Toxic leadership. Two words that, conceptually, can’t coexist. But two words that practically are all too real in tandem, pervasively so. Two words that rhetorically capture, as no other label can, the essence of this pervasive reality.

In the abstract, toxicity and leadership are antithetical, oxymoronic. True leadership is about motivating others, inspiring them to follow willingly. To follow unwillingly is to bow to the fear of coercion. To follow conditionally—I scratch your back, you scratch mine—is to give in to the self-serving bribery we euphemize as persuasion. But true leadership is qualitatively different, a supremely more elevated form of human interaction than we commonly experience. It’s about being out in front rather than on top; about eliciting willing deference from others because they want to, not because they feel they have to; about synching the hearts and minds—even the souls—of followers by the example a leader sets.

Where the poison of toxicity is at play, true leadership is absent. That, regrettably, is much more the norm than the exception today—not only in this country, its institutions, organizations, and communities, but abroad as well; at all levels of human interaction. Its paragon was Donald Trump. But it didn’t—and doesn’t—begin or end there. We have all experienced it in varying degrees, in various forms, at various times in our careers and our lives. It’s everywhere: in the organizations and institutions of politics and government, business, sports and entertainment, the media, education, medicine, even religion. It has been celebritized, commercialized, commoditized as a practice. If you want to understand the underlying causes of the manifold divisions afflicting this country today, for example, look no farther. It is, unquestionably, the defining sign of our times—a crisis of pandemic proportions.

The military—what some might otherwise, naively, consider a model institution of sorts—is in fact supremely susceptible to toxic leadership. It is a breeding ground for such behavior because of its hierarchical, authoritarian culture, a culture that extols the intrinsic goodness of command and subscribes to an ethos of obedience to authority. Insiders and outsiders alike rarely, if ever, question the chain of command imperative that underlies the institution’s modus operandi, presumably because of what is commonly accepted as the urgency of the military’s mission. The military preaches leadership; it lives behind and perpetuates the false image that it nurtures and rewards leadership; and unsuspecting, uncritical outside observers buy this line of false advertising, even to the extent of patterning their own organizations after military structures, processes, and values: discipline, duty, command, authority, responsibility.

What the military actually nurtures and rewards, though, isn’t leadership; it is followership. Those who get ahead, who rise in rank, are those who most unquestioningly carry out the dictates of their superiors. Disobedience in any form is a punishable offense, invariably conflated with dissent, and dissent is so discouraged that it prompts self-imposed quiescence and censorship from those who serve. After all, isn’t such deference to authority the underlying premise of civilian control of the military? By the same token, ironically, not unlike the abusive offspring of abusive parents, those who have suffered at the hands of toxic leadership all too often turn around and inflict those selfsame practices on others when it’s their turn to be in charge.

Let us not, though, focus on the military to the exclusion of the many other organizations and institutions, public and private, in our lives. We’ve all experienced the toxicity of jerk bosses. Many of us have never known anything different, even if we haven’t fully faced up to or admitted its widespread existence. In fact, most of us have probably become so accustomed to its presence that we have unwittingly resigned ourselves to it as an accepted, even acceptable, norm.

Toxic leaders are, above all else, bullies. They lord it over others. They look for weakness and exploit it to their advantage. They impose themselves on others, always through threat and intimidation. They verbally and psychologically muscle others into emotional submission or exhaustion. Their twin metiers are disparagement and contempt—as when a commander in chief refers to those who give their lives in combat as “losers” and “suckers.”

At the root of such bullying lie the deep insecurities that haunt all toxic leaders. Bullying is the disguise they wear to hide their own jealousies, weaknesses, and cowardice. Acting tough and domineering with others is their preferred way of counteracting the deflating self-image they see reflected in the mirror when nobody else is around. They’re never as good, as strong, as tough, or as capable as they would have others believe. To be sure, all of us have insecurities. We’re human, trying to survive and progress in a world that is premodern-Darwinian and postmodern-Orwellian at one and the same time. But most of us have somehow learned to live with and manage these insecurities in ways that aren’t purchased at the expense of others. Toxic leaders have never “matured” in such fashion; they’re stuck in adolescence.

