Follower Experience During Toxic Reorganization

December 3, 2025

Follower Experience During Toxic Reorganization

Dwayn Hanford | 2022

Abstract

This phenomenological qualitative research study centered on the lived experiences of followers during a toxic reorganization with the aim of determining follower importance, emotions, and overall potential damage to the organization a toxic leader can bring. The understanding of these lived experiences highlights new variables in the leader-follower phenomenon. This research also adds to the understanding of the impact of a toxic leader’s influence on the organizational restructure from the follower’s perspective. The researcher sought to answer three research questions: (a) In a toxic leader environment, what relevance and value do followers perceive their input contributes to the organizational restructure, creation of new processes, and organizational focus? (b) What impact or difference do long-term legacy followers and short-term temporary followers have on follower satisfaction with the redesigned organizational effectiveness? (c) How do toxic leadership actions during a reorganization, perceived by followers, contribute to follower assessment of the final organizational structure and effectiveness? The theoretical concepts of situational leadership theory, transactional and transformational leadership theory, toxic leadership, and followership, reorganization and change, groupthink, the Abilene Paradox, and organizational climate and culture were used as a baseline for this study. The participants’ responses to open-ended interview questions indicated that a leader identified as toxic conducted reorganizational practices in a manner that would serve his own purpose with little regard to follower concerns. The responses of temporary and legacy employees regarding their leader noted similar observations similar regardless of employee status. In addition, the reorganization degraded the final organizational structure and effectiveness. The findings have value for any leader who seeks to understand follower concerns during a reorganization under a toxic leader. The results of this study are also intended to provide additional insights into the followership phenomenon: if leaders can only lead because followers give them authority, why do followers provide power to a toxic leader?

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