This post is part of the series on toxicity in the workplace. Previous posts have named the behaviors that define toxic environments, examined the personality traits of toxic leaders, looked at how widespread the problem is, and the costs to people’s health. This post looks at the people who surround and feed the toxic leader.

In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West does not do her own dirty work. She sends her flying monkeys – winged creatures who carry out her orders without question, harassing and attacking Dorothy and her companions on command. They do not appear to reflect on what they are doing or why as they scatter and swoop, screeching and terrorizing. They simply obey, and, in doing so, extend the witch’s reach beyond what she can manage alone.

The term has since found a place in psychology, where it is used to describe the individuals who enable, amplify, and execute a narcissistic or toxic leader’s agenda in the workplace. Flying monkeys are the colleagues, managers, and sometimes HR professionals who carry out the leader’s dirty work, often without fully recognizing their own role. They spread rumors, relay information back to the leader, support the official narrative, and alienate or isolate those who resist. They are the reason a toxic leader can get away with their behavior, why they seem all-seeing, and untouchable.

A study published recently drew on data from Argentina’s military dictatorship to examine who joined the secret police that carried out the regime’s worst abuses. It was not the most committed or capable officers. It was the underperformers, those whose careers had stalled, who had fallen behind their peers, and who saw in the secret police a “second ladder,” a route to promotion and status they could never have achieved on merit. In exchange for doing this dirty work, they saw career advancement, protection, and semblance of power. The researchers call them “loyal losers” (Scharpf & Glassel, 2026, as cited in Taub, 2026).

According to the New York Times article reporting on this research, the implications extend well beyond military dictatorships. In organizations of all kinds, toxic leaders rely on a similar type of dynamic. They do not need their enablers to share their worldview or even to like them. They need people who will benefit enough from proximity to power to keep doing the work because they have enough to lose.

Conformers and Colluders

A research framework that captures this dynamic well in organizational settings comes from Padilla, Hogan and Kaiser’s (2007) toxic triangle, discussed in an earlier post. The authors distinguish between two types of susceptible followers.

Conformers go along out of fear, or because they can’t see how they may resist without personal cost. They are not enthusiastic participants. They are people who have learned that speaking up leads nowhere good, and who have adapted accordingly. They stay silent when they see something wrong. They performatively agree in meetings. They do not confront, question, or challenge. In doing so, they provide the toxic leader with the appearance of legitimacy and consensus, which is a form of enabling, even if their personal views are different.

Colluders are different. They actively participate. They understand, at some level, what is happening, and they have decided that the benefits of alignment outweigh the costs. They carry messages. They monitor and report. They take sides, openly and loudly. And, as the authors note, they are often ambitious individuals who see proximity to the leader as the most reliable route to advancement available to them. They are not simply followers. They have something to gain and will strive for it. Some colluders will also be toxic personalities and gravitate toward the leader because they share similar traits. Birds of a feather.

What Flying Monkeys Actually Do

In practice, flying monkey behavior in the workplace tends to follow recognizable patterns.

They are the first to defend the leader when complaints are raised, not because they have investigated the concerns or weighed the evidence, but because that’s what is expected of them. They claim not to have seen what others saw. They suggest that the person raising the concern is oversensitive, difficult, or has an agenda.

They hang on every word the leader says, even when the communication is incoherent or contradictory, publicly performing understanding and enthusiasm they may not genuinely feel. This serves an important function: it signals to everyone else in the room that alignment is the correct response, and that dissent or having another opinion will get nowhere.

They willingly carry out proxy harassment. They spread rumors about a target, relay private conversations back to the leader, engage in whisper campaigns to discredit someone’s work or reputation before it reaches formal consideration. They do this either because they are asked, encouraged or manipulated to, or perhaps because in the moment, it gives them a feeling of power and insider status that they don’t otherwise have. Belonging to the inner circle, however contingently, is its own reward.

They invoke the leader’s authority as a substitute for reasonable discussion. Rather than making a case on its merits, they drop the leader’s name, as though that’s reason enough.  And, worst of all, they normalize. Over time, they normalize that this is simply how things work here and often make comments about those who don’t “do things our way.” New colleagues take their cues from them. Deference , silence, and compliance become embedded in the culture. The toxic leader’s reality becomes the organization’s reality.

Why They Stay

One of the questions people ask most often about flying monkeys is: do they know what they are doing?

The answer, in most cases, is yes and no. Most flying monkeys have not sat down and consciously decided to enable abuse. But they have made a series of smaller decisions, to stay quiet here, to take this side there, to pass on this piece of information, each of which felt like a small thing or justified at the time.

They are kept in line by a series of incentives and costs. The incentives are status, access, protection, and advancement. The costs are the loss of the leader’s favor, which in a toxic environment means the loss of protection, opportunities, and sometimes employment.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy does not set out to destroy the Wicked Witch. She throws water to save her friend, and the Witch melts as an unintended consequence. The flying monkeys scatter and the power structure collapses.   

Bucket of water, anyone?

This post is part of the Toxicity in the Workplace series. View all posts in the series.

References

Padilla, A., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18 (3), 176–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.03.001

Taub, A. (2026, May 18). Actually, democracy dies in H.R. The New York Times.

Scharpf, A., & Glassel, C. (2026). Making a career in dictatorship. Oxford University Press.