Toxic leadership thrives in the shadows. This book brings it into the light.

Have you ever felt silenced, diminished, or marginalized by a leader who seemed charismatic on the surface but left you questioning what you were experiencing? You're not alone.

Unmasking Toxic Leadership provides the language and frameworks you need to discern harmful power dynamics that often hide behind charisma, niceness, or even performative "godliness." Through compelling stories, solid research, and practical reflection, leadership expert Yulee Lee offers a refreshing and unflinching examination of toxic leadership patterns that devastate individuals and communities, including those within faith-based contexts. Lee writes from both professional experience and her own journey as an Asian American woman navigating these very dynamics.

First, you'll gain the tools to understand what toxic leadership is, how it disguises itself, and why certain environments allow it to flourish. Next, you'll explore the deep effects of toxic leadership on individuals and communities, including how toxicity reshapes identities, choices, and relationships. Finally, you'll learn practices of detoxing, reclaiming agency, and envisioning healthier organizational cultures.

What you'll get from Unmasking Toxic Leadership:



- Clear frameworks and tools to see harmful patterns that might otherwise remain hidden

- Empowering language to name and process your experiences with toxic authority

- Practical strategies and healing pathways to resist toxic power dynamics and reclaim your agency

- Vision for renewal to create healthier leadership cultures and leave a different legacy



Whether you're currently navigating a toxic work environment, processing past trauma from harmful leadership, or forming your own leadership identity, this book serves to help you recognize and resist toxic leadership while ensuring you don't perpetuate these patterns yourself.

Toxic leadership doesn't have to be the story we inherit. It's time to choose a different legacy. Join the hopeful work of creating nontoxic communities and embodying leadership that heals rather than harms.



Yulee Lee (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the cofounder and chief executive officer of Khora Collective, a nonprofit organization committed to developing nontoxic Asian American Christian leaders. She also serves as the chief operating officer at Stuff You Can Use. A former pastor with twelve years of ministry experience, Yulee is also a visiting professor of organizational and change leadership at Wheaton College. Yulee and her husband, Dave, have one child and live in Southern California.



Prologue: A Letter to Those Impacted by Toxic Leadership

Part 1: Discernment: Naming the Problem

1. Toxic Leaders Hate Me

2. The Toxic Triangle

3. The Subtle Faces of Toxicity

4. A Reckoning with Power

Part 2: Impact: How Toxicity Breaks Us

5. Toxic Men

6. Why We Remain or Return to Toxicity

7. The Cost of Leaving Toxicity

Part 3: Liberation: Building Something Better

8. Detoxing from Toxic People and Places

9. Rising from Toxicity

10. Your New Non-Toxic Era

Epilogue: An Encouragement to Next-Gen Leaders