When Does Demanding Leadership Become Abuse?
One of the challenges of studying leadership is that the most important words we use are often the least precise.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about two of them.
Stressful.
Abusive.
They are sometimes used interchangeably, but I don’t believe they mean the same thing.
In one recent situation, some reporting described a workplace as “stressful,” while employees quoted in other stories described it as “toxic” or “abusive.” I have no opinion on which characterization is accurate because, like everyone else, I only know what has been reported publicly.
But the difference in those words struck me. Not because I know the facts—I don’t—but because they carry profoundly different meanings.
A stressful workplace is not necessarily an abusive one.
I’ve worked in stressful environments. I’ve worked for leaders who demanded excellence, challenged assumptions, pushed people beyond what they thought they were capable of, and expected extraordinarily high standards. Those experiences were often uncomfortable. Sometimes exhausting. Occasionally frustrating.
But many of them were also among the most formative experiences of my career.
Earlier in my career, I worked under Artistic Director Molly Smith at Arena Stage. Molly was not an easy leader. Looking back, I have an even greater appreciation for what it takes to lead an institution of that scale and ambition. Excellence requires standards. Standards require accountability. Accountability can create stress.
In fact, I would be somewhat suspicious of an Artistic Director who never created discomfort. Great art is difficult. Leading artists is difficult. Transforming institutions is difficult. Leadership that never creates tension may also never create meaningful change. I don’t believe any ambitious theater wants an Artistic Director that is easy.
But none of that answers the harder question.
Where is the line?
At what point does demanding leadership become harmful leadership?
At what point does accountability become intimidation?
At what point does urgency become fear?
Those are much more difficult questions than they first appear.
Part of the challenge is that there is no universally shared definition of what constitutes an abusive workplace culture. Employment law establishes one set of standards. Human resources professionals often apply another. Individual employees bring their own experiences, expectations, and tolerance for conflict.
Two people can experience the same workplace very differently. And leaders can certainly treat people differently. That doesn’t necessarily mean one is right and the other is wrong. It means leadership is experienced, not simply practiced.
Complicating this conversation further is the reality that leadership is not judged in a vacuum. Decades of research suggest that our expectations of leaders are influenced by gender and other aspects of identity. Behaviors that are interpreted as decisive, demanding, or visionary in one leader may be viewed as abrasive or toxic in another. That doesn’t mean every criticism reflects bias, nor does it mean every allegation should be discounted. It does remind us that evaluating leadership is rarely as straightforward as comparing behavior against a simple checklist.
As organizations continue to raise expectations around healthy workplace culture—and I believe they should—we also need to become more precise in the language we use.
If every demanding leader is labeled abusive, we risk making genuine abuse more difficult to identify. If every stressful workplace is dismissed as “just the nature of the business,” we risk normalizing behavior that should never be tolerated. Neither serves organizations well. Neither serves employees well.
Perhaps the better question is not whether leadership should be stressful. It almost certainly will be at times. The better question is whether the stress people experience comes from pursuing a difficult mission together—or from fear, humiliation, intimidation, discrimination, or the misuse of power.
Those are fundamentally different experiences. One may be an unavoidable part of meaningful work. The other should never be accepted as the cost of excellence.
Leadership is rarely easy. Neither is following it. The best leaders I have known created stress because they asked people to do extraordinary things. They challenged assumptions, raised expectations, and refused to accept mediocrity.
The best leaders I have known also understood that there is a profound difference between pushing people toward excellence and using power in ways that diminish their dignity.
The challenge for all of us is recognizing where one ends and the other begins.