On bosses, pastors and parents who confuse cruelty with leadership, why Gen Z isn’t taking it, and the difference between being hard on someone and being harmful to them.
I’ve had tough bosses. Most of us have.
The kind who sends your report back three times. Who asks the one question you hoped nobody would ask in the meeting. Who expects more from you than you expect from yourself. At the time, you grumbled. Looking back, some of them made you better. I can name a few who did that for me, and I’m grateful.
That’s fine. That’s what leadership is supposed to do.
But then there’s the other kind.
The boss who humiliates people in front of everyone, seemingly for the fun of it. The one who shouts, insults, and sometimes goes beyond words. The one who keeps “something” on you and makes sure you know it. I’ve seen these leaders. Maybe you have too. Some of them run companies. Some stand on pulpits. Some sit at the head of the family table.
And somehow, they’ve convinced themselves, and sometimes everyone around them, that this is simply how leadership works.
Let me be clear. It isn’t.
We’ve seen this movie before
Every few months, Nigerian Twitter gets another toxic boss trending. Someone posts a screenshot, a voice note or a long thread, and within hours the replies are full of people saying, “Wait, this happened to me too.” Different company. Same script.
Then there’s church hurt. Say those two words in a room and watch people nod. Nobody needs it explained.
And families? Quietly, many are splitting. Siblings who no longer talk. Adult children who have cut off a parent. Relatives who stopped showing up at Christmas, and nobody will say why out loud.
These aren’t isolated stories. They’re symptoms of something we’ve normalised for a long time: the belief that whoever is in charge can do whatever they like, and the rest of us should just be grateful.
Style is not the problem
To be fair, not every strict leader is toxic. Leadership comes in different styles, and most of them have their place.
Some leaders are autocratic. They decide, you execute. In a crisis, that can save lives. Some are transactional: hit your target and get rewarded, miss it and face the consequences. Most salaried jobs run on a bit of that. Some are visionaries who stretch you toward something bigger than yourself. Some are servant leaders who see their job as clearing the road for you. Some consult everyone before deciding anything. And some step back so far you start wondering if they still work there.
Every one of these styles can be practised with dignity. Every one can be corrupted.
A boss who gives firm instructions and expects them followed is autocratic. A boss who screams, insults your mother and threatens your job over a typo is something else entirely. The style didn’t change. The person added something to it.
So when someone says, “Abeg, that’s just my leadership style,” the honest answer is no, it isn’t.
Humiliation is not a style. It’s a choice.
How to tell tough love from toxic
This is where it gets tricky, because toxic leaders love to borrow the language of tough love. “I’m only hard on you because I see potential.” Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s cover.
A few questions help me tell the difference.
Who is it really for? Tough love is about your growth, the team or the mission. Toxicity is about the leader’s ego, comfort or need for control.
Where does it happen? Good leaders correct in private and praise in public. Toxic ones do the opposite, because the audience is part of the point.
Does the reaction fit the mistake? A missed deadline deserves a hard conversation. It doesn’t deserve insults about your intelligence or where you come from.
Is this a bad day or a pattern? Everyone snaps occasionally. Good leaders come back and apologise. Toxic ones make it routine, and somehow it’s always your fault.
Is your dependence being used against you? Your salary. Your visa. Your school fees. Your position in church. Your share of family property. When any of these becomes leverage to keep you quiet, that’s not leadership. That’s control. This is where blackmail lives.
Is there a way forward? Tough love says, “This is wrong. Here’s what better looks like. I’ll help you get there.” Toxicity says, “You’re useless,” and leaves it there.
One thing, though. Discomfort is not the same as harm. Blunt feedback can sting. A high standard can feel unfair when you’re tired. A “no” can hurt. None of those, on their own, make someone toxic.
Tough love stretches you. Toxicity shrinks you. That’s the difference.
The office, the pulpit and the home
The office
In many Nigerian workplaces, “Oga is always right” isn’t a joke. It’s company policy.
People get shouted down in meetings and insulted in the office WhatsApp group. Saturdays become “optional” workdays that are anything but optional. Salaries come late, sometimes months late, and asking about it makes you the troublemaker.
Why do people put up with it? Mostly, economics. When jobs are scarce and prices keep climbing, “be grateful you have a job” becomes a very effective way to keep people quiet.
