When Half Your Team is the Enemy: The Universal Cost of Divisive Leadership

As a mediator and conflict manager, I spend my time helping organizations navigate some dark moments - those times when conflict threatens to tear apart everything they've built. From hospital systems to manufacturing firms, from small family businesses to large corporations, I've witnessed a consistent pattern. Organizations thrive under collaborative leadership. They crumble under divisive leadership. I have yet to walk into a conflict where the management style isn't a contributing factor to the organizational problems – whether that be the culture of the organizations or the conflicts they are unable to resolve. Everyone recognizes that problems start with leadership. The data backs up what I see in practice, and the implications extend far beyond any single boardroom.

Vince Lombardi Quote on Working Together vs Toxic Divisive Leadership

Here's what stops me in my tracks: We have a clear name for this in our organizations. We call it "toxic leadership." We study it, measure its damage, and fire people for it. Yet somehow, we've normalized - even celebrated - the exact same behavior in our civic institutions. No board of directors would retain a CEO who viewed half their workforce as enemies. But when political leaders do exactly that, we call it "energizing the base" or "fighting for real Americans." People don't change when they leave work and vote. So why do our standards?

The Devastating Economics of Division

Let me share what organizational science tells us about divisive leadership - the kind where leaders view portions of their own team as adversaries rather than assets.

The research is unequivocal: Lack of effective leadership development, dysfunctional teams, loss of productivity, and low morale because of toxic leadership lead to a high burnout rate and turnover.¹ These aren't just uncomfortable work environments; they're expensive disasters that many organizations don't even know how to begin fixing.

The numbers should make any fiscally responsible person pause. CEO turnover costs $1.8 million for mid-market companies.² But that's just the direct cost. When we look at what collaborative leadership delivers - a 21% increase in profitability, a 17% boost in productivity, and a 59% reduction in voluntary turnover³ - we see that toxic, divisive leadership costs organizations roughly one-fifth of their potential profits and productivity.

If a mayor, governor, or president viewed half their constituents as enemies, what would that cost in lost economic potential? In reduced innovation? In talented people leaving for places where they feel valued? We're not talking abstract concepts here - we're talking about the same measurable losses we'd never tolerate in business.

The Human Toll We Can't Ignore

But the damage isn't just financial. The psychological and physical costs of toxic leadership are equally devastating - and when scaled to communities and nations, they become a public health crisis.

Research shows that toxic leadership behaviors lead to "psychological stresses such as anxiety, depression, fatigue and detachment."⁴ A toxic workplace environment with harassment, bullying, and ostracism "can be detrimental and lead to unnecessary stress, burnout, depression, and anxiety among the workers."⁵ The research is clear: toxic leadership increases work-related stress and emotional exhaustion,⁶ with negative feelings in toxic atmospheres resulting in "increased stress and anxiety levels" that can cascade into "mental health problems like burnout, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide."⁷

The health impacts go beyond mental health. Work stressors, including those created by toxic leadership, are "associated with a moderately elevated risk of incident coronary heart disease and stroke" with excess risk for exposed individuals being 10-40% compared with those free of such stressors.⁸ Workplace stress affects cardiovascular health through "elevated levels of cortisol and epinephrine,"⁹ and research confirms that "sleep disturbance has a significant impact on the beginning and progression of many serious medical disorders, including cancer and cardiovascular disease."¹⁰

Think about this: Ten workplace stressors were estimated to be associated with 120,000 U.S. deaths each year and account for 5-8% of health care costs.¹¹ That's in our workplaces alone. What happens when toxic, divisive leadership becomes the norm in our civic institutions - affecting not just workers but entire populations?

The waste is heartbreaking - and it extends far beyond corporate boardrooms or even national borders. When divisive leadership becomes the model, it doesn't just affect political parties or voting blocs. It gives permission to demonize entire ethnic groups, religious communities, and nationalities. We watch as people whose biggest "flaw" is where they were born, what they believe, or who their ancestors were become targets of the same toxic leadership tactics we'd never tolerate in a workplace.

Think about what divisive leadership has cost us globally. Communities that coexisted for centuries suddenly viewing each other as existential threats. Conflicts that could be resolved through negotiation instead escalating to violence because leaders profit from division. Children growing up believing that people who pray differently, look differently, or speak differently are enemies rather than neighbors.

