Stop Becoming the Boss You Hated

One missed boundary, one unchecked habit, one fear driven reaction at a time. That is how toxic leadership takes root. This truth came into sharp focus during my recent conversation with Mita Mallick on the Let’s Go Win podcast, where we unpacked how leadership problems are almost never about personality and almost always about behavior. Change the behavior and you change the leader. What follows is a practical, human centered guide drawn from that conversation to help you spot the traps, repair the damage, and build leadership that grows people, not just output.

Three essential truths about modern leadership

• Hustle culture produces short bursts, not sustained performance. Constant urgency fuels immediate output but destroys clarity, creativity, and long-term results.

• Fear-driven leadership kills trust and innovation. Yelling, public shaming, or management-through-intimidation might force short-term compliance but it burns talent and morale.

• Good leadership is teachable and measurable. Habits like kindness, vulnerability, coaching, and deliberate time management are practical skills anyone can develop.

Why hustle culture backfires

There’s a difference between pushing hard for a short sprint and making sprinting the default. Hustle culture celebrates burned-out heroes and late-night emails as badges of honor. But those behaviors are unsustainable and ultimately reduce performance.

Short-term drive can produce great results — a product launch, a big pitch, a quarterly spike. Over time, the constant state of "urgent now" drains social capital. If everything is urgent, nothing is. Your team will stop responding, creativity will shrivel, and the best people will leave.

Simple alternatives to continuous hustle

• Build rest into the plan: schedule recovery windows after drive periods so decision making and creativity have space to recover.

• Protect off-hours: stop normalizing after-hours messages as the only way to get attention.

• Measure quality, not just quantity: track outcomes that rely on long-term thinking — retention, product improvements, creative wins.

The real cost of fear-based leadership

Fear can deliver quick compliance. It will not build loyalty or innovation. Leaders who scream, humiliate, or publicly shame colleagues may see short-term KPI lifts, but they create a culture of silence and hiding. People stop speaking up, they stop experimenting, and they eventually check out.

When psychological safety is low, trust erodes. Talented people won’t stick around to be mistreated — job security is no longer a reason to tolerate abuse. That’s why behavior change must start above and cascade down.

What replaces fear?

• Kindness with rigor: be firm and clear about expectations while treating people respectfully.

• Vulnerability: own mistakes and say sorry. Leaders who admit imperfection invite learning.

• Coach, don’t control: teach skills, give feedback, and raise others up rather than doing the work for them.

Practical leadership habits that actually scale

Becoming a better leader isn’t about grand gestures. It’s about daily habits that create space for people to do their best work.

Treat time like your wardrobe

Audit your calendar. Remove meetings that no longer fit. Delegate recurring items that someone else can run. Replace unnecessary long meetings with short check-ins, voice notes, or asynchronous updates.

Make recognition your default retention tool

Recognition costs nothing and yields enormous return. A simple acknowledgment — “I saw what you did and it mattered” — keeps people engaged and loyal. Skip the free swag and introduce people to stakeholders, include them in pitches, and publicly credit their work.

Hold regular, human-centered check-ins

One-on-ones are not optional. They are a leader’s primary way to coach, listen, and spot problems early. Keep them consistent, don’t keep rescheduling, and use them to ask about both work and wellbeing.

Manage up, and teach others to do the same

No one will advocate for your career like you. Help your manager help you: remind them of your wins, ask to join relevant meetings, and make your ambitions known. Managing up is a skill that protects your trajectory and helps leaders make better decisions.

Communicate across cultural differences

People bring different cultural norms to how they show engagement, enthusiasm, and stress. Rather than assume, ask and clarify. Use observations rather than labels: say “I noticed you were quieter in the meeting and I wanted to check in” instead of “you seem disengaged.” The difference is huge — observations invite conversation, accusations invite defensiveness.

AI is a tool — don’t let it replace humanity

AI can free leaders from repetitive tasks and give them more time to coach and connect. Use it as a capacity multiplier: automate routine work so you can double down on human skills that AI cannot replicate — storytelling, empathy, mentorship, nuance.

Spot your own bad-boss tendency

Every leader has a tendency that will swing under stress. Identify yours and hold it under a microscope. Common tendencies include micromanaging, demanding perfection without coaching, and disappearing when stressed.

Pick one tendency you want to change. Ask your team for direct feedback. Make a public commitment to one small behavior change and measure it over weeks. You do not need to be perfect — you need to be aware and intentional.

Questions to get started

1. What one habit do I fall into under stress?

2. How often do I acknowledge people’s contributions publicly?

3. When was the last time I canceled a recurring meeting because it no longer served anyone?

4. Am I building rest and recovery into my team’s roadmap?

Final note: leadership is a practice, not a trait

Great leaders are made through practice, reflection, and small daily rituals. Swap late-night urgency for presence, replace fear with coaching, and prioritize the human side of work. Doing so doesn’t just make workplaces kinder — it makes them more productive, innovative, and sustainable.

If you want one practical starting point: pick one meeting this week to cancel, and spend that time recognizing a team member for recent work. Kindness and clarity compound faster than you think.

Reach out to Mita through her website and follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Watch this full episode of the Let's Go Win podcast on YouTube.