Toxic Leadership In The Military

As per the Army Doctrine Publication 6-22, “Toxic leadership is a combination of self-centered attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that have adverse effects on subordinates, the organization, and mission performance. This leader lacks concern for others and the climate of the organization, which leads to short- and long-term negative effects”. One would think that leadership gets better as you move up in rank in the military but I have a different take. I think is something that needs to be address in an educational manner. Regardless of the rank of the individual, soldiers in the military must complete a series of training before gaining their military occupation specialty and their rank. The United State Army foundation is structure and

I had no idea what I was doing at the age of 18 of I was ready for a change. My first Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) was an Engineer a 12 Charlie; Bridge Crew member. My first duty station was Korea. My leadership in Korea was phenomenal, the comrade between the soldiers in the platoon was that kind of a relationship between siblings that respected and cared for each other regardless of the misunderstandings. My supervisors respected the privacy of every soldier within the platoon, I was never a witness of a soldiers being bash by a supervisor in front of their peers. I never saw an issue with single parents in the unit; those single parents were respected like any soldier in the unit that was single or married. The upmost level of empathy and sympathy was given to each soldier regardless of their family dynamic. My first three years in the military set the foundation to what I believe every leader and command should emulate however, in the last year I started to experience challenging experience of leadership, the kind of leadership that I now label as toxic leadership. I personally do not think that any parent wakes up and say “I would like to be a single parent” is a status that unfortunately is obtain by different pathway in life. A person can lose a spouse due to death, the other parent may not want to be a parent, a couple may get a divorce, the many situations varies in every family. My situation was just a poor judgement as to whom I decided to have a child. It was not the ideal situation, but with the support of my family, I did not see any issues to being an active duty single parent soldier. The first four years it was a breeze, I was able to excel in every aspect of my life and what was expected of an healthy soldier. I was able to obtain college degrees, attend military schools, attend high level of military training and most importantly, I