When leaders model that half their own citizens are enemies, is it any surprise that viewing "others" as enemies becomes normalized? When we accept toxic leadership domestically, we enable it internationally. The same blame culture, the same dehumanization, the same zero-sum thinking that destroys organizations also destroys the possibility of peace between peoples.

We wouldn't permit a workplace that systematically damaged our employees' mental and physical health. Yet we've normalized political leadership that creates mass anxiety, fear, and social division. The human cost is incalculable - broken relationships, destroyed communities, and a generation growing up believing that viewing half their fellow citizens as enemies is normal.

The Trust Crisis: Democracy's Foundation Crumbling

Perhaps the most insidious damage of divisive leadership is the systematic erosion of trust - the invisible infrastructure that makes everything else possible.

Trust is the bedrock of any functioning organization. Research from Great Place to Work shows that companies ranking in the top quartile for trust see 50% higher productivity compared to their low-trust counterparts.¹² The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For achieve 8.5 times the revenue per employee compared to the market average.¹³ Companies with high trust levels experience 50% lower turnover, 76% higher engagement, and 88% better customer ratings.¹⁴ In organizations where trust has eroded, transaction costs skyrocket as every interaction requires verification, documentation, and oversight. Work that should take minutes takes days. Innovation dies because no one risks sharing new ideas.

But here's what should terrify us: while businesses can survive (barely) with moderate trust levels, democracy cannot.

Democracy is, at its core, a trust system.

We trust that votes will be counted fairly. We trust that laws will be applied equally. We trust that today's minority can become tomorrow's majority through persuasion, not force. We trust that those who lose elections will peacefully transfer power. We trust that our neighbors, despite disagreeing with us, share our fundamental commitment to the democratic process.

Divisive leadership deliberately destroys this trust. When leaders consistently portray half the population as enemies, traitors, or threats to the nation, they're not just using heated rhetoric - they're dismantling democracy's foundation. The data is already showing the damage. When the National Election Study began asking about trust in government in 1958, about three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.¹⁵ As of 2024, that number has plummeted to just 20%.¹⁶

But that's just the headline number. The deeper crisis is trust between citizens. When political leaders model toxic behavior - treating opponents as enemies rather than fellow citizens - their followers mirror this behavior. Neighborhoods divide. Families fracture. Communities that once solved problems together now can't even speak to each other. Americans' trust in each other has also declined significantly - from about half saying "most people can be trusted" decades ago to just 34% as of 2024.¹⁷

In my mediation practice, I see this daily. Conflicts that should be simple to resolve become intractable because the parties don't trust each other's basic humanity, let alone their good faith. They've been trained by divisive leadership to see disagreement as betrayal, compromise as weakness, and their neighbors as threats.

Think about the practical implications. How can we address climate change, healthcare, education, or infrastructure when half the country believes the other half wants to destroy America? How can businesses make long-term investments when they don't trust that the rules won't change dramatically based on who's in power? How can communities come together to solve local problems when they've been taught to see their neighbors as enemies?

Research on low-trust societies shows they are characterized by difficulty in forming and maintaining corporate structures, corruption, and dysfunction in basic institutions.¹⁸ The research on restoring organizational trust offers some hope but also a stark warning: rebuilding trust requires consistent, trustworthy behavior from leadership over extended periods.¹⁹ One leader can destroy in months what took generations to build. But rebuilding? That's measured in years, sometimes decades.

Without trust, democracy becomes just a periodic power grab between warring factions. Without trust, every election becomes an existential threat. Without trust, we stop being a nation and become merely a geographic area containing hostile tribes.

We would reject a CEO who deliberately destroyed trust between departments, turning marketing against sales, engineering against production. We'd recognize it as organizational sabotage. Yet when political leaders deliberately destroy trust between citizens, we call it "energizing the base."

This erosion of trust creates the perfect conditions for something equally destructive: a culture where blame replaces problem-solving.

The Blame Game: A Losing Strategy

In my conflict management practice, I preach collaboration, agency, and the power of diversity. Just because someone doesn't agree doesn't mean they're against us - it just means they're different than us. We can be "for" something without being "against" something else. Yet I watch organizations - and increasingly our public institutions - operate from a blame-first mentality.

