It has been my experience that toxic leaders share a similar story of some bad experience when they were put in their first leadership position on a team. Whether it was a loss of equipment, incident caused by subordinates, or just how they were treated when they arrived on the team, created an environment of distrust between the leader and his subordinates. I witnessed this first hand on my team.
We were in a heated discussion about a mission we had coming up. The team leader tried to interject with what he thought we should do, but was quickly disregarded by the team sergeant. The team sergeant said that this was his team and he would run it how he saw fit. This was not the first time our team leader was marginalized by the team sergeant in front of the team. What did this do to our captain’s impression of us as NCOs and professionals? Could that have planted the seed of distrust and resentment in our