Keywords

Toxic leadership in action; stories; resolutions

6.1 Introduction

Toxic leadership is present in all types of academic libraries and at all levels of administration whether they are community colleges or prestigious large research intensive universities. The four cases presented in this chapter illustrate a variety of manifestations of how toxic leadership was experienced and handled at a variety of colleges and universities. Knowing what has happened in academic libraries, where it is suspected a toxic leader has taken over, can help prevent toxic leadership from permeating all of the departments in their library. Anyone who has worked for a toxic leader will recognize these behaviors and their effects on the academic library. Working in a toxic leadership environment as seen in previous chapters is not healthy psychologically, emotionally, or physically.

After analyzing 54 interviews, patterns emerged regardless of the size of the institution. The following four cases illustrate the most common and appalling actions done in academic libraries under the control of a toxic leader. All cases were based on in-depth interviews from more than one perspective. Each case is comprised of a minimum of eight librarians recounting their toxic leadership experiences. Interviews were overlaid to compose a more complete story of the toxic library leader based on Polkinghorne’s (1995) analysis of narratives. Some of the librarian experiences presented have a resolution; others are still living under the miasma of a toxic leader.

Case 1

A national search was undertaken to find the next University Librarian (UL) and unfortunately the upper administration chose two poor library representatives to serve on the University Librarian Search Committee. In their eagerness to find someone to come in as soon as possible, the librarians missed the toxic leadership signs exhibited during the interview: only happy experiences throughout her whole career were mentioned along with evasive answers to question about fundraising expertise. The last thing these librarians expected was to go from a mediocre leader, who was known to like things to work out on their own, to a completely narcissistic toxic leader. Within the first six months the toxic leadership was out in the open. It began with dismissals of both librarians and library assistants who did not meet the new UL’s library vision (a vision to this day no librarian is yet privy to) and the narrowing of the few communication paths available to her.

The UL had stated in her interview that she was well versed in library politics and well connected in the field. She promised to clean up the library and set it on a successful trajectory. During her first 2 years, she would continuously profess in library meetings that she would advocate for the library and make urgently needed improvements including a much-needed increase to the library’s budget. She also promised to be transparent, have an open-door policy, and would not play favorites. The UL stressed to everyone that it was of utmost importance to work together if the library was to improve after having been led so poorly for the past decade.

More prominent issues began to arise when standard meeting dates were set for every month for an entire semester. Inopportunely, the UL would change these dates as she saw fit for the sake of her schedule. Librarians became upset because the once-per-month meetings became once-a-semester meetings and appointments had to be made well in advance to meet with her. The UL would be upset when timely appointments were not scheduled, but it was nearly impossible because she booked so quickly or was out. Librarians could never mention that she was out too much. The one librarian who did bring this up was rebuked for doing so.

Basic communication was never truly open, and by year two it was mostly nonexistent. Additionally, opportunities to participate and opine without restrictions or fear of repercussions had also disappeared. This was one aspect of meetings that many librarians relished because open discussions paved the way for future projects and enabled librarians to work with each other. Although the library’s collection grew and services were expanded during the first 2 years, the expansion then decreased as the UL began to dedicate even more time to her professional associations’ endeavors thereby leaving the librarians to fend for themselves more often with each passing year.

During this time the UL’s proclamations became more bombastic. Some librarians began to see her as power hungry and delusional because she was always citing her colleagues in the field as well as studies, but references to these studies were never provided. She had also become careless and let it be known who her favorite librarians were. These were primarily incompetent or inexperienced librarians who were nonthreatening to her. To everyone else who worked in the library it had become clear that her way was the best way to run a library.

The UL would not listen to how things were done in the past. It infuriated her when librarians questioned her and she would show her disgust and verbally abused the librarians who spoke up in meetings. She enjoyed threatening librarians mostly in private though there were times when she would threaten the whole library staff all at once. She was vindictive and would ostracize librarians until she needed them again. It would be a semester or two before a librarian joined the rest of them in meetings. Although the library before this UL never had a culture of collegiality it had neither ever been truly competitive. It had been mostly a live and let live type of place while the abuse of a particular set of librarians was carried out discreetly. Under this UL there was visible animosity and discontent against some librarians.

