Toxic Boss: Devilish, Devious and Dangerous

Bad bosses wear masks. They are dastardly. They mask nasty intentions under broad, toothy smiles and sympathetic facial expressions. Psychopaths are at the top of the toxic corporate mountain. They are extremely bad bosses, devilish, devious, and distressful.

They silently study the human face and body. They observe agonizing faces and the drooping heads and bodies of family members just informed that their beloved mother has died on the surgical table. The psychopath extracts a probing, hurting look: He wears a mask of despair. He wears masks of consolation and compassion, empathy and revulsion. The psychopath masters how to portray extreme emotions in pursuit of extreme corporate theatre. A consummate actor is in the making.

Toxic leaders can be sponges who soak up emotions to be recycled in the executive suite. A boss ponders “How can I be emotionally intelligent and responsive to an employee when she tells me of her pain and disappointment when she did not receive the promotion?” To compound matters, our CEO in question knows that he doesn’t care one iota about Ms. Whitney’s promotion but he has to put on a mask and act as if he is devastated, deeply moved and shares her pain.

Toxic bosses are actors and chameleons who paste on an appropriate smile, expression, and a meaningful reservoir of eye contact at the appropriate moment with employees on the firing line. They transplant a semblance, a mask of seemingly true emotions onto their uncaring executive faces. They are ready to conjure up the appropriate mask when you visit their office for celebration, empathy, pain, indignation, and neediness. They are masters of exploitation and exclamations. Have you noticed these masks?

Employees visit this boss and he displays a mask of agony or an extreme face of concern. But he doesn’t care. He speaks beautifully sculpted corporate talk aimed at telling management trainees that they are so exquisite and emotionally intelligent. He smiles his twenty thousand dollar smile and tells you that you are a gem, a jewel, and a coveted corporate asset. But he is emotionally void. No one is home. He may succeed in providing employees who meander into his suite—a deep, rich, age-old face of understanding and the guise of a heart filled with compassion. But this boss has no compassion. But he wears a mask of compassion.

I have worked with a few such bosses. I have coached several of these troubled human corporates. hey are CEOs of a thousand masks. They are philandering chameleons. They are vacuous and dazzling. They are talking heads trained to talk whatever you yearn to hear. The worst among toxic bosses are psychopaths bent on temporarily appeasing and eventually dismantling. If you are in the way, inconvenient, expendable, or there is someone potentially better or cheaper lurking in the shadows – then you will soon be expelled. You are expendable in the eyes of the toxic boss. He knows no fidelity. A psychopath may treat a colleague despicably in the corporate suite and be hell-bent on devouring and destroying whoever he fancies. If caught on video will he apologize? No. Psychopaths are the terminal, edge-of-the-cliff toxic bosses. They deny their bad behavior. They show no remorse and suffer no guilt.

What should we expect from the run-of-the-mill toxic boss waltzing about a U.S. company? Be prepared for controlling leaders who treat employees with contempt, scorn, disrespect, and irreverence. But don’t be surprised if they wear a big grin, “have a good day” mask. Be prepared to be burdened by increasingly unreasonable workloads and deadlines. Dialogue is at a premium. Too much talk from underlings is a serious liability. Zip it up. Offer up obligatory smiles. Expectations are unclear. You are provided minimal instructions and training for completing tasks. Dispute and question superiors and team leaders at your own peril. You must assume the defensive posture. Attack is imminent.

Employees working under a toxic boss do so at their own risk. Outside the box, questionable, demeaning and dastardly behavior is the legal tender. Be ready to suffer. Be prepared to suffer emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. But be prepared for a boss popping into your office with an empowerment and collaboration mask against all odds. Your head may hurt from playing and replaying destructive scenarios over and over again in your mind. You wish you had a smartphone video of what he said and how he said it. You may feel waves of stress and doom overtaking you. Is there no recourse? You visit HR and they appear to be hard-wired to the toxic boss. Am I losing my mind and manufacturing conspiracies of toxic chains and networks within the company? Maybe you are suffering from stress and your judgment is slipping. Maybe not.

It could be that the destructive, dysfunctional words, facial expression and body language of your boss is exactly what it appears to be. It is rough, gruff, condescending and belittling. Since he is toxic his crude behavior provides a template for the entire organization – for all the clones who practice “monkey sees, monkey does.” Rude behavior emanating from the psychopath boss spreads permeates and metastasizes throughout organizations, agencies, and businesses. Insults, snootiness, bullying, sexism, racism, and 50 shades of demeaning boss behavior all go viral. The company is poisoned with the stench and pathology of a well-dressed psychopath. As a result, you are beginning to feel it physically. You work in an unhealthy company. You are emotionally sick and infected. Where do you take such an ailment? Who will listen? Is there a boss or an HR leader who is available and who is wearing a “listening mask?”

You certainly make several attempts to speak to your boss about the abuse you are experiencing from him and his henchman. But he acts psycho-sensitive. He wears a puppy dog mask. He is befuddled, faux caring, confused and incredulously recommends that you may want to consider a visit to the company psychologist. He is suddenly a progressive humanist. But he makes no attempts at unraveling toxic communication he has perpetrated or offering an apology. Although he is verbally polite and has the appearance of reasonableness you detect an air of disgust below the surface. The inflection of his voice screams out that he is annoyed, agitated and dealing with an inferior, low IQ subordinate. Are you imagining substandard treatment from this abhorrent psychopath of a boss or accurately describing an obnoxious brute acting as your moral and intellectual superior? Clearly, he suffers no fallout from his behavior. In his toxic way of feeling and synapsing he is ultra-moral, crazy ethical and the demons of guilt do not hover about him whatsoever. He has no conscience but he once Googled the term.

