When you go higher with a complaint, you need specific allegations. "Creates a toxic climate" is subjective and not a crime. Higher might easily say "we had no idea of the problem before you brought it to us. We were having a good day until you walked in. Maybe YOU are the problem." Or higher might say "this is he-said, she-said, and you're the junior guy. So, we're going to assume you are the problem."

Of course, if you get a dozen of your peers together, it might be different, but what are you, Juan freaking Valdez? Plus, this has the stink of conspiracy about it-not good. If the dude gets a talking-to, he'll just be paranoid-not a recipe for improved leadership. And let's say you do get the guy moved on. Who's to say that they won't send you a bigger asshole?

My approach was always to be known as a guy who was good at his job and would follow the rules, but was still kind of an unpredictable asshole. Higher generally just left me alone with my team to do our thing as long as we answered their requirements. Of course, we kind of had a unique situation due to job and organizational specifics.

The Old Army approach was "wait 6 mos and you'll PCS, your Boss will PCS, or you'll change jobs". I understand that is not most pro-active approach and kind of an exercise in kick the can.

The evaluation and personnel system has never been adequate to separate Super Man from Toxic Man. Because Senior Raters were most important part of evals, it is easy to hide your toxicity two levels up. Often the Senior Rater gives Toxic Man the highest eval. Toxic Man can often get promoted far above his level of competence. We keep BS-ing about 360 degree Evals etc.... but I don't think anything is going to change.

I only had one really bad Boss in 24 years. Unfortunately he was CO CDR and I was XO. Everything CO CDR did just made things worse. The 1SG was only a SFC but we would just get together and try to make things work the best we could. The CO CDR was just an unlucky guy, wife ran off w his best friend, he shipped her back to states, wife snuck back to Germany shacked up with best friend. Everything else he touched worked about that well. CDR was not a crook, or a cheater, just a sad sack unlucky bonehead. What can you do? 1SG and I didn't let the CDR stop us from trying to do the best we could for mission and the troops, you just tough it out.

I am rather curious about he definition of toxic? Gen. 'Ned' Almond, MacArthur's FECOM Chief of Staff and then under performing Korean Xth Corps commander seems to me to fit the bill as definitely toxic. But then the more talented beloved Patton shared many toxic personality characteristics with Almond and yet I suspect few would call him toxic?

During Desert Shield/Storm, the first girl I thought I was going to marry found herself deployed to Germany with an Army National Guard military police company. A couple of green-tabers went out of line in terms of drunkenness and sexual harassment. It took a visit from the state Adjutant General (who is technically not in the chain of command during a federal deployment) to sort out. I don't know whether the TAG involvement was out of Active Component/Reserve Component courtesy or political sensitivity, but I found myself glad that this recent Kosovo situation was addressed in the way it was. Total Force means one standard, one fight. I'm glad that Big Army cut no slack.

Another war story: During initial preparations in 2008 to deploy an Iowa Army National Guard brigade, the more-than-rumor, less-than-fact was that state leaders had maneuvered for an Iraq mission set over another, "safer" one available in Kuwait. The thinking was that a kinetically challenging mission was preferable to keeping Joe out of trouble for 12 months.

Contingency missions such as Kosovo are hard, both because they're unsexy and uninspiring to some leaders/soldiers, and because idle troops are the devil's motor pool.

There was another part of the Buss interview that grabbed my attention. I really like these candid interviews, they can reveal a lot - although this one was a little boring at times.

Anyway: the part where he spoke about surviving his deployment. The interviewer asked about how his manuevered through his various challenges to build some success. His response focused on his team's "survival" of the MiTT deployment rather than anything regarding the competency of the IA unit he advised or changes in the security and civic function in his region. He even managed to work in a R&R reference while answering a question about mission success! That captures the basic problem with our overseas missions in Iraq and Afghanistan: We don't really have skin in the game.

I don't mean to say that we are insulated from the enemy or other dangers - obviously not after looking at the casualty numbers. But, the focus of soldiers like MAJ Buss isn't mission success. It's to get through their deployment, see their families again, move onto the next assignment, promotion, and eventual retirement. Surviving rather than winning.

Before I get flamed: I'm not tearing down MAJ Buss or any other MiTT guys. They did their work as best they could. I do think that his one response was a tell for our priorities when we deploy. I did the same thing: it was more important to me to come out OK over improvement in the Iraqi security picture.

...or at least this is what I was taught in one of the more boring leadership classes in officer training. I actually believe leardership exist in a 3 dimensional universe where you lead down, up and laterally. Toxic leaders usually exist in environments where two of the three are not present. For a guy like this to exists there are no checks (or atleast percieved checks) on what this guy thinks he can do.

