Pfeffer, J. (2021). The dark triad may be not so dark: Exploring why 'toxic' leaders are so common-with some implications for scholarship and education. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 41, 7, 540-551.
Snippets of relevant text from:
Accompanying the blog:
Leadership and the Dark Side: An unresolved paradox
Pfeffer notes that much of the writing about so-called dark leadership traits and behavior proceeds from the following premises, each of which seems somewhat problematic for the following reasons:
1. "Dark triad" traits are common among leaders.
An early article by Kets de Vries and Miller (1985) argued that some degree of narcissistic personality is prevalent in most leaders. As House and Baetz (1979, p. 353) noted,
"leadership requires a predisposition to be influential. Therefore such traits as dominance or ascendance and need for power are associated with leadership."
Subsequent voluminous empirical research has consistently found a relationship between narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy and leadership emergence as well as other positive career outcomes such as interviewing well, being hired, and achieving promotions.
If dark traits frequently predict leadership emergence and positive career outcomes, it follows logically that leaders will, compared to non-leaders, tend to have more of these traits.
Judge et al. (2009) argued that lessons from The Prince by Machiavelli "are relevant today as they were in the 16th Century." They noted that Machiavellians seek leadership positions, have high motivation to lead, and are willing to do things – such as investing in their own social capital – that will help bring them into leadership roles.
Not surprisingly, then, Machiavellianism is positively related to attaining leadership roles. One study (Simonton, 1986) reported that Machiavellians serve longer in national elective offices. An analysis of 793 early career employees in Germany found that Machiavellianism was positively related to leadership position (Spurk et al., 2016)
2. Behaviors, personality, and the important distinction between the two.
Displaying confidence, a characteristic of narcissists, can be accomplished through body language (Cuddy, 2015). Some research suggests that because confidence is often conflated with competence (Anderson et al., 2012), displaying confidence – something that can be primed and adopted in the moment by instructing people in how to engage in “power posing” – results in better interview performance (Cuddy et al., 2015).
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The distinction between traits and behaviors is important because to the extent that the dark triad represents behaviors, not just traits, that fact raises the question of whether it might be desirable to teach people to exhibit, at least to some moderate extent, and in some circumstances, some aspects of dark triad behavior....
the essence of leadership is, in some sense, being able to get people to engage in behaviors that they would not otherwise do in the absence of that leadership. A different, less-charged word for this activity is social influence, the essence of effective leadership.
3. Why do "bad" leaders have so many followers?
As I have noted elsewhere (Pfeffer, 2016), notwithstanding a truly enormous leadership industry teaching – and preaching – leaders to be modest, authentic, truthful, and to care for others, among other virtues, such behavior is not common among successful, powerful people.
Instead of or in addition to just documenting the many ill-effects of various leadership behaviors and arguing for different organizational cultures and leadership styles – an activity that has gone on for decades with little to no observable effect – progress requires understanding how and why such conditions persist. Research provides a number of possible, and not mutually exclusive, answers...
3. Why do "bad" leaders have so many followers?
A. Effectiveness
It is possible that leaders with dark triad traits are actually more effective, in part because they relentlessly pursue their objectives, are often visionary, and most importantly exhibit self-confidence and are manipulative which makes it possible for them to charm and recruit others to their endeavors.
Why people tolerate the dark triad in leaders is that such traits often, although not invariably, can produce good results.The negative consequences that do arise are then rationalized as being necessary to create disruption or achieve power and status.
3. Why do "bad" leaders have so many followers?
B. Similarity to positive leadership attributes
As O’Reilly and Chatman (2020) described in an exceptionally thorough review of the literature on grandiose narcissists, many of the traits and behaviors that characterize such individuals are also descriptors of transformational leaders, and as they noted, “the concept of transformational leadership has been central to the study of leadership for the past 40 years” (p. 7).
Nevicka (2018) has argued that narcissists “have many prototypical (leader-like) characteristics” including confidence dominance and extraversion. Because narcissists frequently create positive first impressions and actively seek positions of power, they frequently emerge as leaders. Nevicka concluded that “narcissism and leadership might appear like a perfect match.” The qualities of narcissists and leaders may be almost indistinguishable, which makes the idea of people selecting narcissists for leadership roles logical and unexceptional.
3. Why do "bad" leaders have so many followers?
C. Relationship to political skill
O’Reilly and Pfeffer (2021), in a series of studies, found that individuals higher in narcissism were more likely to see organizations in political terms. They were also more willing to engage in organizational politics. And those with higher levels of narcissism were also more skilled political actors. Given the research on the importance of political skill to both individual career outcomes and to many aspects of performance, the fact that narcissists are more skilled organizational politicians provides yet another explanation for why they are able to readily attract followers and allies.
3. Why do "bad" leaders have so many followers?
D. Signals of power and success and the
relationship to the self-enhancement motive
People want to be associated with – close to – power and success. As Cialdini and his colleagues noted (Cialdini et al., 1976), people desire to bask in reflected glory. The self-enhancement motive (Sedikides & Alicke, 2012) – the desire to appear powerful and successful to oneself – leads to motivated cognition and to choices that make people feel good about themselves.
Evolutionary theory would suggest that for people’s genetic material to survive intergenerationally, one useful skill would be the ability to identify and then associate with those individuals with the most power.
As research has shown, because power provides people the latitude to violate rules and social norms, norm violators are perceived as more powerful because of the very fact of violating social expectations (Van Kleef et al., 2011).
Conclusion
It is far from clear to me that either leadership science or practice has been well-served by dark terminology and value-laden research, both of which have tended to cloud the observation of empirical regularities and to expending enormous effort to find what the values dictate as desirable ... decades of research has failed to improve leaders, leadership practice, or to remediate leadership shortages.
When a particular approach fails to work for a long time, maybe it is time to change the approach, alter judgments, and reconceptualize labels, research, and teaching.
Paul Barrett here ..
The bottom line is that the dark side attributes are also those associated with leadership behaviours, leadership emergence, and the kinds of behaviours that engage and attract followers. There's little point treating these as dysfunctional 'traits' as that gets you nowhere fast.
As Maretha Prinsloo has put it:
"The issue is not the behaviour – it is the awareness, intention and insight behind it. That is what should be assessed and why Cognadev's deep psychological assessments do exactly that".