.

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Clearly explaining what the issue is and why it is significant to you.

The dark side of leadership could be attributed down to human civilization, but the concept of
leadership was always synonymous with positivity. Toxic leaders are cruel leaders of the
organization. Toxic managers are rather people, who have a severe and lasting response to
inflammatory on their destructive behaviour and unstable personal qualities. Toxic followers will
and can hurt organizations, much like toxic members. Then good people have driven away, their
survival is endangered, and society is endangered. Under different ways and shapes, the toxic
members arrive. Intentionally toxic leaders damage others or better themselves purposely at the
detriment of others, while unwittingly toxic leaders inflict significant harm by irresponsible or
incompetent actions, along with their negligence. In order to make matters more complicated,
leaders look different depending on their relationship with them (Al Zaabi, et. al., 2018).

Some of the traits of toxic leadership are as follows:

Arrogant: Toxic leaders are extremely praiseworthy and arrogant. They believe they are right
and appear to be taking their word for the truth of the Gospel. They do not offer assistance to
anyone, and they dislike it if someone intends to change it, particularly if one is junior.

Autocratic: A toxic boss wants to hear no opinion than their own. They wish to follow each
other silently, without ever asking about the direction. Employees are subordinates, tiny
individuals who only live to offer the boss (Paul, 2017).

Irritable: Maybe not surprisingly, toxic leaders are also extremely irritable. Since they are not
responsive to any other person's thoughts, they hate and stop as large as required being asked
questions. The organisation is shocked by a hostile chief due to a lack of creative and free-
flowing concepts.

Maladjusted: The rough and aggressive mask of a toxic manager is a bad-tempered, changeless
man. They are very rigid and undergo very complicated adjustments. The toxic boss is probably
is the most vigorous opponent to organizational changes (Webster, et. al., 2016).

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Lack of confidence: Although the toxic leader has no self-confidence, they are highly confident.
As a consequence, team leaders are often very difficult to trust. This lack of trust often overlooks
or sweeps tough problems.

Symbols of personal authority: Such indicators provide the freedom to space, unlimited
exposure to everything, and maybe even packing the whole office into its photos and success
accounts.

Discriminatory: Not unexpectedly, toxic leaders also discriminate against themselves. They also
tend to be prejudiced by racism, discrimination, ageism, and other derogatory behaviour (Matos,
et. al., 2018).

I observed shocking situations that elevate stress and worry, leaving everyone low-self-worth, at
one point in a professional career. I analysed some issues and eventually share responsibility for
situations and the world in which we operate.  Perhaps everyone trapped so gently by certain
toxic leaders who exit in a worse situation because of their personality. The structures of the
organizations are venomous and evil. A report recently reports that 56% of employees suffer
from the harmful behaviour of a toxic leader (Foster, 2018).

This is a frightful figure which certainly uncovers that incorporate, the issue of toxicity gradually
declines the morality, motivation, and self-esteem of its subordinates. It is no stranger knowingly
or unknowingly to such situations for many people. Numerous media reports are covering
corporate corruption or political scandals that expose public confidence-breaking leaders. Let's
start with Wells Fargo which is a multinational financial company in America. Its strategic
objective is to drive accelerated development by aggressive market targets. But it accused 5,300
workers when revealed and shot (Özer, et. al., 2017). Wells Fargo admitted that failure was
organizational problems which include the characteristics of organizational culture were
wrongdoings. Sales practices were also failed due to the sales culture distortion. Employee
performance control was strongly associated with this system and links the main index of
internal management sales performance (days and months tracked). This is all because of toxic
leadership. It's convenient to accuse lower workers of corporate wrongdoing. However, there is a
greater issue than a few employees with media controversies like Wells Fargo.

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Make a clear link to theory/research or model relevant to this unit that is drawn
from at least one academic journal

Wells Fargo is highly susceptible to toxic leaders with six aspects of human conditions. In the
very canter of the human experience, existential terror, namely, the fear which emerges from the
consciousness it can die. It begins to grow between the certainty of the eventual destruction and
the uncertainty of their situations. Second, as Abraham Maslow describes in his hierarchy of
needs, psychological needs enable some people to respond to toxic directors. These leaders fulfil
many of our wishes to substitute parents by authority figures, to be representatives of the global
beings, and to feel "selected" or special (Boddy and Croft, 2016).