The research on blame culture is devastating. A culture of blame within an organization harms productivity and quality of work and breaks down an organization's social structures by pitting employees against each other and removing trust.²⁰

Even worse, blame culture becomes socially contagious, a way for employees to protect their own self-image through what is known as the "kick the dog phenomenon" - where blame flows downward through the hierarchy until someone with no one below them absorbs all the fault.²¹ When a leader blames their direct reports, those managers blame their teams, and on it goes until the newest intern is somehow at fault for systemic failures.

Sound familiar? When did we last hear a political leader say, "This went wrong on my watch, and here's how I'm fixing it"? Instead, we get endless cycles of finger-pointing - at the previous administration, the other party, the media, immigrants, elites, the "establishment," or whatever convenient target deflects responsibility.

The cost? Fear of blame discourages risk-taking, learning from mistakes, and speaking up about problems - stifling innovation.²² And critically, in a blame culture, problem-solving is replaced by blame-avoidance.²³

Think about that. Problem-solving is replaced by blame-avoidance. In a company, that means missed opportunities and stagnant growth. In a democracy, it means unsolved challenges in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and every other area crying out for innovative solutions.

We wouldn't accept a manager who spent more time blaming other departments than fixing problems. We'd call it toxic. So why is it different when it's a senator blaming the other party or a governor blaming Washington?

The Double Standard We Can't Explain

Recent studies have shown that toxic leadership—a multifaceted and destructive leadership style characterized by negative managerial techniques—has detrimental consequences on many organizations, societies, and countries.²⁴

Read that again: societies and countries. The research community already recognizes that toxic leadership doesn't magically become acceptable when we scale up from organizations to nations. The damage compounds.

We spend millions on leadership development programs in our companies. Companies that invest in leadership development experience a 32% reduction in turnover rates and a 10% increase in productivity, according to the International Coach Federation.²⁵ We send managers to trainings on inclusive leadership, emotional intelligence, and collaborative problem-solving. We measure their ability to unite teams and drive results.

Then these same managers go home, turn on the news, and watch political leaders practice exactly what would get them fired at work.

Leaders who:

• Demonize half their constituents

• Refuse to acknowledge any mistake or failure

• View compromise as betrayal

• Spend more energy on blame than solutions

• Create cultures of fear rather than innovation

• 
  

It's as if we're living in parallel universes with completely different standards for success.

The Science of Successful Leadership

Research has identified clear differences between divisive and inclusive leaders. Inclusive CEOs express a collaborative form of power focusing on the welfare of others; divisive CEOs are motivated by self-interest.²⁶ This isn't opinion - it's measurable. The study found that two forms of the power motive account for over 50% of the variance in two behavioral indices of inclusive and divisive CEO behavior.²⁶

What does inclusive leadership deliver? When leaders are able to maintain high levels of engagement and retention on their teams, it improves customer service, performance, and productivity, which leads to better overall profitability.²⁷

Let me translate this for civic life: When citizens feel heard, valued, and included - even when their preferred policies don't win - they stay engaged. They pay taxes more willingly. They volunteer more. They start businesses. They solve problems in their communities. They don't retreat into angry echo chambers plotting against their neighbors.

Toxic leaders perceive leadership fundamentally as exerting power over employees or the organization²⁴ - or in political terms, over citizens and institutions. Is it any wonder trust in government is at historic lows?

Why Naming It Matters

In healthcare, we learned that naming problems accurately is the first step to solving them. We don't call cancer "a slight irregularity" - we name it, stage it, and treat it appropriately. Just as we've learned in conflict resolution that naming the real issue is essential to finding solutions, we must name toxic leadership for what it is.

Yet in our civic life, we've developed an entire vocabulary to avoid calling toxic leadership what it is:

• "Strong leadership" (when it's actually controlling – especially of different opinions)

• "Fighting for the people" (when it's dividing the people)

• "Telling it like it is" (when it's blame and deflection)

• "Shaking things up" (when it's destroying institutional knowledge)

• "Being a disruptor" (when it's toxic behavior)

• 
  

"Destructive leadership behavior is defined as the systematic and repeated behavior by a leader, supervisor or manager that violates the legitimate interest of the organization by undermining and/or sabotaging the organization's goals, tasks, resources, and effectiveness and/or the motivation, well-being or job satisfaction of his/her subordinates."²⁸

Replace "organization" with "nation" or "community" - does the definition change? Does destructive leadership suddenly become constructive when it's practiced in a statehouse instead of a corporate house?

