Toxic Leadership

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Leadership is that process in which one person sets the purpose or direction for one or more other persons and gets them to move along together with him or her and with each other in that direction with competence and full commitment (Elliott, 2009). Leadership is supposed to guide people to attain a particular set vision. Motivation is fundamental in the process of leadership as if there is no motivation there will be laxity among the people involved. It is also a critical scenario for leadership to have followers; this will infer a relationship between leaders and followers (Frank, 2003).

Emotions of a leader are so important in this aspect of leadership. It is through emotions that the leader will be categorized as ‘toxic’ or ‘not toxic.’ It is with no doubt that true leaders will appeal to emotions and as the same time know how to cope with their own emotions and how to perceive or control the emotions of a group. The major fundamental task of a leader is to inspire positive feelings in those he leads. In whichever situation followers always turn their attention to leaders, they expect his reaction towards that particular situation which will act as emotional guideline. The way a leader responds to a situation will give the followers a way of interpreting that event which in turn will make them react emotionally. If a leaders panics, gets annoyed or angry, these emotions will spread to the followers. On the contrary if he shows confidence and optimism to the same situation, his emotions will also be “infectious” (Maxwell, 2002).

There is an importance of leaders to first analyze the impact of their emotional manifestation. Leaders should own emotional intelligence. Those leaders that don’t possess emotional int...

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