The dogmatic tyranny toxic leaders practice on others is born of their outsized arrogance. The irony of their insecurity lies in the extent to which they demand to be accepted by others as the smartest guy or gal in the room, at all times, regardless of circumstance, no matter the subject. The irony of ironies is that toxic leaders are all too often profoundly incompetent—demonstrably unable, when push comes to shove, to perform the basics of their job—and ignorant, totally lacking in knowledge or understanding of what their subordinates do.

Such incompetence and ignorance feed and feed off the toxic leaders’ insensitivity toward others, who by definition are inferior. That’s what being a subordinate means, doesn’t it? At the same time, toxic leaders are shameless sycophants who suck up to their superiors. Lying to superiors about shortcomings and exaggerating accomplishments are the norm for toxic leaders in their dealings with those above them. Though almost always possess a poor eye for true talent, which by its very nature is threatening to the less able, they have an excellent eye for the weakness of other sycophants, whose unquestioning obsequiousness they rely on, and conversely for strong personalities who could become outspokenly critical “dissidents.”

If bullying is the starting point for describing toxic leaders, vindictiveness is the end point. Toxic leaders are nothing if not vindictive. They brook neither disagreement nor resistance from subordinates. Self-absorbed and self-serving, they are indifferent to the needs or feelings of others. They mercilessly go after those who disagree with them or appear to stand in the way of change, however ill-conceived, however inappropriate, however disruptive and even destructive. Measured reflection and gradual implementation, they think, are merely smokescreens for stonewalling and subversion by uncooperative, clueless subordinates.

We know all too well the effects toxic leaders have on the organizations and institutions they are charged with leading. First, they demoralize all but the sycophants in the organization, especially experienced hands with talent who have devoted a notable share of their careers to the organization, have a vested interest in its success and reputation, and tie their own identity to that of the organization. Toxic leaders ironically draw unethical, unprofessional behavior—dishonesty, cowardice, surreptitious disobedience—from those whose self-respect, self-preservation, and survival are at stake.

Second, toxic leaders feed division and disunity within the organization, most notably between the loyalists who align themselves with and tie their career prospects to the toxic leader and those in forced opposition. Dividing and conquering take precedence over unity of effort and action. The question this raises is which is the higher-order virtue: loyalty to the boss or loyalty to an institution and one’s colleagues?

Third, toxic leaders undermine, diminish, and even destroy established norms, standards, processes, organizations, and institutions. That is the ultimate measure of their impact. The link between leader character and organizational climate is all too clear; that between toxic leader character and dysfunctional organizational climate even more painfully so. Human exposure to poison, we are told, leads to death about 10 percent of the time. If one out of ten organizations were to die from exposure to poisonous leaders, wouldn’t that be grounds for alarm?

What then, if anything, is to be done to deal with the widespread presence and effects of toxic leadership? On an individual level, there is little, if anything, to be done. The deck is stacked against any individual, however courageous, however righteous, acting alone; the system is rigged in favor of the oppressor who has been granted rank and position. Toxic leaders are the soulless supervisory zombies who walk among us. They can’t be eradicated or effectively neutralized, and when they slip up or move on, there’s always another, and another, and another to take their place.

If the presence of toxic leaders and their impact are to be minimized, two things and only two things will work: collective action, under cover of official mediating bodies or grievance mechanisms, and public disclosure that exposes abuse to the light of day. We joke about a zombie apocalypse because it isn’t real. Toxic leadership isn’t a joke because it is real. We dare not ignore it, however meager our ability to contest it, lest it assume apocalyptic proportions that threaten the survival of our institutions and the livelihood of society.

Gregory D. Foster is a professor at the National Defense University who teaches ethics and civil-military relations.