If higher lets him go without knowing whats going on in there subordinate units then they are wrong. I know there are bigger issues to handle at positions of BN and higher, but if higher is so focused on outcomes they can't see success "in spite" of bad leadership then they are wrong. The platoon leaders I was responsible for knew I was just going to tell them what needed doing and let them work. At the same time they owed 1SG and I an explanation of the how and the who that way ultimately I underwrote their decisions and there was a trust there. In a unit with toxic leadership there is no trust between the leader and led.

The trust between leader and led is so fundemental to the leadership environment, there is no command that can truly exist without it. If you as a leader, do no have the trust of your charges, then you can not lead them. Ultimately your personnel will, more often then not, audible your orders and go a different route because they think they can do (know) better. For a commander, nothing is more irritating than to be constantly usurped or challenged, and the weak minded leader will look to the iron fist of UCMJ in order to regain control. This begins a viscous cycle which usually leads to a leader insulating him/herself from their formation and a further breakdown of trust. With no one left in the unit to talk to him, and a higher who is diconnected from their units, the only people left are their peers.

Lateral leadership is the hardest direction for leadership to travel. Because the officer corps has become such a shark tank, many of us look at helping our peers as helping the competition. It is also difficult because the advice offerer is not coming from a position of strength or authority. The only way this works is if there is a common respect between the two leaders. Regardless, there is a responsiblity to the service and part of that is to fix our friends just as it is to subdue our enemies.

Now, all of this said toxic leaders are at every level from squad to division, and are both officers and NCOs. The thing is, it takes a leader to fix a leader, and just making due or sticking with the "devil you know" often results in entire command teams getting fired, or worse young soldiers, who cannot handle the torment, killing themselves. All I've ever asked anyone I was given responsibility to lead, from playing sports in high school and college, to my life in the service of my nation, is they trust me. Trust that I have their best interest at heart, that I would never make them do anything I would not do and no matter what we succeed because of them. Toxic leaders don't have trust in the people they lead, and the led don't trust their leaders.

The Army has plenty of options to deal with toxic leaders -- or at least report them:

Open door -- Takes balls, though
CSM -- NCO chain can work if the NCOs trust the CSM
Sensing Session -- as I recall, these are mandatory within 90 days of taking command. Soldiers have to take it seriously (many don't) Question is, what to the highers do with the info?
Chaplain -- the chaplain can transmit patterns of discontent in a unit
IG -- For this route, you tend to need some specific complaints to get traction

It doesn't take much digging to locate toxic leaders. But most people "kick the can" down the road. Maybe pull them out early, maybe give them a marginal (but not referred) OER/NCOER. In the past 10 year, that is not enough for the Army to boot you -- are even stop you from getting promoted. That will changes during the drawdown, though.

It is rare that there is enough counseling on file to make a "bad", truly career ending report stick, unless there is a single provable incident of misconduct.

Is there a DOD or service definition of "toxic" leaders or leadership? Are there really more "toxic" leaders now than in years past? Do the services really reward "toxic" behavior?

I think when people say toxic they really mean an abusive command climate. I've worked for many very demanding (and effective) leaders over the years and many have continued to move up through the ranks. Very few truly fostered an abusive command climate.

I have never found the officer corps to be that dog-eat-dog, but I have generally been in well led units.

There are always a few of "those guys", but I have found them to be the exception more than the rule. And usually, what goes around comes around.

Frankly, the officer corps got a lot LESS competitive when they quit making CGSC a competitive board, stopped blocking CPTs, and posted MAJ and LTC promotion rates over 90%.

The first truly competitive board is BN CMD, at about the 16th year of service, and by then you are vested.

Now, I've heard that the Army is reversing itself on both blocking CPTs and ILE.

Things will get a little more sporty.

Not abusive guys always get over. But still, there is plenty of room for team players -- and in fact, I would argue that being a team player is a much more effective long term strategy than being a blue falcon. But everybody has their own experience.

A few years back when I was still a Captain, I was presenting a paper at a conference at Ft Leavenworth when GEN Petraeus was there sorting out COIN doctrine, etc. My old unit, the Rakkasans were in the news because of COL Steele's tactics that seemed to violate everything about the direction the Army was moving toward winning the COIN fight.

At a break some of us were shooting the shit with P4, which was pretty awesome in itself. I worked up the courage to ask him about our old unit's commander--why had the Army at this critical juncture put a guy like COL Steele in charge of a BDE in the middle of the COIN fight? I felt queasy asking it, and I feel queasy typing it. Steele is an officer who have served his country loyalty and admirable, but when your tactics are making headlines in bad way, someone has to ask, right?