Under the UL’s toxic leadership the library had become an obstacle course and only librarians who were in her inner circle would be assisted through the course. Expenses for professional development were a constant issue for disagreements. Her favorites could spend funds however they liked whereas no one else was afforded such liberty. The UL would “especially allow male librarians to get away with murder in all aspects of their duties.” Her favorites received the largest raises at the end of year regardless of how hard they worked.

Her narcissistic tendencies also became more prominent when she presented herself as all seeing and all knowing. Librarians could not question her pronouncements even when they were clearly misinformed. She enjoyed giving monologues about her connections in the profession and how these made her who she was. Sadly, she was not as well connected as she fancied herself to be: after 4 years her fundraising team had received only a few pathetically small donations.

The UL overworked librarians who worked for the sake of the library’s mission because they were necessary to keep the library functioning. If these librarians asked for anything be it resources, to establish new services, or raises, she would become irritated. Some librarians were told that they needed to make sacrifices for the overall health of the library, but this stricture never applied to her favorites nor to herself. Inevitably, resentment grew among the overworked librarians, which continues to help spread toxic leadership throughout the whole library. There were some librarians she used from time to time and others she completely ignored. The UL’s lack of communication skills, combined with her often leaving for business or vacation without it being communicated to the librarians, created mistrust. The UL also created silos were none existed before. She hated being called out on mistakes or needed improvements. She would only listen to these when they came from her favorites.

She would nit-pick ideas, research agendas, and professional desires of some librarians, and would push through terrible ideas simply because these came from one of her favorites. Some of these ideas cost the library a small fortune and were never executed again. And even though all librarians were told there would be an opportunity to provide feedback for all executed ideas, the feedback opportunity for one particularly costly and disastrous event was canceled and replaced with a library promotion and marketing exercise. All ideas, even bad ideas, would be considered provided they came from certain librarians.

The UL believed herself to be a people person and took pride in being able to hire competent librarians. Of her 6 hires after 4 years only 2 librarians remain. New hires did not receive positive reinforcement or proper training. Instead they were simply overworked from day one and asked to meet ridiculous expectations that were generally given at the last minute. The UL only wanted results and did not care how these happened. All the librarians were by now sharing among each other how the UL never clearly articulated what her plans were. The UL’s pattern of bad hires is covered up in the interview process by her saying she gives new and mid-career librarians a chance to grow before moving to other positions.

Remarkably, this UL believes herself to be a wonderful mentor. She believes her mentoring method is productive even if she has to terrorize her mentees who never asked for her mentorship in the first place. She strongly pressures them to produce presentations and shames them when they do not.

Her mentoring program has been counterproductive, as it has led most of the newer librarians to seek psychological assistance to cope with their extremely high stress and a variety of other symptoms ranging from insomnia, loss of morale, weight fluctuations, drinking, and walking around with a never-ending feeling of dread regarding what the UL will ask them to do next.

Throughout the years she has reduced her advocacy for the library and has not really demanded a larger budget to at least keep up with the basic inflationary needs for raises and collection growth. At first, like most toxic leaders, she promised a lot of things. After years of empty promises a pattern has been set. She no longer cares about creating a successful team of librarians, in retrospect she probably never did. Most of the library’s personnel is demoralized, less productive, does not feel valued and is confused. The library is minimally meeting its goals but it is not growing. Due to toxic leadership and poor hires librarian turnover is now an inevitable common occurrence. Librarian searches have become ongoing. They cost a lot of time and money and have become a drain on the university’s recruitment resources.

During the fourth year of her reign, there was a change in the university’s upper administration. The UL would now have a new supervisor, the Vice-President of Academic Affairs (VP). This new VP was solely an interim and as such did not get much involved in the library. This was all the information the UL needed for her to go after librarians that were not meeting her expectations. She micromanaged those librarians she wanted out of her library. Most of the hardworking librarians have reached an impasse, they do not know where to go, they have been silent for so long. They do not trust the Vice-President because as an interim he is perceived as distant and weak. He does not like conflict. A few librarians have met with him in person and have written formal complaints against the UL still nothing has happened. Some librarians come up with excuses such as complaints against deans and directors take time because they need to reach a critical mass at this university to merit an investigation.