The fear that individuals cannot challenge a poor leader is more troubling to everybody. Third,
interpersonal concerns emerge out of disaster, sudden shifts, and uncertainty of daily living.
Certainty and security are inadequate. Fourthly, in a historical moment labelled by specific terror
and difficulties, each lives. Humans live in a world that cannot be solved and incomplete, where
an understanding of the current is uncovered and reacts to discoveries.  This endless and infinite
world brings face to face with endless challenges in every new era, creating the stage and re-
establishing heroic activities. Taking out the anxieties existential, behavioural, contextual, and
historical constantly into account could leave people both paranoid and paralyse (Hadadian, and
Zarei, 2016). Throughout the sea of the unconscious, they seem to drown out fears, particularly
existential terror. They guide the quest for safety and security in the form of leaders from this
unnoticed depth.

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Provide a practical example you could implement as a leader.

Leadership is critical in the creation of approaches to reduce toxicity in the workforce.

Investigators suggested that good styles of leadership, such as transformative and transactional
leadership, tend to report lower toxicity. Transactional management continues also to record
higher efficiency of workers and greater work satisfaction. This result is the successful
participation of workers in decision-making, the active involvement of opposing opinions, and
concerns in the company's actions in a specific manner. Discovery should be understood. Such
processes allow for greater transparency between leaders and employees, which allow for greater
confidence and provide workers with strong and coherent means of redress if a toxic relationship
is present in leadership or employee relationships (Vreja, et. al., 2016). The willingness of
executives to handle tasks that often change is a significant aspect. Members that embrace the
more inclusive culture, who are pushing for the integration of specific employees, or that are
trying to reform the oppressive organizational culture from inside, are more likely to achieve
greater workplace health and consequent profitability with the addition of an oppressed
community.

Leaders who address discrimination or other attitudes or risks of toxicity rapidly and effectively
tend to report lower labour toxicity levels. The research does not provide the styles of approaches
used by nontoxic members to achieve these outcomes (Kılıç and Günsel, 2019). Although the
literature indicated that leadership could and did play a key role in alleviating workplace toxicity,
further research on positive leadership behaviour and the decisions and perspectives leading to
these positive things remained necessary. Toxic working environments and business culture can
also produce toxic leaders. It has been finding that the instability in the workforce is terrible for
businesses. In other words, toxic places of work and members such as Wells Fargo spending less
time productivity, lower profits, and worse reputation in the public sector (Ottaway, et. al.,
2018). Such 'lows' will build a downward spiral where dissatisfaction may escalate, causing
additional workers and employers hostility, reduced employment, and so on due to stress or other
factors. On the opposite, non-toxic workstations, mostly headed by non-toxic members of their
sectors, tend to report higher productivities, lower staff attrition, and overall more competitively.

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Leadership training and screening could also help for this purpose. The conclusion is that the use
of Wells Fargo is an efficient overall method for motivating students to manage good and bad
behaviour. This research was a means of addressing the concerns of organisations about how
maladaptive members are to be identified or addressed. This is discovered that acknowledging
leadership problems through positive practice teaching and forcing future leaders to think
rationally about management styles and student implications could lead to greater success for the
leader and reduced toxicity (Bell, 2017).

For example, a company finds it was wrong, even unethically, for its employees. In order to
investigate, there is growing public outrage. The executives of the company express shock at the
disclosures and say they have not led employees to do so reprehensibly. This explains the latest
Wells Fargo case, which revealed that some banks' workers opened bank and credit card
accounts without their consent to achieve ambitious selling targets. The Chief Executive of the
Company, John G. Stump, announced that 5,300 employees had been shot in the acts, an ethical
failure. Some former employees, however, have mentioned an environment where managers
have inspected the progress towards sales quotas several times a day (Major, 2018). Those who
have achieved sales objectives have received heavy bonuses. At Volkswagen, technologists fitted
millions of cars with tools to circumvent U.S. pollution controls so that vehicles meet budget
demands. Managers at General Motors allegedly postponed the demand for defective and
possibly hazardous switches because of their anxiety about replacement costs. 

