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‘We need to cut one in five management posts. There is no point discussing this or consulting with the wider management group because there is no alternative. We are standing on a burning platform. We need to take decisive action now.'The chief executive thought this was pragmatic leadership. It was certainly decisive. But the burning platform was not just a description of the organisation's financial position. It was also a description of the chief executive's leadership style.Pragmatism can be a virtue. Senior managers sometimes have to make difficult decisions with limited choices. But when ‘pragmatism', ‘necessity' and ‘there is no alternative' become the justification for almost everything a leader does, pragmatism becomes something else. It becomes an excuse for avoiding challenge and accountability.This is where grey leadership can become a disguise for dark leadership.Grey leadership sits between the familiar categories of good and bad leadership. It is not necessarily abusive, destructive or obviously toxic. It is more ambiguous. Rules are bent because circumstances demand it. Difficult decisions are postponed until there is no longer any choice. Harmful behaviour is tolerated because someone is considered indispensable. Unpopular decisions are imposed because ‘we need to be pragmatic'.Dark leadership is different. By dark leadership, I mean leadership that knowingly accepts predictable damage to people, trust and organisational culture in pursuit of organisational or personal objectives.Dark leadership rarely announces itself as dark. It borrows legitimacy from something legitimate: financial pressure, customer expectations, new technology, regulation, performance problems or organisational survival. The problem may be real. The response is still a choice.Every organisation has two balance sheets. One records money, performance and productivity. The other records trust, hope, pride, belief and memory. This is the emotional balance sheet of the organisation.Trust asks whether people believe what leaders say. Hope asks whether they believe improvement is possible. Pride asks whether they feel their work has meaning and value. Belief asks whether they think their effort will make a difference. Memory asks what previous experiences are telling them about the latest management initiative.Leaders often assume every new decision starts with a clean sheet. Employees do not.They remember the restructure that was supposed to be temporary. The initiative that was abandoned. The promise that was broken. The consultation that changed nothing. The previous ‘burning platform'. Organisational memory means yesterday's experience becomes part of today's reaction.Leaders make decisions in the present. Employees judge them against the past.This is why grey leadership can become dark leadership.Consider a genuine budget crisis. Cutting management posts may be unavoidable. That is not dark leadership. Nor is introducing AI because the organisation needs to become more productive. Nor is tackling high absenteeism, persistent turnover or poor performance.The warning sign is what happens next.‘We have to automate' becomes a conversation-stopper. ‘We need stronger attendance management' becomes an excuse to ignore why people are exhausted. ‘We cannot carry people who are not delivering' becomes a reason to punish rather than improve. ‘There is simply no money' becomes a way of shutting down challenge.None of these statements is necessarily wrong. The problem is when they end the conversation rather than start it.A difficult decision can be necessary and still be badly led. The financial problem does not remove the responsibility to explain, listen, challenge assumptions and treat people with respect.The tipping point comes when three things coincide. The damage to people and relationships is predictable. Leaders have choices about how they act. And they knowingly treat the emotional cost as irrelevant because the operational problem is considered more important.At that point, grey leadership has stopped being grey.Grey leaders borrow from tomorrow's trust to solve today's problem. Sometimes that borrowing is necessary. The danger comes when it becomes routine.An organisation can survive one difficult decision. It can survive a painful restructure. It can even survive a failed initiative. What becomes dangerous is the accumulation of emotional debt. Trust is spent faster than it is rebuilt. Hope becomes cynicism. Pride becomes embarrassment. Belief that effort makes a difference begins to disappear.Eventually the organisation develops a darker culture.The signs are often subtle. People stop challenging senior managers because they assume the decision has already been made. Meetings become exercises in compliance. Staff say what they think leaders want to hear. Good people leave. Those who remain become more cynical. New initiatives are greeted with weary scepticism rather than enthusiasm.The formal organisation may still appear to be functioning.The emotional organisation is telling you that it is not.Senior managers need to test their own use of the word ‘pragmatic'. Before a difficult decision, ask five questions. Is the problem genuinely unavoidable? What choices are we pretending do not exist? What emotional assets will this decision spend? What will employees remember about how we handled it? And what will we do to rebuild trust afterwards?These questions do not prevent difficult decisions. They prevent difficult decisions being used as an excuse for poor leadership.HR should not become the department that makes bad decisions easier to impose. Its role is to challenge the human and organisational consequences of apparently pragmatic decisions. But HR cannot compensate for a chief executive who repeatedly spends emotional capital without rebuilding it.The burning platform may explain the decision.It does not excuse the leadership behaviour.When pragmatism becomes a permanent justification for predictable damage to trust, hope, pride and belief, grey leadership has stopped being grey.It has become dark leadership. Blair McPherson is an author and former director in local government

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LEADERSHIP

When pragmatism becomes an excuse for bad leadership

By Blair McPherson | 21 August 2026

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