The purpose of this research is to describe which behaviors of school administrators are perceived by teachers as "toxic leadership" behaviors; to reveal the negative reflections of these behaviors on schools. The research was carried out on the basis of the five-dimensional structure of Schmidt's (2008) definition of toxic leadership (unpredictability, authoritarian leadership, narcissism, abusive supervision, self promotion). This study was designed with the phenomenological approach, which is one of the qualitative research methods. In this context, the negative memories of 71 different teachers with their school leaders were collected, and the data were analyzed by content analysis. The findings showed that toxic leadership behaviors, based on the five-dimensional structure of toxic leadership, were collected in 21 categories. When the findings related to the reflections of toxic leadership on the school are examined, it is seen that developing negative feelings in the school, cutting off communication with the school principal, distrust of the principal, decrease in organizational citizenship behaviors / lack of extra performance, decrease in the perception of self-efficacy, worthlessness and hopelessness, decrease in school engagement, alienation from school and profession, professionalism. It has been observed that the categories of low performance, increase in oppositional behaviors / ignoring managerial directives, morale, low motivation and unwillingness, organizational silence, slowing down work, avoidance of taking initiative and burnout have been reached. Suggestions were developed based on the results obtained.
Toxic leadership, unpredictability, authoritarian leadership, narcissism, abusive supervision, self promotion