The Toxic Triangle - Grade: 95 PDF

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The Toxic Triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers and conducive environments

The University of Winnipeg Bus-4460-001

November 21st, 2018

The toxic triangle gives insight to how destructive leaders, susceptible followers and conducive environments lead to devastating outcomes within the organization. In my opinion, the toxic triangle goes far beyond business. The concept encompasses any area that involves a relationship between leaders and followers which by implication includes family relationships, religion and even politics. This article is relevant today and has implications for the entire world as all societies in one way or another has a structure which allows for leaders to dominate and precede over their followers. The nature of the relationship between the leader and followers may differ across countries and cultures however the underlining structure is the same. The implication of this is that we have a framework which could potentially lead to toxic leadership and devastating outcomes. Following this, the article is important as it gives insight as to how to spot destructive leaders and how to frustrate environments which allow them to thrive. The article fits in with previous class lectures where we discussed traits, characteristics as well as behaviours of good leaders. The article reveals that destructive leaders display traits of narcissism and reckless behaviour. They are manipulative, insensitive and ignorant, to name a few. These traits as discussed are the exact opposite of what makes a good leader and of what behaviour is expected and desired in leadership. Furthermore, there are real life examples where the toxic triangle played out and not surprisingly, the outcomes were disastrous. The article gives an example of a hospital in the United Kingdom which had to perform open heart surgery on a child. The hospital had a low success rate in performing that particular procedure and some doctors felt that the child should be taken elsewhere. However, despite all the warnings and concerns, the hospital went on to permit the surgery and as a result, the child died after eight hours on the operation table.

Using prior knowledge of the toxic triangle, it is important to note that the hospital leadership exhibited destructive behaviour as they were more focused on idealized goals rather than what was in the best interest of the child; they would rather perform the operation in hopes to be hailed as hero rather than transfer the child to a hospital with a better track record. The desperate parents of the child were also susceptible followers as they were in dire need for the operation to work that they signed off their child’s life and put it in the hands of incompetent people. Similarly, the hospital created a conducive environment for such devastating outcomes as fatalities were often considered part of the job and essential to the learning curve. All three factors coupled together is what ultimately lead to the devastating outcome. To conclude, this article is lacking as it does not discuss whether the absence of one or more of the factors will still lead to the same outcome. For example, if we have a destructive leader but not susceptible followers, will the outcome be different? And in what way?. I believe that is a question to be answered and an area for further research. I would assume though that unsusceptible leaders will revolt and challenge the leader and if they are effective, they can deter the leader from exhibiting destructive behaviour while serving as checks and balances for the leader. This is however an assumption and I would more research to be done. I believe the findings from the future research suggestion will have huge implications for our world as sometimes we cannot prevent destructive leaders from entering into power however we can determine whether we are easily susceptible or not.

References Padilla, A., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2007). “The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments.” The Leadership Quarterly, 18 (3), 176-194....