A Toxic dynamic at Work in Organizational Crisis

Our interventions during organizational crises reveal a particularly toxic systemic dynamic structured around three interdependent phenomena: the progressive entrapment of formal power, inadequate support for transformations, and the emergence of compensatory implicit leaderships.

The entrapment of formal leadership power

Often, the leader displays characteristic signs of a progressive entrapment in a position of power that has become defensive. This dynamic is reflected in several converging indicators: unilateral decision-making without prior consultation, a clear difficulty in acknowledging leadership or steering errors, and the avoidance of situations involving vulnerability or public questioning.

This entrapment generates a self-protective vicious circle: the more the leader perceives contestation, the more rigid their positions become, increasing the distance from their teams and paradoxically fueling the very resistance they seek to control. Accounts consistently point to a noticeable behavioral shift since the first organizational tensions emerged.

Poor change support as a revealing factor

This defensive posture of formal leadership finds its most problematic expression in inadequate support for organizational transformations. Reorganizations are increasingly imposed without change pedagogy, without co-construction of meaning, and without anticipation of human impacts—particularly those related to psychological and identity-based safety needs.

This technocratic, top-down approach to change reveals an instrumental conception of the managerial relationship: employees are viewed as adjustment variables rather than as actors of change. This perspective mechanically generates resistance, which is then interpreted as “bad will,” further reinforcing the leader’s entrapment in a control-oriented logic.

The compensatory emergence of implicit leaderships

In response to this deficiency in formal leadership, figures of implicit leadership naturally emerge, channeling collective frustrations and proposing counter-organizational narratives. These “default” leaders (a team member, an employee representative) gain legitimacy that is inversely proportional to the loss of credibility of official leadership.

This dynamic creates a particularly destructive organizational polarization: on one side, an isolated and rigidified formal power; on the other, informal powers fueled by opposition and contestation. This configuration prevents any constructive resolution of tensions and keeps the organization in a state of permanent latent conflict, preventing it from completing its transformation.

Mechanisms of mutual reinforcement

These three phenomena reinforce one another according to an implacable systemic logic. The leader’s entrapment generates inadequate change support, which fuels resistance and legitimizes the emergence of oppositional implicit leaderships. The very existence of these leaderships, in turn, reinforces the formal leader’s sense of being contested, further intensifying their defensive entrapment.

This configuration generates what we call “systemic psychological debts”: each actor develops subjective claims against the others, within a negative-sum game in which no one can win. The formal leader feels misunderstood and unfairly challenged, implicit leaders feel legitimate in their opposition, and employees feel instrumentalized and unrecognized.

Breaking out of this impasse requires external intervention capable of untangling these dysfunctional triangulations and restoring constructive dialogue between the different levels of leadership, both formal and informal.

1. Support for the team to work through their lived experience, the systemic dynamics at play, and the transformation context.

2. Support for the leader(s) to help them break free from power entrapment, restore legitimacy with their teams, and develop more flexible managerial behaviors adapted to the context.

3. Support for the organization in its social dynamics and the adjustment of organizational working conditions.

Matthieu Poirot
Psychologist and PhD in Management
Expert in Organizational Psychology

www.midori-consulting.com