I became Chief Editor of GQ Russia at 23. That sounds glamorous now; at the time it felt like being handed a loaded weapon and a classroom full of teenagers.

I was the youngest person ever in that chair, and honestly, I did deserve it. I was sharp, productive, ambitious, obsessed with quality, and fast. I knew exactly what I wanted on every page. What I didn’t know was how to manage people. I treated my team like my personal Formula 1 car: push harder, go faster, no questions, no feelings.

My management style was a mix between overachieving student and prison guard. Very strict working hours. Endless tasks. Impossible KPIs. No sick days. No “how are you,” only “where is it.” I wasn’t screaming or throwing things — I was just ice-cold and relentless. A very young biology teacher in a high school full of kids who, I was sure, didn’t care enough, didn’t try enough, and definitely didn’t understand how serious everything was.

For a while, this “discipline” worked. Our numbers were great, the stats were climbing, traffic was booming, the brand looked strong. I thought I had cracked the code: if you squeeze hard enough, excellence comes out. Genius.

Except it doesn’t. What comes out is burnout.

First it hit the team: exhaustion, anxiety, emotional shutdown, passive resistance. Then it hit me. My creativity dropped. My joy evaporated. Meetings became transactional, not inspiring. The work — which used to feel alive — started to look… dull. Shallow. Technically fine, emotionally dead.

It took years — and a lot of therapy — for me to admit the obvious: I wasn’t leading. I was controlling. And I wasn’t just hurting people; I was hurting the work.

Now, with some distance and a much softer nervous system, I can tell you this: If you want your brand, your project, your magazine, your startup, your team to survive and grow, you need to stop being a toxic boss. Not because “kindness is trendy,” but because the data is brutal: toxic leadership kills performance, creativity, and retention. Empathy and psychological safety, on the other hand, improve productivity, innovation, and profit.

Nice isn't the opposite of effective. Nice is a performance tool.

The reason so many young (and not-so-young) leaders become miniature dictators is very simple: it works in the short term.

And then it all collapses.

Gallup estimates that up to 70% of variance in team engagement is explained by the manager. Bad bosses don’t just annoy people; they reshape brains, stress systems, and performance curves. Studies show that employees with toxic or abusive supervisors have higher cortisol, more burnout, more physical health issues, and are significantly more likely to quit. One meta-analysis linked abusive supervision to lower creativity, worse job performance, and higher counterproductive behaviour (think quiet sabotage, disengagement, minimal effort).

So yes, the prison guard strategy can give you a quarter or two of good numbers. But if you care about long-term brand value, innovation, and loyalty, it is a time bomb. I had to watch mine explode.

We usually imagine a “toxic boss” as someone throwing staplers and shouting in open space. Easy to condemn. Easy to say, “Well, I’m not like that.”

In reality, toxicity is often much quieter and more socially acceptable:

Research calls this “abusive supervision” and “low psychological safety.” Harvard’s Amy Edmondson showed that teams with high psychological safety — where people feel safe to speak up, fail, and ask for help — perform significantly better, especially in complex, creative environments. Conversely, when people feel judged or threatened, their brain literally shifts into survival mode, narrowing focus, killing creativity, and suppressing learning.

In other words: if your team is afraid of you, they won’t tell you the truth. They will tell you what you want to hear. And your whole business will be operating on lies.

At some point, I noticed something very uncomfortable: it wasn’t just my team that was tired. I was exhausted by my own leadership style.

I was always “on,” always responsible for everything, always fixing, correcting, pushing. Zero delegation. Zero trust. Zero emotional connection. And the more I controlled, the more resentful I felt: “Why don’t they think for themselves? Why am I the only one who cares?” Classic.

This is where therapy entered the chat. It forced me to ask questions I had avoided:

Through that work, I realised something:

My toxic boss persona wasn’t strength. It was fear. Fear of not being respected. Fear of being seen as “too young, too female, too emotional” in a very masculine media environment. Fear of failure — which I tried to outsource to my team by over-controlling them.

Once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

Let’s talk data again.

So no, “being softer” won’t kill your performance. Ignoring your team’s emotional reality will.

You can’t fix everything overnight, but you can stop adding fuel to the fire. Here is where to start.

It is easy to be a “strong boss” for 12 months by scaring people. It is harder — and much more interesting — to be a good leader for 10 years by building people.

When I look back at my 23-year-old editor self, I feel two things at once: pride and empathy. Pride for the work, the speed, the ambition. Empathy for the terrified young woman who thought the only way to be taken seriously was to shut her heart off and become a machine.

I don’t want that for anyone else. Not for new managers. Not for their teams. Not for the work we put into the world.

Emotional intelligence and empathy aren’t “nice extras” you sprinkle on top of real leadership. They are the core technology. They make everything better: your life, your team’s life, and the actual output of your business.

If you are in charge of people — five, fifteen, fifty — you are shaping not just careers, but nervous systems and futures. That is a lot of power. Please use it with care.

And if you recognise parts of yourself in the toxic boss I used to be, here is the good news:

Your KPIs will survive. Your team might finally thrive. And you — surprisingly — will feel much more human in your own job.