Whew... any more than eight would have taxed me today. A shout out to all leaders out there who avoid them
8 Symptoms Of A Toxic Command Climate
Leaders who know what to look for can take steps to prevent toxic leadership habits from infecting their command.
A great deal of time and effort has been spent by military leaders trying to seek out and prevent horrible command climates. The term often used is “toxic.” Time and effort is spent on sexual harassment and equal opportunity training, suicide awareness, and risk management in order to demonstrate that unit leaders “are doing something” and care about their soldiers.
Yet, looking out across Army formations, not much has changed. Toxicity continues and soldiers are smothered within commands that ultimately destroy their morale and willingness to serve, or worse, teach young impressionable leaders that “this” is how to lead.
For leaders and future leaders, it’s important to recognize what a toxic command climate looks like. Just as important is to recognize the symptoms in order to understand that what they might be experiencing is not how a command climate should be. Leaders, current and future, who know what to look for can take steps to limit it or at least ensure that they don’t fall into the trap and promulgate the disease.
- Micromanagement exists often on an epic scale.
- There’s a lack of respect shown from higher echelons to lower, and the lack of simple professionalism.
- Zero-defect mentalities and zero-tolerance policies are standard.
- Leaders tend to have a suffocating adversity to risk.
- There’s no meaningful purpose behind any order or task given to subordinate elements.
- There is no attempt to develop subordinates.
- Superiors take all authority from the noncommissioned officers and platoon-level officers within the command.
- There is a complete lack of trust of superiors, between peers and between subordinates.
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