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Each visit to your boss and follow-up visits to HR only intensifies feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Somehow the real culprit is this brutal executive demon. Yet he is in charge and highly credible among the sea of empty suits. He is beyond reproach among executive board members and he is the voice that matters within an upside down, unfair and unhealthy business culture. Moreover, this CEO pretends to wear the masks of reason. But there is one saving grace. You comb the company grapevine and find out that you are not alone. Hardly. Other employees despise this guy. He is arrogant. He looks down his nose at mid and entry-level employees. There is a buzz around the company floor that the leader is “deeply toxic” and he is the psychopath-in-power who has grown a neurotic, diseased company. Neurosis is the legal tender. Normal behavior is suspect and demonized.

How do you respond to a toxic boss who is a psychopath? How do you confront, challenge and question this alleged villain and toxic boss if HR appears to be stumped, dumbfounded and even complicit? What do you say to a boss who wears a mask of innocence? What are your choices?

Your first choice is to file grievances with the same HR that you so thoroughly distrust. However, you have been whispered to by several savvy colleagues that that road through HR leads to professional suicide. Will you be blacklisted? Dismissed for reasons yet to have been invented? Is this sheer paranoia? Most employees decide that they don’t want to take the plunge and test a rogue HR. You were not thrilled by your exposure to HR to date so let’s look for other options. Should you consider taking stress management courses? Enrolling in company yoga classes and weekend retreats? How about conspiring and waiting around for the demise of this destructive, dysfunctional, academy award winning toxic leader? Can anyone strip this boss of his ultra-cool, chill, PC masks? No, that might not work. Word has it that he is like a wealthy gentleman with a closet full of hats, scarves, ties, and shoes. He is a corporate stud of a psychopath with a closet full of toxic masks. He has as many masks as a professional basketball player has sneakers. You expose toxic boss #3 and #7 and toxic boss #22 and #31 raise their ugly heads. He has a mask for every ugly behavior and tirade.

What else is left? You can leave. Opt out. Resign. Throw in the towel. But who wins and who loses?

Perhaps you can play the absenteeism card. You grow increasingly scarce and develop diseases, injuries and strategically delete as much workplace time as possible. I have also seen more than a few brave, bold, fed up and extremely high IQ employees who strategically set out to sabotage their boss in any and every way that they can dream up. You can sabotage this tyrant via low productivity. You might oversee brainstorming teams that fail to brainstorm and perform leadership roles for Innovation and R&D teams that purposefully derail. And you have one agitated colleague who has already revved up her sabotage into aggressive behavior such as theft of company property, data and irreplaceable software. Moreover, she has recently made considerable progress with clandestine postings on social media. You can serve as a colleague and partner in crime? Or is this not your style? Will your boss appear out of the dark in a mask of fatherly disappointment and disapproval?

It all started with a control freak leader who day-by-day appeared to increasingly fit the definition of not only a toxic boss but a full-fledged psychopath. No internal avenues for communicating displeasure were available in the workplace. Two highly articulate grievances appeared to flounder in cyberspace and get lost in a corporate HR vortex. Is there no conflict resolution possible? The agitation has been intolerable. What to do?

POST SCRIPT

After 18 months of resignations, sabotage and attacks to the brand via social media the company finally acknowledges via an official executive statement that “there are rumblings among employees that a few workplace issues are in need of being addressed.” But the alleged toxic boss is identified as instrumental and “irreplaceable” as he is the prime driver of the revenue stream for this Fortune 500. The culprit is fully protected, wears a mask of CEO dignity and what follows is naïve attempt at self-reflection and a terribly false and posed dialogue of existential, collaborative nonsense. No substantive issues allowed. The psychopath sits on his throne, wears the masks of psychopathy and the plebeians scurry about as if meaningful. What to do?

As bosses, employees, career professionals and psychologists we are in need of addressing this continual scourge of toxic bosses and dysfunctional organizational practices. As a psychologist, consultant and coach I ask questions that are not always welcomed. Do we defend a psychopath boss and toxic status quo or do we risk self and speak up? As an organizational member, we are on shifting, treacherous ground. As an externally hired executive coach and management consultant, I occasionally have the luxury of being an agitator and a perceived enemy of the elites who hire me. Is the psychopath a danger to self or others in the workplace? Are HR and the powers that be in a position to seriously assess behavior and provide a bona fide diagnosis? Well-intentioned and lightweight “assessments” may leave the bully, madman or potential killer loose in your company. Sooner or later there may be an incident that is not repairable or reversible. There may be genuine malice, evil and death lurking beneath the masks.

How does the company perform damage control and address grievances against an extremely toxic yet fiscally productive leader? What are the options for transforming such a toxic boss? Moreover, how can the company brand be protected from further social media assault? Are there ways to expose the devious masks worn by the psychopath – the most extreme of toxic bosses? Can toxic bosses be unmasked? Or are some organizations committed to protecting their seriously flawed executive suite offenders and swearing that the devilish mask is the friendly face of an emotionally intelligent boss? Buy into the masks of the toxic boss at your own risk. Psychopaths undermine, devour and destroy while maintaining an impeccable chill and dapper demeanor. They hit hard and smile pretty. Beware. Don’t be demonized by a demon. The toxic boss is playing hardball. Your reputation, career and the future of company and brand are on the line.