Negative Leadership
Russell Jay Hendel
The Stepping Stone, June 2025
Introduction
Just as there is a rich literature on positive leadership describing what a good leader should do and what personality characteristics they should possess, so too, there is a rich literature on negative leadership describing behaviors leading to low morale, decreased staff self-esteem and confidence, increased turnover rates, and decreased productivity. This literature includes academic papers,[1] doctoral theses,[2] and books,[3] and spans leadership in multiple countries and multiple industries.
Several studies have proposed methods to measure negative leadership.[4,5] The Swedish Destrudo-L[6] is a negative leadership measurement tool which groups negative leadership into five categories: lack of fairness, punishments and threats, ego-oriented, passivity, and messiness. The Destrudo-L complements positive assessment tools such as the Scandinavian Development Leadership Questionnaire (DLQ).[7] One study found that Destrudo-L and DLQ in combination were able to explain about 70% of the variation in trust of an immediate supervisor.[8]
A frequent challenge to dealing with negative leadership is the ambiguity of terms. Negative leadership can refer to (i) the absence of good leadership attributes, (ii) criminal behavior (e.g., sexual abuse) or (iii) abusive leadership, which is defined as "sustained display of verbal and nonverbal hostile behaviors, excluding physical contact."[9] Since criminal behavior and good leadership are well understood, the remainder of this article will focus on precisely characterizing the drivers of abusive leadership.
Jewish Speech Laws and Email Etiquette
The drivers of abusive leadership are discussed in a recent study,[10] which finds a shared commonality between the disparate disciplines of Jewish law and email etiquette.
Jewish law, besides its emphasis on ethical and ritual behavior, has a well-developed collection of speech laws. For example, charity is not only a function of the quantity given but also depends on the delivery method; even a facial expression of nuisance and lack of verbal empathy for the poor person's situation, is considered sufficient to annul the good deed.[11]
Jewish law formulates abusive behavior for locked-in servants by focusing on five characteristics (with the mnemonic SHELLED): shouting, (lack of) hearing and listening to servant concerns, embarrassment, lack of a leisurely verbal pace, and double standards.[12] Rather startlingly, an owner who only has one serving of a good food dish, (not enough for both him and the servant) must give the servant preference over himself.[13] Verbal abuse is a biblical law,[14] and is codified in the law codes to include such behaviors as reminding a person of past behaviors he has outgrown or referring requests to people who can't provide. Verbal abuse as a violation of law is considered worse than monetary overcharging.[15]
Additionally, Jewish law has an entire category of forbidden speech categories on which there are many books. As mentioned earlier there is a shared commonality between Jewish law and email etiquette. We therefore review a short but comprehensive article on email etiquette with concrete and specific suggestions.[16] The article points out that even violation of the email etiquette of brevity is a form of abuse, that is, it is abusive of a person's time. The article presents five important contrasts to avoid abusive behavior summarized in Table 1.
Table 1
Five Contrasts Highlighting Elimination of Abusive Verbal Behavior
A Case Study: The Task that Was Not Completed Timely
The paper in endnote 10 provides a case study, a person who did not complete an assignment on time, with a hierarchy of verbal reactions to the completion. Table 2 lists them along with the violations of the principles just mentioned; the earlier formulations are considered more abusive while the later formulations are considered more correct.
Table 2
Six Possible Verbal Reactions to an Incomplete Task
Note: In all but the bottom row, each verbal reaction is critiqued by the principles of abuse violated.
A Case Study: The New Zealand Cell Phone Ban
Newspaper reports on the recent cell-phone ban in elementary schools in New Zealand, based on interviews with students, succinctly illustrate the principles of this article.[17] Students complained about double standards (teachers could use cell phones but not students), a lack of discussion with students, neither hearing nor listening to students prior to the ban, and the resulting lack of cooperation as students bypassed the cell phone ban by using walkie talkies.
Of note in this case is that even though by and large students couldn't quit like workers possibly could, other deleterious consequences of bad leadership emerged—in this case decreased compliance. Also interesting is that the newspaper reports identified a key reason for discussion and listening: students pointed out that the cell phone ban prevented (emotionally) needed communications with parents and caregivers, and that this omission could have been easily avoided through a preliminary discussion and an exception process during lunch and recess.
A Case Study: Talking During Synagogue Services
A survey of the attempts of multiple synagogues, with varying congregational attributes, to curtail talking during prayer services illustrates many of the principles of this article.[18] The survey divided attempts into three categories:
- Those synagogues posting or presenting ritual laws prohibiting speech during prayer services, which violates the method-outcome leadership requirement;
- Those that emphasized punishment for the practice, which violates the future-past leadership requirements; and
- Those conforming to leadership principles (which as might be expected led to success).
One synagogue successfully implemented a four-prong program including:
- Requiring congregants to sign an intent-to-comply declaration (fulfilling the positive shared-vision requirement of transformational leadership),
- Eliminating the double standard of pulpit staff being allowed to talk about service matters while congregants could not,
- Eliminating certain service components which had minimal value (fulfilling the method-outcome requirement of good leadership) and
- Conducting an educational campaign reviewing and emphasizing the meaning and purpose of certain obscure prayers (also fulfilling the method-outcome requirement of good leadership).
A Case Study: Moses
A good case study is provided by the Bible whose hero, Moses, tragically failed. In reviewing this case study we do not assume the divine authorship of the Bible or even its historical validity, but rather, consistent with an exegetical practice that arose between the 10th and 12th century, we view the Bible as a piece of literature.
