Follow the Leader: Follower Strategies Enabling Toxic Leadership

Event Center A & B

Compromising stability within successful organizational frameworks exists a pernicious trichotomy of junctions. Researchers Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser (2007) conceptualized the complexities of The Toxic Triangle (TTT) as an incongruent confluence between destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and a conducive environment. The purpose of this research was to contribute to the distinctions of the TTT theoretical framework, paying special attention to the less researched follower role and how followers may enable toxic leadership schemas through organizational alignments. Followers of toxic leaders have been broadly categorized as colluders and conformers. Colluders engage with the toxic leader for personal gain and are characterized as individuals who are ambitious, hold similar worldviews, and have bad values. Conformers obey out of fear and are characterized as individuals who have unmet needs, low core self-evaluations, and low maturity (Padilla et al. 2007). The distinct division of followers may enable a toxic leader to exploit the organizational environment. Toxic leaders may react to the distinct differences through purposeful positioning of the followers within the organizational setting. Of special interest to this study is where the follower aligned him/herself in proximity to a toxic leader. How closely one chooses to align him/herself with a toxic leader as a reaction to toxic leadership may be important in lending support to follower categories. Additionally, a moral reasoning scale was used, which may be useful to reveal the underlying cognitive processes that help to delineate colluder or conformer acceptance of toxic leadership. Results, limitations, and implications are discussed.