This brash UL went in taking walls down only to then erect stronger and higher ones to suit her own needs. To function the librarians who care about the library circumvent the UL often and simply seek forgiveness for their successful events and procedure implementations after these have taken place. After the UL’s anger has subsided she takes full credit for these events. When things do not go well she easily blames her librarians for issues triggered by her neglect. The constant withholding of information, scolding and disparaging of librarians in public, her narcissism, the persistent creation of silos, never being allowed to question her authority, spending lavishly on herself, secret meetings, spending more and more time away from the library to help other libraries improve, remaining active in professional associations to the detriment of her leadership and management of her own library, taking vacation whenever large projects were undertaken by the library make her a toxic leader. She does not like problems, she just wants all of the benefits without any of the work. The UL, albeit an older woman, has a lot of years ahead of her to destroy the library if she is not stopped soon. The damage has begun, and it is up to upper management to step in to remedy the situation seeing that they have had the facts for years.

Case 2

This library director (LD) was the second director ever at this university library. He seemed to be a fair leader at the beginning. He expanded user services and updated the library with much-needed technologies (e.g. state of the art ILS and establishing a web presence). He even advocated for a larger budget that would cover more than just annual inflationary needs. However, once he was comfortable in his new role as LD innovation began to slow down and creativity was strongly discouraged. He did not bother with requesting adequate funding for the library because the library was finally the way he wanted it to be. The LD would build his administrative team with like-minded librarians who would in time turn on their coworkers. These events after years of toxic leadership rendered “a really poorly functioning, a poorly funded, an underused, poorly housed library with a highly demoralized staff.” Publicly he was known as a very nice man, but privately he would intimidate librarians, especially women, and could be extremely patronizing.

This was the LD’s third library directorship, and as he aged into what would be his last LD position he became more dependent on his associate university librarian (AUL) and his favorite librarians. The AUL, who was also one of the LD’s favorites, would take advantage of the LD’s protection and failing health to abuse her coworkers. After the initial 2 years of hard work with updating and expanding user services, the LD moved on to perfect his library. He began to fire difficult female personnel and replaced them with males. The various exit interviews given by the women who were forced out did not matter much because the LD had a great relationship with the human resources director. In less than 5 years, the library’s hardworking culture (although never very innovative) transformed into a laissez-faire one and maintained the status quo.

What made this LD a toxic leader, according to the librarians who worked for him, was his tendency for favoritism, poor communication skills, and fear of innovation, starting with the 2.0 revolution in libraries. At the end of his career his aversion to making decisions became more of an issue. His solution to innovation was to ignore new trends. Favoritism was the most obvious flaw, and if the LD did not like someone in the library, he and his favorites would make it difficult for that person to work in the library. One of the librarians realized that “there was no leadership guidance. There was no guidance coming from neither the person who’d been assigned my mentor nor the actual LD in power.”

Librarians who excelled in their jobs and were active in the profession were punished by the LD for making the others look bad and accused by the AUL of setting higher standards for everyone. Some of the librarians felt it was unfair that they had to show up to work every day to work while the favorites only needed to show up for at least an hour a day to get paid. The AUL routinely informed these librarians that they were not team players and they were punished by giving them negative review letters and were personally attacked at librarians’ meetings. Moreover, depending on how upset the AUL had become she would pass on their projects to other librarians.

As time progressed the LD allowed himself to be influenced by his AUL to the point that some librarians’ raises were in fact decided by the AUL. There were a couple of single female librarians who were denied their complete raises because as they were neither married nor had children they did not need a full raise even if they had earned it. By complete raise it was meant that those who had family obligations and did their job received for example 5% and those who had no one to be responsible for received 4.5% or less. It depended on what the AUL had decided and if the LD would dispute or accept it. Most of the time he accepted the raises and would inform librarians of the change in raise. For many years, raises were affected by the AUL’s manipulations. She would decide if you had been good to her the previous year on a whim. The rationalizations given to librarians became more and more bizarre with each passing year. The affected librarians would later learn that this was a type of financial bullying that the LD fully participated in to favor his sycophants.

