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Leadership quality is one of the biggest risk factors for a toxic work environment, and there are often leading indicators that can be addressed before cultures become psychologically unsafe, according to a behavioural scientist.

Bad behaviour doesn't just "spring out of nowhere fully formed", and leaders don't just "wake up one day and sexually harass", leadership specialist and Diamond Leadership founder Julie Diamond tells HR Daily.

Rather, there's a continuum of behaviours, she explains.

But Diamond, who has spent years studying the power competencies that underpin healthy leadership, says employers can be on the lookout for some lead indicators – "small-level behaviours that people find irritating, annoying, a little offensive, or kind of creepy" – and address them before they become more problematic...