Alleviating the Impact of Toxic Leadership in Autonomous Engineering Institutions: The Process of Rectification and Development

Engineering institutes have to continuously develop as centers of excellence, offer industry-specific or industry-aligned curricula, outstanding graduates and researchers who are innovative and bring needed human and knowledge capital. They should offer industry-specific innovative solutions from day one. The outstanding, high-performing faculty are key players in planning interdisciplinary graduate programs and training company executives. The leaders of engineering institutions should facilitate institutional development and provide necessary counselling, coaching, and mentoring to faculty members. Further, they have to offer the necessary faculty training and development programs from recruitment through retirement. The outstanding faculty members have to offer innovative solutions to the industry, which faces complex problems due to the fast growth of disruptive technology, from problem analysis to innovative product development. These faculty members can assist the community by developing interdisciplinary graduates in collaboration with user companies, transnational companies, and international development agencies. Many institutions suffer due to toxic leaders who continue to focus on their self-development, creating coteries of loyal workers while discriminating against high-performing and well-accomplished faculty teams. Toxic leaders do not produce successive outstanding performers, and they continuously discriminate against fast-growing faculty teams that focus on excellence in planning multidisciplinary research and development programs and offer intellectual property to various companies in industrial corridors and hubs. Hence, it is essential to identify toxic leaders and conduct an academic audit of the institute's performance across three areas: higher education, research, and services to engineering departments and companies. The toxic leaders have to be corrected through strategic planning, advanced program development, internal revenue generation, and the creation of centers of excellence. This book focuses on the early identification of toxic leaders and on transforming them into saint leaders who prioritize equity, ethics, integrity.