The toxic leadership style this LD exhibited was relentlessly passive-aggressive. He would make promises that he would later deny or only kept because there were witnesses to his initial promise. One salient promise was allowing a librarian to attend an all-expenses-paid conference outside of the country. When the librarian returned from said conference she submitted the appropriate expense reports and receipts as required. She was initially denied reimbursement because the LD could not remember meeting with this librarian much less promising her monetary funding to attend a conference so far away. Fortunately, his secretary witnessed the librarian leaving the LD’s office in tears and asked what was going on. Upon realizing the misunderstanding the secretary checked her files and handed the LD the handwritten note he had given her months prior to the conference. This secretary was punished for her actions, but she informed the librarian to not worry about her as she knew how to handle her boss’s anger.

Near the end of the LD’s tenure the AUL began to control more of the daily responsibilities. Newly hired librarians were led to believe by the AUL that she would take care of them and be their go-to person and so they did not bother the LD with needless concerns. This so-called change of command (although not legitimate) allowed for the AUL and the LD’s favorites to go after librarians who were not maintaining the status quo. The peer-on-peer abuse or bullying at this library was at first ignored because it was deemed invisible. The librarians experiencing the abuse could not believe what was happening to them. Initially it was two librarians who the favorites went after. It took the persecuted librarians a full year to realize that what was happening was happening to both of them. This was very fortuitous because in the experience of many librarians who were interviewed for this book it usually takes many years before librarians realize they are not the sole victims. These librarians teamed up and were able to watch out for each other.

Unfortunately, they were too few against the barrage of rumors about them and their professionalism that was spread all over campus. Each fall, when the librarians would return to work, they came back to expressions such as, “Oh, we thought you weren’t coming back!” from their liaison faculty and even library staff. Initially the librarians would ask “Who told you that? Where did you hear that?” These questions were met with “Oh, never mind, glad to see you” or “Does it really matter?,” which, of course, it did matter. Guarding their reputations became an all-consuming endeavor for these librarians. It was thoroughly exhausting because no matter how hard these librarians tried they could not keep up with the endless rumor mill. These assaults on their professionalism were exacerbated by the fact that the LD refused to believe his AUL and favorite librarians would behave in such an untoward manner. He actually accused the attacked librarians of fabricating these rumors and of bringing whatever happened to them upon themselves for not maintaining the status quo. He even asked them to put their brains on the back burner in order to maintain order in the library. These librarians were punished with small raises and given less funding for professional development activities. The LD really disliked problems, which is why he believed in having a laissez-faire environment in his library, a place where everyone had their place. Hence, innovation and creativity were only allowed in tiny amounts and only when it came from the AUL or one his favorite librarians.

After 20 years of a permissive toxic leadership influenced culture it inescapably permeated the whole library. No department was left untouched. The toxicity was so rampant that many instructional services ceased and the Access Services Department had become a revolving door. They could not keep their personnel. The Instruction Department was so dysfunctional that it could only handle the basic library orientations. No one was willing to put in extra effort. For what? Those librarians would only be punished in the end for doing too much. Faculty had spoken up because the atmosphere in the library had changed drastically. Many no longer felt comfortable going in to do their research but it took years of complaints to bring awareness to what was going on.

It was this most obvious situation that eventually caught the attention of some in the university’s upper administration. The toxic leaders had taken their abuse too far that finally the office of the Vice-President of Academic Affairs became involved. A librarian was publicly humiliated by an AUL’s protégé. Librarians could not complain to “the Human Resources Department [because it] was next to ineffective and if anything, basically was only there to deal with the most minor issues staff would encounter.” It was a librarian and a staff person issue that revealed the truth, and as a result there was an eight-month investigation, which uncovered a disturbing truth: the LD and his favorite librarians, along with his AUL, were acting like a mob. Their threats and constant lies enabled them to control all of the library’s personnel and had led to the forcing out of female employees for at least a decade. The culture of silence made it difficult for the Vice-President of Academic Affairs to decipher what was really happening in the library. The LD could not ignore that there were issues (librarians drinking publicly, user services severely reduced, peer-on-peer personal attacks, etc.) in his library, and knowing that he was part of the problem and that he did not have the energy to remedy the situation, he decided to retire immediately.

In essence the LD was forced to step down because of his toxic leadership that not only he exercised but also because he exercised it with the AUL along with his favorites. The AUL took it upon herself to abuse and fire and hire as she pleased and kept the LD in the dark and when informed he only said the AUL was doing what was best for the library. For his troubles the forced-out LD received a very generous farewell compensation package that included salary for one more year and allowed him to do his work from home while a national search was carried out to find his replacement. Knowing that the LD would still be around when the new LD arrived made for awkward interactions between them even if this interaction only lasted 2 months. More careful planning should have taken place to avoid a possible clash between the old and the new library leadership.

