First, we celebrate that my sister from another mister earned her Ph.D.!!! And then, Dr. Xaulanda Simmonds-Emmanuel and I take a deep dive into the topic of “toxic leadership”, and how to navigate that, in this week’s episode of I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY.

“If ‘leaders’ are not creating a work environment where individuals can be their best selves and do their best work, are they really leading or just creating chaos?”, Dr. Simmonds-Emmanuel recently stated in a post that prompted this raw conversation about workplace environments and the leaders in them. 

Upon defending her dissertation and obtaining her Ph.D., Dr. Xau was faced with two options: a) hyperfocus on her role as Chief Passion Seeker/Co-Founder of The XauSky Group, dedicated to fueling passion in the workplace by providing organizational development, consulting, and training offerings to create high-performance teams and more engaging work cultures, or b) pursue a leadership role in Corporate America. She chose option “a”. Why? Like so many entrepreneurs, she suffers from PTSD caused by having previously worked in toxic work environments that once dimmed her light. Plus, she has a business empire to build 😊.

Dr. Xau shares insights regarding the signs of a toxic leader, so we know how to identify them, and she also shares the traits of a leader people will want to work with and for, passionately.  We discuss shifts in organizational cultures driven by the millennial mindset, a more ethnically diverse workforce, and the lasting effects of the COVID pandemic – the human equalizer – that made everyone realize “I am vulnerable”, regardless of race, faith, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual identity or orientation, abilities or disabilities, age, lived experienced, zip codes, etc., etc., etc.

The key question here is: Can a toxic leader change? Depends…