You're actually sort of proving an aspect of my point. Toxic leaders excel. Microsoft crushed Netscape. Jobs shreds his teams, but they still do very well. Why

You're actually sort of proving an aspect of my point. Toxic leaders excel. Microsoft crushed Netscape. Jobs shreds his teams, but they still do very well. Why is this? It's because exactly what I said above. The right feedback loops and the right incentives, they'll keep rising. Science can be discovered here, to start: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C31&q=toxic+leadership&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C31&q=tox... To talk to your implied point more with an edit - the real question becomes how do orgs excel if they're not doing the slash and burn technique that seems to get rewarded in the economic system we have. For what it's worth, this is a great question to ask. There are similar continual questions/counterpoints like yours re: toxic leadership instead about leadership and ethics. Aside from the occasional Enron, there really doesn't seem to be much accountability for doing bad in the corporate world, or more commonly it's dealt with a mucky in-between ground of virtue signals/corporate activism and employee support groups internally that's pretty easy to spot and very distasteful because it feels so surface and hypocritical. Short answer - not being a toxic leader does not mean failing at producing a good product, standing up for oneself/beliefs and related candor, and general aggressive pursuit of an outcome with a bias for action. It gets difficult to find these types out in the wild, but that's sort of my point. It's hard to learn how to do this, and there isn't a good training pipeline either, so prior to pointing out "here's a great example of a non-toxic, transformational leader who ships great products and wins at corporate life," we're still by and large at the stage of "hey, there are other ways to do this, stop idolizing Jobs to start." It's also important not to idolize the individual behind the leader. Someone can lead teams and be great to work for, but they might be really awful in their personal life. Jobs is an interesting example of this as well oddly enough. That said, counterpoints you're basically asking for proof of do show up in the wild. If you've ever worked for someone who was (a) great to work for and with and (b) had the vibe just passing through your team onto some serious success in tech, those types tend to fit the bill of non-toxic, transformational leaders. Zelensky is another example of someone really grokking this well. I haven't worked for Brian Armstrong at Coinbase, but some of what he signals seems to fit the transformational, non-toxic bill and it'd be interesting to learn more about his day-to-day style. Google founders in their later iterations are good examples possibly. Anyway, lots of practical and academic resources out in this direction.