Over the past couple of years, I’ve met a lot of people in leadership roles, many of them don’t even know how they come across. These people are full of themselves, power-hungry, narcissistic and if you don’t put them on a pedestal by the way you speak to them, they will pretend that you do not matter.

Now this is not surprising at all, considering that power corrupts the best of us. These ‘leaders’ are clearly not fit to lead other human beings.

How do you spot a toxic ‘leader’?

1. They are self-absorbed. They only pay attention to themselves and their thoughts, needs, desires, and emotions. They are not concerned about others and will show little interest in or care for others. For instance, they will not greet you during a a meeting or a virtual call and go straight to the business. They do this to show that they will direct where the conversation goes, while you wonder why this person didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge your presence. This leads to self-doubt. When a leader lacks empathy, they are only interested in bottom-lining the topics that concern or benefit them.

2. They will nit-pick and want to know every detail of what you are doing. These people find it difficult to trust the people working under them, assuming they are incompetent of doing their jobs right. They put people down. This lowers the team morale (optimism, enthusiasm, and excitement), at the same time lowering the team performance as well.

3. They will not accept their mistakes. These people are always right and will even defend their wrongs through gaslighting, as they cannot take responsibility for their mistakes. ‘Are you sure about this? Someone else must have changed that, because I checked, and it was alright.’ Or ‘These people make mistakes all the time, and besides, you can’t trust a company like that! And why are you taking their side?’ These remarks may seem childish but then we are not really talking about mature human beings.

4. They are disrespectful and obnoxious. They have no respect for who you are, where you come from and where you want to go. They will judge you because they want to judge you, it is as simple as that. If they feel you are not worthy of their respect because e.g., you are a woman, an immigrant, a black person etc., they will deliberately ignore you. Their intention is not only to put you down but also to bully you. For instance, on virtual calls, if you don’t speak much, they will say things like ‘oh maybe she has left to bring us coffee’.

5. Leading is not enough, they want the spotlight too. They will want to take the credit for something that has been a team-effort and will not acknowledge the hard work of other team members at all.