Case 3

A very well-respected academic library unfortunately was led by a truly toxic leader as stated by librarians who worked for her. For a moment, the situation in the library seemed to continue without remedy in sight. Before becoming the director of the library (DL) she was another highly educated and well-prepared librarian with vast experience in academia who was deemed a go-to team player. However, once the library’s leadership fell into her hands she changed into a tyrannical egomaniac whose new job it seemed was to poison all librarians’ trust in each other, to berate them publicly and privately, as well as engage in nonstop micromanaging.

After enduring years of toxic leadership, most if not all of the librarians complained to the university’s Vice-President and the President at least once. Unfortunately, the college’s upper administration refused to take sides, claiming that because all of the librarians involved in the toxic dynamic was among faculty and as such should be handled through dialogue and biennial leadership position elections. These librarians were mostly women and were considered a homogeneous group even though they clearly belonged to very distinct ethnic groups, religions, and social classes. Due to the perceived homogeneity in the library unit by upper administration there was no actual conflict requiring their involvement. This attitude is troubling because even if this group of librarians is considered homogenous, the power dynamic is not being taken into consideration and is purposefully being minimized. The power balance needed to be acknowledged, and because it was not the DL took advantage of the lack of interest from her supervisors, and continued to terrorize her librarians for years.

This DL, like many other directors, is middle aged, narcissistic, and has a mean streak. Her toxicity is now legendary for her love of power and for her dislike of being contradicted. She fancies herself an expert and mentor to her personally selected incoming librarians. She keeps an open relationship with the college’s higher administration in order to maintain their support. The director does not push or challenge as much as she could to help the library’s position on campus. She tries to keep her librarians and staff in check. She appreciates innovation as long as she is included in the efforts and given credit. A librarian stated, “I learned really fast…that a whole lot of ideas is not appreciated, within my library it’s like be quiet.” whereas another disclosed that her work on a major education initiative was stolen and used by the whole system of libraries without the DL fighting for recognition. The DL knew this issue was not worth the use of her political capital.

All of the librarians were overworked, constantly berated, intimidated, and abused in front of other librarians and library staff. Some were told repeatedly how they were worthless and blamed for not doing their jobs well, even when strained due to the cramped working conditions. The DL did not advocate for her librarians when they had to deal with a temporary relocation.

The librarians who spent over 2 years in a cramped shared space expressed a range of symptoms due to working for a toxic leader. They have experienced high stress and health problems due to the harsh work environment they had to endure for longer than the originally stipulated 6 months. The symptoms ranged from feeling down, insomnia, psychological distress, and emotional issues regarding their job security. It did not help that everyone was aware of how much the DL enjoyed pitting librarians against each other at meetings. Librarians and library staff have overheard the DL more than once stating that “‘Sometimes I just like to watch them [librarians] fight’ and she either directly instigates or she lets the fighting continue instead of doing the more appropriate thing. From what I’ve lived through the fighting seems to reenergize her.” The DL eventually revealed that she chose the one-room office solution during the temporary relocation to build a stronger team and make sure everyone was working their hours.

Not knowing when the next confrontation with the DL would be kept some of the librarians constantly stressed out and had some return back to their old bad habits such as smoking, eating junk food, abandoning special diets, and exercise regimens, among others. Sadly, a few of these librarians also began to exhibit classic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms such as loss of sleep due to recurring nightmares, severe anxiety, flashbacks, and constantly reliving passed traumatic episodes where they were belittled in public or forced to work under the DL’s close supervision. Some librarians also showed effects on their personal lives with a constant fear of going in to work and needing to have family members drive them to work. Their health was also affected. Some of the effects were losing dental fillings and not being able to focus on the present as well as being diagnosed for varying degrees of depression.

This college’s upper administration chose to not step in and stop the toxic leadership by considering all of the librarians as equals even though the librarians knew their DL was a toxic leader who not only abused them, but also dedicated time to abusing the untenured librarians. At this college, the DL position can change every 2 years because librarians are all faculty with shared governance and the library is regarded as another campus academic department. If the librarians were to vote against her reelection, the DL openly threatened she would ensure they were not awarded tenure.

