Army Takes On Its Own Toxic Leaders

NPR -- George Reed is associate dean and associate professor for the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at USD. He talks with NPR about how top commanders in the U.S. Army have announced publicly that they have a problem: They have too many "toxic leaders."

This was not the first time that an Army researcher had raised the issue of toxic leadership. In 2003, the secretary of the Army asked researchers at the Army War College in Pennsylvania to study a question:

"Given an institutional objective to establish and maintain effective command climate," Secretary Thomas White Jr. wrote, "how can the Army effectively assess leaders to prevent those with destructive leadership styles?"

"The first thing that struck me was, what a good question," says retired Col. George Reed, who was director of Command and Leadership Studies at the War College. "It was not a question that we had wrestled with before."

Reed and a colleague interviewed dozens of officers who were attending the War College. (Full Story)