Why CEOs and HR need better language for leadership challenges
In recent years, it has become common to hear senior leaders described as “psychopaths,” “toxic,” or even “psychotic.” These labels usually emerge during moments of organizational strain burnout, fear, ethical tension, or cultural erosion.
The experiences behind such language are real. Yet the language itself may quietly undermine the very clarity and progress organizations are seeking.
From a clinical perspective, terms such as psychosis and psychopathy have precise meanings. They belong to psychiatry and clinical psychology, not to everyday leadership assessment.
When these terms migrate into management discourse, they often function less as explanations and more as labels moral judgments that borrow the authority of science.
While this may feel decisive, it rarely supports prevention or repair.
For CEOs, a key insight is this: most leadership challenges are not mental illness. They are more often the result of unexamined motivation, excessive drive, and limited reflective awareness, amplified by power and insufficient organizational safeguards.
Leadership roles naturally attract ambitious, decisive, and influential individuals. These qualities are not pathological; they are often essential.
Challenges arise when one motive power, control, recognition, or achievement dominates too strongly and becomes rigid.
A leader may remain intelligent, strategic, and results-driven, while becoming increasingly unaware of the human, ethical, or cultural costs of their decisions.
Labeling such leaders can offer momentary relief, but it tends to close the door on learning and course correction.
Labels simplify complex dynamics and shift attention away from development, shared responsibility, and system design.
This is where HR plays a crucial preventive role not as a diagnostic authority, but as a partner in leadership health and stewardship.
High-functioning HR teams do not ask whether a leader is “healthy” or “toxic.” They ask more constructive questions:
What motivations are most active here?
Where might drive have turned into excess?
How open is this leader to feedback?
How aware are they of their impact on others?
What structural boundaries help regulate authority?
From both a clinical and organizational standpoint, reflective awareness is often the pivotal factor. Leaders who struggle to observe their own patterns under pressure are more likely to create unintended harm.
Leaders with strong awareness, by contrast, can hold intense ambition while remaining adaptive, ethical, and humane.
For CEOs, this perspective supports healthier leadership cultures by emphasizing early recognition, feedback loops, coaching, and governance design.
For HR, it reinforces legitimacy by focusing on prevention rather than post-hoc labeling. Accountability is not weakened in this approach. Leaders remain responsible for outcomes without being reduced to stigmatizing terms.
The guiding question becomes: What is happening here, and what needs to be adjusted early enough to matter?
Clinical Reflection
In clinical practice, diagnosis follows careful assessment and serves treatment. In organizational life, labels are often applied without such safeguards.
A preventive approach focuses less on naming and more on understanding patterns, awareness, and context where meaningful change is most likely to occur.
Written by Mr David Matta, Executive Trainer and Advisor
President, Lebanese association of mindfulness (LAM).