That’s exactly why those Twitter threads spread so fast. Each one gives the next person permission to speak.
The pulpit
Church hurt is a special kind of pain, because it doesn’t just wound the person. It wounds their faith.
We all know the verse. “Touch not mine anointed” (Psalm 105:15). It gets quoted a lot, often to shut down any question at all. But the same Bible tells elders to shepherd the flock “not as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples” (1 Peter 5:3). Notice the contrast. Not lords. Examples.
Jesus washed His disciples’ feet. He didn’t ask them to wash His.
A pastor who corrects sin with love is pastoring. A pastor who disgraces a member from the pulpit for disagreeing with him, or uses God’s name to control, shame or extract money, is doing something else. Calling it anointing doesn’t change what it is.
The home
Respect for elders is one of the best things about our culture. I’d like us to keep it.
But “I am your father” is a fact, not an argument. Scripture puts a duty on parents too: “fathers, provoke not your children to wrath” (Ephesians 6:4). That instruction is there for a reason.
Discipline is meant to shape a child. Abuse breaks one. Many of us know what the difference looks like. The beatings that left marks. The endless comparison with “your mate.” Being shamed in front of the whole family at a gathering. Adult children controlled with money or the promise of inheritance. Family meetings that feel more like a tribunal than a conversation.
When an adult child cuts off a parent or relative, the family usually asks one question: what did the child do? Rarely does anyone ask what came before.
A cut-off is usually the last chapter of a long story. Not the first.
Gen Z isn’t having it
If you’re from my generation or older, you’ve heard this one. “We were flogged, insulted and overworked, and we turned out fine.”
Some of us did. But the ones who didn’t turn out fine are rarely at the table telling the story. And plenty of us who “turned out fine” still carry things we never had words for.
Gen Z has the words.
They grew up online with a vocabulary for things the rest of us simply endured. Boundaries. Gaslighting. Red flags. Burnout. In seconds, they can see how workplaces run in London, Toronto or Nairobi and ask, why not here? They watched “suffer now, enjoy later” fail many of their parents, as the economy kept moving the goalposts and “later” never quite arrived.
So they do what many of us couldn’t. They resign. They post the screenshots. They go no-contact. They japa.
If I’m honest, I think that shift is mostly healthy. Abuse should never be a rite of passage.
But fairness cuts both ways. “Toxic” and “gaslighting” get thrown around a lot, and not every correction is an attack. Resilience is a real skill. Some growth only comes from staying in a hard place long enough to be shaped by it. A young person who walks out of every uncomfortable room may also walk away from lessons they needed.
So here’s where I land. Gen Z is right that abuse should never be normal. The older generation is right that growth is uncomfortable.
The question isn’t whether it hurts. It’s whether it harms.
What leading with grace looks like
Grace isn’t softness. It isn’t lowering the bar or pretending bad work is good work.
Author Kim Scott has a name for the balance: “radical candor,” caring personally while challenging directly. Take away the care and you get cruelty. Take away the challenge and you get a leader who watches people fail quietly and says nothing.
From what I’ve seen, leaders with grace do a few things consistently.
They correct the work, not the worth. “This report isn’t good enough” is feedback. “You’re useless” is an insult.
They correct in private and give credit in public. People never forget who stood up for them in the room.
They explain the why. Instructions with reasons build people. Orders without them build fear.
They apologise when they’re wrong. A leader who never says sorry teaches everyone under them to hide mistakes.
They never weaponise dependence. Salaries, titles, church roles and family support are not leverage.
And they let people leave well. How you treat someone on their way out tells the people staying everything they need to know.
If you’re on the receiving end of a toxic leader right now, write things down. Find people you trust. Know your rights. And know that sometimes, leaving isn’t failure. It’s wisdom.
Hard on problems, gentle on people
Leadership, whether in an office, a church or a home, should leave people better than it found them.
Pressure can do that. High expectations can do that. Hard conversations and honest feedback can do that.
Humiliation, threats and blackmail can’t. They just make people smaller. Worse, they teach the next generation that this is what power looks like, and the cycle continues.
Gen Z is breaking that cycle. Sometimes clumsily, but clearly. The rest of us have a choice. We can defend the old ways, or we can admit that some of what we endured was never necessary.
I’d rather admit it.
We can be hard on problems without being harmful to people.
That’s leading with grace.