P4's answer was telling: "Because young Captain, the Army would rather loose a war than change its promotion system."

So here we are wrestling with this toxic leader question. Have we promoted a bunch of guys into high positions who don't belong there? Has the complicated nature of the last ten years of war produced a bunch of stressed out guys who can't figure out how to win so they become overly focused on classic chickenshit items like reflective belts? Did the "zero defect" 90s produce a generation of toxic leaders who will just have to work their way out of the system?

The Army knows it has a problem, but can't figure out how to fix it. 360 evaluations? Please. All of this seems to indicate that high leadership think all of us has a problem, but none of them do. Are GO's getting 360 evals? Does anyone tell the SMA to shut his trap when he starts talking about the new APFT?

Further can we even define a toxic leader? I'm sure that some of my guys have thought me toxic in the past? Was I?

So we have a problem but aren't talking about systemic changes over the long-term. That's the real 360 evaluation.

Beyond ranting about the Army's flaws, to me the most instructive lesson on toxic leadership is the Caine Mutiny which I've re-read at various junctures in my career. Sure, Capt Queeg was toxic, but could the crew have elevated him beyond it? Loyalty goes in all directions. I think it ought to on everyone's reading list.

One day 4 other MAJs, myself and a CW4 walked into our senior rater's office and told him that we weren't coming back to work unless something was done about the LTC we worked for. He was flat out crazy and since we all had concealed carry permits, nobody was comfortable with fact that he had access to a weapon and ammo at all times. The CW4 who was the oldest among us decided this needed to happen because he was pretty sure that we were on the road to a physical confrontation with the guy.

The other thing was that our crazy boss was under consideration for an extension and nobody could bear the thought of that.

MAJ Buss really frames the dilemma well, unfortunately things have to get pretty bad before the path forward seems clear. In our case, the level of misery was high enough that we pretty much stopped caring about whatever repercussions there might be.

There was an investigation, and soon after our conversation with the 0-6 he more or less handcuffed the guy and limited his interaction with us.

....in the Georgia Guard.

The force has already seen just about every flag officer in the State relieved over the past year. And his isn't even the first company level relief for cause this year. A Georgia Guard Company deployed to Kuwait lost its commander after several inappropriate actions came to light,

Speaking of which, the OPTEMPO in Kuwait will reach a level where discipline will become a significant problem soon enough, if it already hasn't.

Not sure how really to frame this properly. While in an advisory position in Iraq, we had a reserve flag officer and a reserve COS above myself (XO) and the CO.
They were exceedingly difficult to work with because combined they had less operational time than one of my mid level NCOs. Yet they insisted on constantly micro-managing the operations. Their decisions were often made without any consideration of the long term effects on our operations or the impact to our relations with our Iraqi counterparts. It was frustrating to say the least. It felt like we were the A team being led by a bunch of Junior Varsity folks. For example, when a member of the flag staff asks me to identify on a chart several of the key POI's, ones that we should just know as a matter of course, there is a problem. Indeed one of the biggest problems was many of our superiors on the flag staff seemed to be dialing it in. I can't count how many times I had to resend a report, or do staff work for them, because they were incompetent. It truly ate into my time as an XO, which was already quite busy with more operational concerns.

In addition, they often would threaten to fire anyone over really petty things, or, worse from my point of view, keep people on, despite obvious professional and personal shortcomings. They would only listen to our advice on occasion. It was enough to feel like things were not a total loss, but just barely

The only way me and the CO were able to make it through our time there without full on insubordination was to jointly make the decision that our role was to mitigate the effects of the poor decisionmaking at the top on our people. This should be obvious to those with even basic leadership skills, but it was something that we had to really fight to make happen. We also had to recognize that red-lines on our part had to be decided on and that we would agree and go along with many of the more hairbrained ideas, as long as they did not cross those red lines. It was a constant battle, but one that left us feeling like, despite the idiocy we endured, we were able to accomplish something good at the end of the tour.

Even at the end, we had to live with the personal, internal satisfaction because this leadership refused to go to bat for us. Our end of tours were all downgraded because the boss never fought for his people. Yet the flag and COS went on to nominate and fight for a LOM and Bronze Star for themselves respectively. Our efforts made their awards possible. It was salt in the wound of a difficult tour.

When pressed, Palin has even admitted that she hasn't been thinking about it. It's not ever been relevant to her. Her abyssmal understanding of foreign policy makes her downright dangerous. She makes Bush sound like Henry Kissinger..

"Is rio orange war always forfait b and you inevitable ?"
MaximB