Whether you’ve been in the workforce for a few years or a few decades, odds are you’ve tolerated a toxic boss ; 71% of U.S. workers have had at least one such supervisor in their career, a 2023 Harris Poll showed.
As with other ruinous relationships, toxic bosses are difficult to escape and any number of reasons, such as being unable to afford quitting your job , may keep you putting up with them. New research, however, offers an underlying reason for some employees’ willingness to work under an abusive leader. Do you view your toxic boss as successful? This perspective makes you more likely to label their abuse as “tough love,” according to a study published in this month’s issue of the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes .
Researchers at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business also found that employees tended to think a high-performing boss could boost their own career—reproachful behavior notwithstanding. “If someone is a good performer, we almost have this halo effect, or you assume that they have all these other positive traits particularly associated with leadership , which goes directly in the face of an abusive leader,” lead study author Robert Lount, PhD , an Ohio State professor of management and human resources, tells Fortune . “We were trying to reconcile these issues and how that might help understand when abusive behavior might not necessarily be encoded as abusive.
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