Most the librarians working in this library came from other system campuses and other parts of the country because they had heard how professional and respectful the college system in general was toward librarians. Here librarians were faculty and participated fully in the college’s governance. Librarians had a hard time reconciling who they were, their work ethic, and their intolerable work conditions. The emotional abuse took its toll and affected their work in some instances. For some librarians, the constant berating and lack of confidence in their abilities by the DL fueled their work outside the library, while other librarians became demoralized and needed to seek therapy to help them cope with their hopeless situation.

It would take a little over 2 years to galvanize and unify most of the librarians against this extremely well-connected DL.

The unifying took time because librarians needed to know who they could really trust and who they assumed would run immediately to the DL and inform her of the librarians’ plan to oust her from her DL position. Early on the librarians knew it would be impossible to recruit the DL’s two sycophants thus they worked quietly to not give rise to any suspicions. They all still worked in one large room without any dividers for privacy. The demoralized librarians were no more. They finally had a plan to remedy their intolerable work environment. They knew their only chance to bringing change to their library was going to be by exercising their vote in a future election.

The biggest decision the librarians had to make was who would be the librarian among them to run against the DL. After thinking it through the librarian chosen was someone strong, fair, and tired of the maltreatment. She was also secure in her abilities and well respected on campus. It was then time to execute their plan. The librarians knew that on the first day of voting the DL would remind them all to vote for her. This was in fact not a reminder, it was just another opportunity the DL took to intimidate all of the librarians. The librarians would only prevail if they voted as a block against the DL on the first day of voting, which they did and it worked. It had to be done that way as it was the only way the librarians could listen to the DL without being persuaded into voting for her, as the votes would have already been cast. The librarians were able to secure their liberation from their toxic leader, but what was not thought out was what would happen after taking down the DL. The librarians now needed to be mentally prepared for the consequences of the DL losing her power and position. How quickly could their new DL begin advocating for them to upper administration?

The librarians defeated their toxic leader with careful execution of the plan. There was finally new leadership in the library unit after fifteen years of toxic leadership. Change could finally happen, but how? How fast? Although taking down the old DL was necessary to improve the library, some librarians felt that they had not spent the necessary time building alliances with upper administration and that this would affect the new leadership in the library. The status quo had been maintained for so long that no one was expecting the librarians to take down their DL any time soon. Their ex-toxic leader was now a colleague who would share teaching responsibilities with them. The old DL would want to share her expertise with the new DL for leadership continuity purposes. The ex-toxic leader played the game because she was the only librarian who had established connections on campus. She was extremely angered by the vote and so resorted to being strategic in all of her actions. Every chance she gets she leverages her political capital. Although defeated, the ex-toxic leader is still a presence. The new DL has isolated her, yet she still tries to exercise her power and influence. Everyone in the library is hoping the ex-toxic leader will retire soon or at a minimum start phased retirement.

Defeating a toxic leader is possible. However, the planning must be strategic and done well in advanced as it was done by this team of academic librarians. If these steps are not taken it can lead to awkward situations that may impede a speedy trajectory toward healing the library because the buy-in needed from upper administration is not automatic. Strong support needs to be carefully cultivated. Regardless of the politics still at play the library is in a much better place. Librarians do no regret the risk they took as a team to build the library their users deserve. Yet taking over a severely damaged library is a lot hard work as the new DL discovered. The new DL was ultimately assisted by some in upper administration and was encouraged to take leadership institutes to help her with improving the library’s morale and productivity. The new DL has had to work hard and as fast as she could to ensure positive changes take root and not consider the possibility of losing her, their new leader in the upcoming elections.

Case 4

Ageism, delusions of grandeur, threats, misinformation, deceit, and belittling were this leader’s most common methods to getting her way. The toxic leader in an academic library is not always the Library Dean. It can be a department chair (DC) or any other supervisor. At this university library, the dean, a woman known to rule with an iron hand, did everything in her power to enable a young and talented librarian in the hopes of having her become her successor. This DC would become a relentless tyrant to her peers and library support staff with the dean’s blessing. The dean for years purposefully turned a blind eye to the toxic work environment being created by her favorite because these years were considered formative and mistakes were to be expected from this soon-to-be powerful emerging leader. The library dean herself was well known for a great moment of library leadership she had performed in the 1990s. She was still resting off those laurels. The dean believed herself to be a wonderful leader and mentor who liked to groom librarians in whom she saw leadership potential and a little of her own mean streak. According to librarians who worked for the dean, she was known to say that if a leader came across as too nice it would come across as weakness.

