How to Identify Toxic Leadership Before It Poisons Your Community

Understanding Success Motivations in Community Leadership

When I invite someone to take on more leadership in a community I care about, I watch carefully.
I look for something deeper than most look for. I want to see how they define success for themselves.
The way someone approaches success reveals much about whether they'll nurture a community or slowly poison it, even unintentionally.
In Art of Community, I identified three success patterns to recognize when people gather around shared values and common goals.
Each pattern creates a very different community experience.

The Three Types of Success in Communities

Relative Success: When Winning Means Others Should or Must Lose
Someone driven by relative success wants to perform or achieve a status higher than others.
Note, not just better for themselves, but specifically better in comparison to others.
It’s ok to say, grow into the fastest bike rider, the one who covers the most miles, the one who takes on the most challenging routes.
This sounds admirable until you realize what it means in practice when pursued all the way.
A bike rider measuring their success relative to yours sees your improvement threatens their position.
They become invested in your limitations.
When you ask for advice or support, they’re not very or at all interested in your growth if it looks threatening to them.
When you're struggling with a technical issue in a group ride, are they likely to stop and help if it harms their ranking?
There is also the possibility of actual sabotage. It may go unnamed or even seemingly accidental, but it serves the needs of someone motivated to achieve peak relative success.
This creates a subtle and devastating dynamic.
This kind of leadership in charge or influential in organizing rides or welcoming new members, may even unconsciously limit other people's development.
They plan routes that showcase their strengths.
They share less guidance to riders who might surpass their achievements.
They want an environment where their relative superiority feels secure.

Personal Maximizing Success: The Calculation of Self-Interest
The second pattern appears more reasonable on the surface.
Consider an imaginary apple-picking community event.
Mark, a personal maximizing leader, approaches the day with personal maximum success in mind.
He wants to pick as many apples as possible for himself by day’s end.
No harm in this. It is an apple-picking day.
Unlike relative success, Mark doesn't need us to fail for him to feel successful.
He genuinely celebrates when we fill our buckets.
The challenge emerges in his decision-making when the community needs leadership.
All of Mark’s choices get filtered through one question: "How does this benefit me?"
When you ask Mark to help move a ladder to a better tree, he calculates quickly.
Ten minutes helping you means ten fewer minutes picking apples for himself.
The math doesn't work in his favor, so he’s leaning on promoting self-reliance.
Mark can remain friendly and engaged.
He can enjoy our company and appreciate our success.
His limitation lies in his propensity or unwillingness to invest in collective outcomes when they need personal sacrifice.
This creates community leadership where people perform and coexist pleasantly but rarely powerfully transcend individual limitations.
Members tend to operate largely as parallel individuals rather than as an interconnected and supportive group.
Growth happens, but it remains largely individual rather than collective.

Community Maximizing Success: The Power of Collective Investment
The third pattern looks wildly different.
When someone approaches success from a community maximizing perspective, they measure victory by collective achievement.
At our apple-picking event, Lisa wants our entire group to pick the most apples possible.
She extends this thinking even further, considering how our actions today affect future opportunities.
Do we pick in ways that keep trees healthy for next year?
Do we behave in ways that ensure we're invited back to the orchard?
Lisa enthusiastically carries ladders for others because this is what makes a team effective.
She hauls empty buckets to people who need them.
She might spend time helping someone who's struggling rather than focusing on her own personal harvest.
This doesn't necessarily mean Lisa picks fewer apples than she could if she focused entirely on herself.
Often, the opposite happens.
Communities with this approach develop systems, knowledge sharing, and mutual support that amplify everyone's individual capacity.  You may recognize teamwork.
Lisa understands something profound: her success is connected to and is enjoyed with the success of the entire group.

Why This Matters for Community Leadership

Identifying these patterns grows critical when we consider leadership selection.
Communities have a better chance at thriving when leaders operate from community maximizing success.
They struggle when leaders operate from the other two patterns.
Relative success leaders unconsciously limit member growth to maintain their position.
Personal maximizing success leaders withhold investment in collective outcomes.
They talk a generous game. They play a selfish strategy. 
Neither approach builds the kind of environment where communities flourish into integrated, supportive and resilient teams.

Recognizing Success Patterns in Action

Watch how potential leaders respond to situations:
When a new member struggles, does the leader invest in helping them succeed?
When organizing events, does the leader consider what benefits the entire community or what showcases their own abilities and status?
When members need support that doesn't directly benefit the leader, how do they respond?
These moments reveal much that’s important.

The Reality of Mixed Motivations

Most people operate with some combination of these three patterns.
Figuratively, I don't expect anyone to carry buckets and move ladders all day without picking any apples themselves.
Healthy community engagement includes personal satisfaction and individual achievement.
There is importance in identifying people whose primary orientation supports collective flourishing rather than undermining it.

Building Communities That Sustain Growth

When I select leaders for community roles, I look for people whose success calculations naturally include the welfare of others.  We call this generosity. It must be present and recognizable.
These individuals create environments where members feel supported in their growth rather than competing for limited recognition or resources.
They design experiences that grow collective capacity rather than showcasing individual superiority.
They invest their energy in outcomes that benefit the entire group, even when those outcomes require personal sacrifice.

The Choice We Make Every Day

Every time we participate in a community, we choose which success pattern to put forward most.
That choice shapes not only our own experience. It makes a difference for everyone around us.
Communities grow in character by what their members, especially their leaders, value most.
When we prioritize collective flourishing over individual advancement, we create spaces where everyone can grow beyond what they could make possible alone.
This isn't idealism.
It's the practical reality of how thriving communities actually function. 
Consider military platoons, hospital crash teams and any ball sports team you’ve ever met. 
The next time you find yourself in a community setting, notice which success pattern feels most natural to you.
That awareness can present a first step toward building the kind of communities we all long to be part of.

Get free resources on building the community you long for at www.charlesvogl.com

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