The article “Fight, Flight or Freeze: Common Responses for Follower Coping with Toxic Leadership”, was written by Vicki Webster, Paula Brough, and Kathleen Daly in 2016 and was published in the journal Stress and Health. The authors of the article are academics at Griffith University and their research interests range from the negative side of leadership to employee mental health to transitional justice. In this study, the authors tried to investigate the coping strategies that are adopted by followers to cope with the psychological, emotional, and physical consequences of their leader’s adverse behavior. By asking the research question “What are the coping strategies employed by individuals who perceive their leader’s behavior to be harmful?” the study aimed to understand how the theoretical coping frameworks explain the coping responses adopted by employees adversely affected by toxic leader behaviors. The article was mainly written for the organizational employees and representatives who usually advise and support the victim of abusive leaders’ behavior.

The study adopted mixed methodology. A survey link was advertised by seven professional human resources, psychology, and university associations across Australia and New Zealand to their members, and participants were invited to take the survey and were given the option of sending their reply through text. The survey consisted of six open-ended qualitative questions. The questions focused on three areas: specific behaviors that toxic leaders demonstrate, the impact of that behavior on the respondent, and the coping strategies followers employed to cope with toxic leadership behaviors. From the survey, the study collected random data electronically from seventy-six respondents. Seventy percent of the respondents were female, Australian, aged between 30 to 49 years, with post-graduate degree and worked either in private or in the public sector with only 10 percent in non-profit-organizations. Most of the respondents had work experience from five to sixteen years and most of them were from the healthcare sector, education sector, professional service sector, and financial sector.

After the survey was conducted, the data were coded and themes were developed by two independent data analysts using NVivo. First cycle coding developed 402 codes and second level coding shrinked it down to 255. The 255 codes were aggregated into three subcategories, which include perceived toxic leadership, consequences of toxic leadership, and theoretical coping strategies. Frequencies of responses in each subcategory were employed to identify common themes emerging from the data. The study found six behaviors that were most common among toxic leaders: manipulating, intimidating, abusive, narcissistic, micromanaging, and passive aggressive behaviors. Moreover, the study found that employees adopt adaptive and perceived maladaptive strategies to cope with toxic leadership behaviors. The coping strategies were problem-solving strategies such as instrumental action (e.g., making a formal complaint, seeking mediation and whistle blowing), information seeking strategies (e.g., seeking professional advice), emotion- focused strategies such as self-reliance (e.g. working harder), submission (e.g., ruminating) helplessness and delegation (e.g., feelings of shame, self-blame and disgust), and avoidance-focused coping strategies, such as taking leave. When it comes to practical implications, the study can facilitate how organizations and their representatives use effective coping strategies when they respond to victims of abusive leader conduct. In addition, proactive organizational training programs can help employees about effective coping strategies to deal with toxic behaviors of managers.

In conclusion, the article did a decent job in reviewing relevant and recent literature, in defining relevant terms, and in identifying the gap in the literature. Use of independent analysts to code the data and to adopt second cycle coding were effective in bringing reliability and validity to the study. However, rather than collecting data from seventy-six respondents through a survey, the study could have adopted a phenomenology study with five to ten respondents as that would have given more in-depth information to the researchers than what they have received through text from the survey. Moreover, it would have been better if the authors had drawn a clearer picture about the problem that prompted the authors to study the topic and if the authors described why the study needed to be conducted. Finally, broadening the audience base would have added more value to the study in hand.