Once the dean appointed her as the new instruction DC, it would take a little over two academic years before this library department became a revolving door. The DC expected all new hires to do her personal research and prepare her conference presentations. Newly hired librarians at first felt compelled to do it because they did not feel they could say no to the DC. These librarians were promised coauthorship for their efforts, but this never happened for any of them. The DC only used new hires for her own benefit and never provided any direction regarding their duties or expectations before their next review. When asked for a meeting the DC was always busy or would cancel at the last minute.

Librarians in the Instruction Department were under high stress and in constant fear of not getting a good review.

Things would remain the same for four more years. The Instruction Department had earned its bad reputation within the library, yet the dean did nothing because she considered the up and downs of a department to be normal. Eventually the DC would find her stride. After the library dean retired a year later everyone was happy to see her go because it was time for new blood to reenergize the library. The new library dean, a man, decided to hire a replacement for the newly vacant associate dean position because the previous associate dean had retired after helping the new dean transition into his position. The now considered, well-groomed and officially hated DC of the instruction department felt this was the time to make her move into upper administration. She strongly believed she was owed the associate dean position because the previous dean had personally informed her of her true leadership potential. Members of the Associate Dean Search Committee were confused because they did not receive any internal recommendations, the DC had recommended herself at the last minute. In order to learn more about the library, the new library dean opened up the opportunity for feedback in every library department to provide the DC a fair opportunity for the associate dean position. The dean had only worked with this DC for a year and he had seen how useful she could be and he was also well aware of her professional activity at local, regional, and national associations.

The dean had high expectations and no one expected what would happen next. All of the feedback was negative. Librarians and library assistants knew this was their opportunity to prevent an immature, impatient, and selfish woman from becoming the new associate dean. The librarians and staff were grateful for the chance to share what had been happening in the library for the past 10 years. Some of the participants feedback:

The dean was shocked to find out what had been going for the past decade. He had only been there a little under 2 years at this point. Everyone liked him, thus his employees had no reason to make him aware of the toxic stress untenured librarians in the instruction department had to endure.

The dean was not able to promote the DC to associate dean due to the information revealed during the feedback session. Also, because the DC was confident she would get the associate dean position she did not bother to reapply to become the chair of the department for another three-year term. Left with nothing the DC became a regular librarian again after 6 years of being the DC. She no longer had any position of power in the library and, worst of all, no one to advocate for her.

Finally, it was known that she does not talk to any peers, and librarians do not want to work with her on any committees because she is known to be vindictive and they do not want her to accumulate any influence again. She continues to be extremely bitter and feels betrayed. She does not understand why her peers would turn their back on her. She completely dismisses the accusations against her and justifies her horrible behavior by expressing that her mentoring style maybe singular but it makes for better librarians in the end. She was no longer considered a star of the academic library world and could no longer exert influence yet even powerless the old DC makes the librarians around her uncomfortable. The instruction department librarians are excited because they know she is interviewing at other universities and know she will be leaving soon.

It should be noted that this happened in a very large library and because of its multi-department setup the instruction department librarians, even though they were under duress working for a toxic leader, were able to continue serving as best they could all of their users. They were also able to seek advice from their union representatives and their colleagues in other library departments. There was turnover, librarians left, but new librarians were always hired. This is one luxury smaller academic libraries do not have and why it takes longer to notice what is happening in a larger academic library than it is in small-to-medium one as was stated by a librarian who left for a smaller institution believing toxic leadership could not happen in smaller or religiously affiliated institutions. Exit interviews were skipped by many of those who left the institution because they did not want to relive their negative experience. Had these librarians filled out exit interviews perhaps the old library dean would have had to talk to the DC about her toxic leadership style, but knowing that the library dean chose the DC precisely because of her special leadership potential, librarians still at the institution do not believe anything good would have happened in their department.