Distinguishing destructive/toxic from incompetent leadership

Abstract We argue that it is both timely and critical to make a clearer distinction between destructive/toxic and incompetent leadership to advance research and better mitigate the problems with leadership quality. To achieve this, we first review and integrate the fragmented literature on the subject and specify what competent and effective leadership is. We then propose an operational definition of toxic leadership that is useful for practitioners to make a better distinction between toxic and incompetent leadership. We finally provide recommendations to avoid and deal with toxic leadership in organizations and discuss research directions.