Blame Shifting as Leadership Strategy: Why Toxic Managers Get Promoted

56% of all employees work under a leader classified as toxic. A third of all leaders exhibit toxic behavior (Wolor et al., 2022). And yet these leaders keep getting promoted. Not despite being toxic. Because the system rewards it.

I'm going to tell you why the word "toxic" is part of the problem. And why your KPIs are causing the damage you blame on your managers.

The Word "Toxic" Is Itself Toxic

Before we talk about blame shifting, let's start with ourselves. When I call someone "toxic," what am I? I'm attacking. I'm reducing a human being to a label. I'm shifting blame.

Exactly what I'm accusing the other person of doing.

In my work with executives, I see this pattern constantly. The board complains about the "toxic" division head. The division head complains about the "toxic" team. The team complains about the "toxic" corporate culture. Everyone points at someone else. Nobody looks inward.

That's blame shifting as a system error. Not an individual failure.

Two Sides of the Same Avoidance

As a physician and pattern expert, I see two psychological strategies behind the label "toxic leadership" that function identically. Both avoid the same thing: an uncomfortable feeling.

The first strategy is overcompensation. In schema therapy developed by Young, Klosko, and Weishaar, overcompensation describes behavior where people live the opposite of their internal schema (Gazzellini et al., 2024). Someone who feels worthless inside becomes dominant, demanding, untouchable on the outside. The narcissist in the corner office isn't a person without feelings. He's a person who will avoid one specific feeling at any cost: I am unimportant.

The second strategy is surrender. The victim who suffers and complains is also avoiding. Avoiding confrontation. Avoiding the risk of taking responsibility. Avoiding the feeling of standing alone.

Both strategies are experiential avoidance. Wang, Tian, and Yang (2024) describe this mechanism as a self-reinforcing cycle: avoidance impairs attention, working memory, and emotional tolerance, which in turn produces more avoidance. A meta-analysis with 135,347 participants shows medium to large effect sizes (r = 0.406-0.560) for the relationship between experiential avoidance and psychological distress (Akbari et al., 2022).

The result: In the same company, an overcompensator and a surrenderer sit at the same table. Both avoid. Both call the other one the problem.

The Math Notebook Problem

Remember school? In math class, writing the correct answer wasn't enough. You had to show your work. Without showing your work, the solution was worthless because it couldn't be verified. You could have copied it from your neighbor.

In business, we've forgotten this principle.

We measure KPIs. Revenue. Margin. Customer satisfaction. Project completion. All results. None of it tells you how someone got there. Whether through respect or through elbows. Whether through collaboration or intimidation. Whether through real leadership or through fear.

Babiak, Neumann, and Hare (2010) studied 203 managers in development programs. The finding: 4% showed psychopathic traits, four times more than the general population. These individuals were rated positively on charisma and presentation style but negatively on actual performance and teamwork.

Read that again. Positive on charisma. Negative on performance. And still in leadership positions.

That's not an accident. That's a system failure. When your evaluation systems only measure the result, you automatically select for people who deliver results by any means necessary. And "any means necessary" means: blame others when things go wrong. Claim credit when things go right.

The CEO Who Wanted to Be the Best

I had a client in executive coaching. He wanted, quote, "to become the best CEO in the world." At first, I was pleased. Someone who wants to work on himself. Become more empathetic, lead more respectfully.

Then I understood the pattern.

He was extremely demanding. Delivered great KPIs. Paid well. Organized work efficiently. But emotionally, he was unavailable. For his employees, he was a machine that functioned but was never reachable.

The feeling he was avoiding: being unimportant. "Being the best" was his strategy to never confront the feeling of not being enough. Classic overcompensation.

After nine months of coaching, I happened to speak with one of his employees. He said: "You changed our boss. Now work is actually fun."

What had changed? Not the KPIs. Those were good before. What changed: the path to those KPIs. The work shown in the math notebook.