The biblical story presents a leader Moses who, through his prophetic connection with the Deity, freed several million slaves from slavery, provided them with a law book, and transformed them into an autonomous nation. Yet suddenly, we find God firing Moses as leader. This is tragic, unexpected, and most importantly seems to lack any clear reason. About a dozen biblical commentators, who wrote before the development of leadership theory, search in vain for the rationale behind Moses' removal, often picking on some small petty mistake and thus not providing a satisfactory explanation.[19]
Using leadership theory, particularly the negative leadership characteristics presented in this article, we may easily offer a convincing rationale for this literary enigma. First, recall that the goal of situational leadership is to make staff self-sufficient by achieving mastery. Yet Moses consistently and on several occasions complained that his staff would not believe he was sent by God, might try and assassinate him, a result of their constant complaints, and would not be satisfied (i.e., would still complain) even if their requests were met.[20] In the determinative episode that resulted in his being fired, Moses called his followers the “contrarians,” thus violating the speech laws reviewed in this article.[21] Quite simply then, Moses was fired because of repeated violation of leadership principles.
Conclusion
The message of the Bible is clear and strong: Providing subordinates with favors, even extraordinary favors such as transforming slaves into an autonomous nation and providing them with a legal code, does not guarantee good leadership. Leadership can be undermined by lack of faith that subordinates can grow and by violation of fundamental speech laws.
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Russell Jay Hendel, Ph.D., ASA, is the vice-chair of the Leadership and Development Section Council. He is adjunct faculty III at Towson University, where he assists with the Actuarial Science and Research Methods program. He can be reached at RHendel@Towson.edu.
ENDNOTES
[1] Great Learning Blog, "Major causes of leadership failure and how to overcome them," Great Learning Blog, Sep. 4, 2022, https://www.mygreatlearning.com/blog/major-causes-of-leadership-failure/.
[2] Damon Brown Crawford, "The Effects of Leadership Organizational Culture on Employee Performance Resulting in High Turnover, Low Morale, and Decreased Productivity" (2022). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 3676. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/3676.
[3] Daniel Watola and Dave Woycheshin, eds., Negative Leadership: International Perspectives (Manitoba: Canadian Defense Academy Press), 2016.
[4] Christian N. Thoroughgood, Brian W. Tate, Katina B. Sawyer, and Rick Jacobs, “Bad to the Bone: Empirically Defining and Measuring Destructive Leader Behavior,” Journal of Leadership& Organizational Studies 19, no. 2 (2012): 230–255.
[5] James B. Shaw, Anthony Erickson, and Michael Harvey, “A Method for Measuring Destructive Leadership and Identifying Types of Destructive Leaders in Organizations,” The Leadership Quarterly 22 (2011): 575–590.
[6] Gerry Larsson, Maria Fors Brandebo, and Sofia Nilsson, “Destrudo-L: Development of a Short Scale Designed to Measure Destructive Leadership Behaviors in a Military Context,” Leadership & Organization Development Journal 33, no. 4 (2012): 383–400.
[7] Gerry Larsson, “The Developmental Leadership Questionnaire (DLQ): Some Psychometric Properties,” Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 47, no. 4 (2006): 253–262.
[8] Maria Fors Brandebo, Sofia Nilsson, and Gerry Larsson, "Leadership: Is bad stronger than good?" Leadership & Organization Development Journal 37, no.6 (2016): 690–710.
[9] Bennett J. Tepper, “Consequences of Abusive Supervision,” Academy of Management Journal 43, no. 2 (2000): 178–190.
[10] Russell Jay Hendel, "Enhancing Pedagogy and Biblical Exegesis with Emotional Intelligence," Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI) 22, no. 6 (2024): 78–112, https://doi.org/10.54808/JSCI.22.06.78.
[11] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Matnoth Evyonim, Chapter 10, Paragraph 4 (accessible in English online at https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/986711/jewish/Matnot-Aniyim-Chapter-10.htm).
[12] Maimonides, Avadim, Chapter 9, Paragraph 8, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1363819/jewish/Avadim-Chapter-Nine.htm
[13] Maimonides, Ibid, and additionally Chapter 1, Paragraph 9, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1363819/jewish/Avadim-Chapter-Nine.htm
[15] Maimonides, Mecirah, Chapter 14, Paragraphs 12–18, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1363946/jewish/Mechirah-Chapter-Fourteen.htm
[16] Melanie Dunn, "Email Strategies," Actuary of the Future, January 2020. https://www.soa.org/490e4d/globalassets/assets/library/newsletters/actuary-of-the-future/2020/january/aof-2020-iss-01-31.pdf. Throughout this paper summaries and citations of the Dunn article are paraphrased and slightly altered to adjust for the leadership context and to offer a more precise formulation.
[17] Cara Swit, Aaron Hapuku, Helena Cook, and Jennifer Smith, "This is what happened after New Zealand banned phones in schools," The Independent (US Edition), April 6, 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/new-zealand-mobile-phone-ban-schools-b2728243.html.
[18] The survey is presented in Ari Enkin, (ed.), If You Go To Synagogue To Talk, Where Will You Go To Pray, (Israel: Renana Typesetting), 2018. The four-prong program is included in the survey (pp. 23-27) and originally appeared in, Danny Frankel, “The Silent Revolution: How One Synagogue Put an End to Talking During Prayer," Jewish Action, 5768 (2007).
[19] The enigmatic episode leading to firing Moses is presented in Nu. 20. A collection of attempts to explain this passage is presented by Jacob Milgrom, The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) Torah Commentary: Numbers, Excursus 50, Varda Books, 2004.
[20] The verses for these episodes occur at Ex. 4:1, 17:4, and Nu. 10:21–23.
[21] We follow here the biblical commentary known as Rashi. Further support is found in the commentary of the Ibn Ezra.