ABSTRACT
Chapters 8 through 14 contain oppressed followers’ stories based on their experiences with toxic leaders. We “cleaned up” these testimonials to ensure anonymity; however, we retained the author’s “voice”, including spelling or grammar errors, to keep the tenor and tone of each story. We share a summary of the type, supporting cases, a chapter summary, and sources cited. Each case consists of a testimonial followed by questions to evoke understanding, awareness, and leadership acumen. Chapter 13: Moral Corruption Cases describes leaders who do not care for the well-being of their followers. Darker leadership styles may result from moral-less and unethical leadership. Unethical leader behaviors included lying, bullying, corruption, and coercion to influence followers. Despotic leadership has been identified by some researcher as the worst form of negative leadership because the leaders manipulate followers through moral corruption and information distortion. Additionally, such leadership is highly self-centered, vengeful, exploitative, authoritarian, and self-interested. Morally corrupt leaders adversely affect trust, engagement, creativity, organizational citizenship, job performance, psychological well-being, and work–life balance.