All of these cases showed a lack of consternation, and the business "cultural heritage" was
eventually deprived of the truth. Employees receive their cultural information not from what
management says, but from what they report. Signals in the office are combined. It will
demonstrate how reward and acknowledgment are done openly (Milosevic, et. al., 2020). Or they
can appear in more subtle ways, which measures management focus, concerns, and responses to
dissenting opinions. Also the most complex objective and principles will quickly be undermined
by such signs. Wells Fargo, and Volkswagen, are prominent examples of how signals from the
workplace can seemingly unintentionally shape organizational and behavioural cultures. These
signals, in the worst of cases, cause unethical and even illicit conduct. However, they advise
people more often explicitly about the kinds of personalities and actions an organization truly
appreciates.

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Conclusion

From the above it has been concluded that toxic leadership has an important influence on
personal and corporate performance as a dark leadership style. However, only limited
consideration was given to the essence of toxic leadership and its mechanism impact. This
report builds on the existing research on dark leadership and findings from a case study of Wells
Fargo, contributes three ways to the current theory. Toxic leadership can occur due to the lack of
clear purpose to hurt others, be less damaging relative to disruptive or violent leadership.
Secondly, the toxicity of this leadership style is determined by the ability of such leaders to
execute other duties. Finally supporters of toxic leaders can be significantly active not only in
failure to obey toxic leaders as well as in effectively manage to reduce their harmful effect. Thus
report highlights the complexities of toxic leadership and, most specifically, how followers can
resolve adverse consequences and neutralize the impact on toxic leadership by solution and
preparation.

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References

 Al Zaabi, H.H., Elanain, H.M.A. and Ajmal, M.M. (2018). Impact of toxic leadership on
work outcomes: an empirical study of public banks in the UAE. Int. J. Public Sector
Performance Management, 4(3), p.373.
 Bell, R.M. (2017). The dysfunction junction: The impact of toxic leadership on follower
effectiveness (Doctoral dissertation, Regent University).
 Boddy, C.R. and Croft, R. (2016). Marketing in a time of toxic leadership. Qualitative
Market Research: An International Journal.
 Foster, E.F. (2018). Impact of Manager Perceptions of Toxic Leadership on Their Job
Satisfaction andOrganizational Commitment in the Food Processing Industry (Doctoral
dissertation, Grand Canyon University).
 Hadadian, Z. and Zarei, J. (2016). Relationship between toxic leadership and job stress of
knowledge workers. Studies in Business and Economics, 11(3), pp.84-89.
 Kılıç, M. and Günsel, A. (2019). The Dark Side of the Leadership: The Effects of Toxic
Leaders on Employees. European Journal of Social Sciences, 2(2), pp.51-56.
 Major, D.C. (2018). Understanding the Impacts of Toxic Leadership on US Army Junior
Officers (Doctoral dissertation, Creighton University).
 Matos, K., O'Neill, O. and Lei, X. (2018). Toxic leadership and the masculinity contest
culture: How “win or die” cultures breed abusive leadership. Journal of Social
Issues, 74(3), pp.500-528.
 Milosevic, I., Maric, S. and Lončar, D. (2020). Defeating the Toxic Boss: the nature of
Toxic Leadership and the role of followers. Journal of Leadership & Organizational
Studies, 27(2), pp.117-137.
 Ottaway, T., Peluso, D., Richardson, J. and Fenner, T. (2018). Toxic Leadership in the
Cockpit.
 Özer, Ö., Ugurluoglu, Ö., Kahraman, G. and Avci, K. (2017). A study on toxic leadership
perceptions of healthcare workers. Global Business and Management Research, 9(1),
p.12.

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 Paul, A.L. (2017). Perceptional differences of retired army recruiters, regarding and
concerning spiritual and toxic leadership organizational outcomes (Doctoral dissertation,
University of Phoenix).
 Ross, D.B., Matteson, R.W., Sasso, M.T. and Peyton, G.L. (2020). A Remedy for
Improving the Culture in Higher Education: Toxic Leadership to Servant Leadership.
In Confronting Academic Mobbing in Higher Education: Personal Accounts and
Administrative Action (pp. 159-185). IGI Global.
 Vreja, L.O., Balan, S. and Bosca, L.C. (2016). An evolutionary perspective on toxic
leadership. Management and Economics Review, 1(2), pp.217-228.
 Webster, V., Brough, P. and Daly, K. (2016). Fight, flight or freeze: Common responses
for follower coping with toxic leadership. Stress and Health, 32(4), pp.346-354.’

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