Poison at the Top: Fixing Toxic Leadership Before It Kills Your Company
Toxic leadership isn't always loud, obvious, or dramatic. More often, it hides behind polished presentations, endless meetings, and "yes-men" managers who protect appearances while culture quietly rots underneath. The cost is enormous: disengaged employees, lost innovation, high turnover, and a company that looks strong on paper but is crumbling at its core.
Poison at the Top is both a wake-up call and a roadmap. Drawing on nearly 40 years of frontline observation inside factories, corporate offices, and management teams, Jason McIlrath exposes the patterns that allow toxic bosses to thrive - and the cultural blind spots that keep executives from noticing until it's too late.
With 40 practical chapters divided into four parts, this book explores:
The hidden costs of toxic leadership that executives often miss.
The repeated patterns of toxic bosses across industries.
The systems that reward "actors" and punish authentic leaders.
Proven strategies to rebuild trust, psychological safety, and purpose.
Written with unflinching honesty and real-world insight, Poison at the Top challenges leaders to confront the uncomfortable truths within their own organizations. More importantly, it equips them with tools to break the cycle, measure culture as rigorously as profit, and build workplaces where people - and performance - thrive together.
If you're ready to stop rewarding toxic leadership and start building a culture of trust, resilience, and purpose, this book is your guide.