Why the System Rewards the Wrong People

Schmid, Knipfer, and Peus (2021) found a remarkable pattern: moderate narcissistic traits in leaders correlate with the highest team performance. High narcissism leads to exploitation and performance decline. But both moderate and high narcissists display dominant behavior.

The difference is nearly invisible to evaluation systems. Both deliver results. Both appear confident. Both make fast decisions. Only the way they do it differs. And most organizations don't measure that.

Schyns and Schilling (2013) analyzed 57 studies in a meta-analysis. Destructive leadership correlates negatively with performance, satisfaction, and well-being, but positively with turnover and resistance. The costs are real: According to a SHRM study (2019), turnover caused by toxic workplace culture cost U.S. companies $223 billion over five years.

But those costs show up in a different manager's budget. In a different quarter. Under a different line item. The blame shifting is built into the system.

The Uncomfortable Question

Ask yourself: How would you feel if you had no success?

If you can't tolerate that thought experiment, your success might be nothing more than running away. From the feeling of not being enough. From the fear of being unimportant. From the idea that without your achievements, nothing of you remains.

This applies to the narcissistic manager as much as to the employee who defines themselves as a victim. Both run. Both avoid. Both don't need better KPIs. Both need an honest answer to the question: What do I feel when I stop running?

What Organizations Need to Change

The solution isn't identifying and removing "toxic" people. That's blame shifting in itself. The solution lies in three changes:

First: evaluate the work, not just the result. Not only what a leader achieves but how. 360-degree feedback is a start, but only when it has consequences. A manager who achieves numbers through intimidation shouldn't receive the same rating as one who reaches the same result through collaboration.

Second: audit your incentive systems. If your bonus structure is tied exclusively to quarterly numbers, you've built a system that rewards overcompensation. Expand the criteria to include employee retention, team development, and psychological safety.

Third: stop putting people in categories. "Toxic" isn't a diagnostic criterion. It's a weapon. Ask instead: What feeling is this person avoiding? What behavior does that create? And what incentive system reinforces that behavior?

The answers are less satisfying than a label. But they lead to real change.

If you want to understand why your best managers might be your most expensive mis-hires, take a look at the psychological dynamics in the boardroom. And if you want to know why smart people consistently fail at simple decisions, the answer is here.

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Sources with URLs:

1. Wolor, C., Ardiansyah, A., Rofaida, R., Nurkhin, A. & Rababah, M. (2022). Impact of Toxic Leadership on Employee Performance. Health Psychology Research, 10(4). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9760724/

2. Gazzellini, S., Pellegrini, V., Napoli, A., Ventre, D., Lettori, D., Castelli, L., Basile, B. & Giacomantonio, D. (2024). Validation of the Schema Coping Inventory for Dysfunctional Coping Strategies. Frontiers in Psychology, 15. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1441794/full

3. Wang, Y., Tian, J. & Yang, Q. (2024). Experiential Avoidance Process Model: A Review of the Mechanism for the Generation and Maintenance of Avoidance Behavior. Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11332439/

4. Akbari, M., Seydavi, M., Hosseini, Z.S., Krafft, J. & Levin, M.E. (2022). Experiential avoidance in depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive related, and posttraumatic stress disorders: A comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 24, 65-78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2022.03.007

5. Babiak, P., Neumann, C. & Hare, R. (2010). Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 28(2), 174-193. https://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/babiak2010.pdf

6. Schmid, E., Knipfer, K. & Peus, C. (2021). Narcissistic Leaders: Promise or Peril? The Patterns of Narcissistic Leaders' Behaviors and Their Relation to Team Performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8273342/

7. Schyns, B. & Schilling, J. (2013). How Bad Are the Effects of Bad Leaders? A Meta-Analysis of Destructive Leadership and Its Outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 138-158. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1048984312000872

8. Society for Human Resource Management (2019). The High Cost of a Toxic Workplace Culture. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/about/press-room/shrm-reports-toxic-workplace-cultures-cost-billions