A Different Path Forward

Cultures without blame understand the complexity of organizations, which enables them to better attribute errors to systemic failures rather than pointing the finger at one individual.²⁰ This isn't about being "soft" or avoiding accountability. It's about being smart enough to solve actual problems rather than just finding scapegoats. Blame and responsibility are not the same thing.

In my work facilitating community conflicts, I've seen what happens when leaders choose collaboration over division. Problems that seemed intractable suddenly have solutions. Groups that viewed each other as enemies find common ground. Progress happens.

The research tells us exactly what works:

• Leaders who bring people together rather than divide them

• Systems that focus on solving problems rather than assigning blame

• Cultures that harness diversity rather than fear it

• Organizations that see disagreement as data, not betrayal

• 
  

We already demand this in our workplaces. We already know it works. Leadership style has a positive influence on the success of an organization.²⁹ The only mystery is why we accept less from our public institutions.

The Question We Must Ask

Here's what puzzles me: We wouldn't keep a CEO who treated half their workforce as enemies. We wouldn't invest in a company whose leadership spent more time fighting itself than serving customers. We wouldn't shop at a store whose manager publicly declared half their customers unwelcome.

We have entire academic disciplines studying toxic leadership. The dark side leadership literature remains a highly relevant yet fragmented literature stream.³⁰ We have consultants who specialize in removing toxic leaders. We have HR policies specifically designed to prevent toxic leadership from taking root.

So why do we tolerate - even reward - this behavior in our civic institutions?

The whole company suffers when everyone is always looking over their shoulders and is afraid to make mistakes or express concerns. Innovation stops because people don't feel able to be as creative as they used to be.³¹

Replace "company" with "country" or "community" - does fear suddenly become productive? Does blame solve problems? Does viewing fellow citizens as enemies make us stronger?

We Get to Choose

In business, we demand evidence-based management. We expect leaders who unite rather than divide. We measure success by outcomes, not by how effectively someone can demonize the competition. We fire executives who can't work with their teams. We call toxic behavior what it is - toxic.

As someone who makes her living resolving conflicts, I should theoretically want more division - it's good for business. But I've seen too much destruction. I've watched too many organizations implode because leaders chose division over collaboration. I've seen unnecessary conflict escalation destroy families, communities, and entire populations.

And now I watch the same patterns play out in our school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and yes, in Washington. The same toxic behaviors we'd never tolerate in a CEO, we applaud in candidates. The same divisive tactics that would get a manager fired, we celebrate. It affects all of us.

The evidence is clear. Toxic, divisive leadership is a luxury no organization can afford - not our businesses, not our communities, not our country. The question isn't whether we're "red" or "blue," urban or rural, progressive or conservative. The question is whether we want institutions that work.

We've named it in our organizations: toxic leadership. We've measured its cost: billions in lost productivity, 120,000 deaths annually (based on 2015 research),¹¹ immeasurable human suffering, and the erosion of the very trust that makes democracy possible. We've proven the alternative works: inclusive, collaborative leadership that sees everyone as part of the team.

The only question left is why we tolerate in our democracy what we'd never accept in our workplace.

I believe most people genuinely want harmonious, functioning institutions. We just need to apply the same standards everywhere. The blueprint exists. We use it every day in successful organizations around the world.

Maybe it's time we stop accepting different rules for different venues. Maybe it's time we call toxic leadership what it is - no matter where it shows up. Maybe it's time we demand leaders who see all of us as their team - even the half that didn't vote for them.

Because when half your team is the enemy, everybody loses. And we've been losing for far too long.

Kimberly Best is a state Supreme Court listed mediator in Missouri and Tennessee, a FINRA Arbitrator, and owner of Best Conflict Solutions, LLC. She specializes in organizational conflict management and is the author of "How to Live Forever: A Guide to Writing the Final Chapter of Your Life Story."

For more insights on conflict resolution and leadership, visit www.bestconflictsolutions.com

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