Key Takeaway: Fashion retail organizations that fail to actively measure and transition tenured toxic leaders risk institutionalizing cultural drag, suppressing next-generation leadership, and trading short-term stability for long-term irrelevance.

Left unchallenged by the employer, the query posed by the tenured leader has shown a tendency to evolve. What may begin as self-protective resistance—subtle obstruction, selective endorsement, quiet skepticism—can escalate into a broader questioning of which initiatives, inclusive practices, mentor-mentee relationships, or even emerging leaders might be permitted to advance without threatening the incumbent’s position. Over time, this posture risks shifting from self-preservation to systemic constraint.
In candid terms, a number of these leaders would not be considered Orators in any objective sense. They may command captive audiences of direct reports, but as independent figures within the broader marketplace of fashion retail—public speakers, visible thought leaders, or credible subject-matter experts—their reach is often limited. When such a leader functions as a Toxic Star, recommendations for ongoing leadership development are frequently muted or deferred by the leader’s leader. This pattern is especially evident when peers have ascended collectively or along parallel timelines, creating an unspoken incentive to preserve equilibrium rather than introduce scrutiny. The result is a senior leader increasingly ill-equipped to mentor the next generation or to evolve alongside the industry they ostensibly steward. These conditions form the origin story of the Toxic Star.

The term itself was popularized by Adam Grant in a widely circulated LinkedIn post:
“If your organization has toxic stars, you don’t just have a culture problem. You also have a broken reward system. In healthy organizations, the impact people have on others is a key factor in their pay, performance, and promotions. If you’re an asshole, you’re not a success.”
Within fashion retail, the tenured Toxic Star is rarely an anomaly. More often, they are incubated by their organization—nourished by misaligned reward systems and protected by the micro-cultures of stores, teams, or corporate functions. It is reasonable to assert that many such leaders are acutely aware that their leadership style would not translate seamlessly into another organization, whether a legacy brand navigating the optics of heritage against contemporary ethics commitments, or a growth brand adapting to post-COVID workforce realities and heightened employee expectations. In either case, the next organization may view the same behaviors not as authority, but as liability.
And so, they stay.

The tenured Toxic Star remains in place, becoming a bottleneck in the leadership pipeline and a brake on cultural progression. Incoming leaders—those capable of offering new perspectives, modern people practices, and adaptive thinking—are often diverted into managing around the incumbent rather than learning from them. Advancement becomes less about capability and more about navigating rituals, alliances, and informal power structures. These entwinements serve two functions: to preserve influence within a select inner circle and to insulate the broader organization from the visible consequences of top-down toxicity. The latter function, notably, continues to evade systematic detection by many fashion retail human resource frameworks.
Research underscores the scale of the issue. In The Bullies Are Back, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie cites Gary Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI):
“…in the US at least, [workplace bullying] is on the rise: according to a January 2021 survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), 30% of US workers reported being bullied, up from 19% in 2017.”
The WBI defines bullying as a pattern of repeated mistreatment, abusive conduct, or work sabotage that humiliates, intimidates, or harms targets and interferes with their ability to work. Namie’s conclusion is unequivocal: “It’s gotten worse.” Importantly, the data dismantles lingering myths that bullying sharpens performance or “weeds out” weakness. It does not enhance competitiveness, nor does it benefit the bottom line.
Against this backdrop, the question becomes less about awareness and more about accountability. In an industry that prides itself on reinvention, how does fashion retail continue to celebrate the success of tenured leaders whose presence quietly detours future leaders in service of personal insecurity?

Studies continue to examine the interpersonal and organizational effects of toxic leadership, and the language has sharpened—from “difficult” to “bully.” Yet a notable gap persists: clarity around the appropriate exit pathways for this category of leader. Proposed solutions vary. Some leaders transition into advisory roles within large consulting organizations, despite unresolved questions about the downstream impact of their behavior. Others are offered outplacement services that function more as reputational triage than structural repair. More recently, the concept of “quiet retirement” has emerged—a voluntary retreat from influence as the next generation steps forward. For many professionals shaped by these leaders, quiet retirement is perceived as the least disruptive outcome, preferable to protracted conflict or abrupt dismissal.
Samuel Butler once wrote, “Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.” In leadership, this portrait extends beyond individual output to encompass the cultures built, the talent cultivated—or constrained—and the futures enabled or deferred.

The responsibility for curating an honest portrait of leadership rests with the fashion retail employer. Measuring the effects of tenure, evaluating the cultural drag of unresolved toxicity, and proactively phasing leadership transitions where progress has stalled are not acts of disloyalty—they are acts of stewardship. As an industry, fashion retail stands at an inflection point. Organizations that continue to conflate tenure with entitlement risk preserving stability at the expense of relevance. Those willing to assess, measure, and thoughtfully change the guard will not only unlock the next generation of leaders, but also signal—internally and externally—that progress is not optional, and that leadership, like fashion itself, must evolve to remain credible.