Destructive leadership is linked to poorer well-being, lower performance, and stronger intentions to quit.

How a leader responds to concerns, and whether real change follows, signals whether staying makes sense.

Research links psychological safety to team learning behaviors like seeking feedback and discussing errors.

Weigh what a job gives you against what it costs your health, self-esteem, and relationships.

A former student* of mine came back to visit a few years after she had graduated. She works in finance, a heavily male-dominated industry, and even though she sees herself as a strong woman, she felt some traditional sexism seeping into the office culture. She was often asked to take notes or make coffee, something her male counterparts were rarely tasked with.

Even worse, the workplace culture was one in which the job was expected to be number one in employees’ lives, above everything else. Employees were often expected to stay late to work on unexpected, urgent problems, regardless of their availability. People routinely had to work weekends and late evenings, often without advance notice. When my former student raised these issues with her boss, she would be loudly berated and chastised. She described an environment with frequent turnover and no real sense of autonomy.

During our visit, she told me about a conversation with her boss in which she said it was a problem that employees had no psychological safety in the workplace. Her boss had never heard the term before and dismissed it outright. Hearing how he responded to her concerns, I couldn’t help but think, “Well, there’s your warning sign!”

In coaching her through the situation, I suspected she’d need........

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