HOW MACHIAVELLIAN ARE YOU IN YOUR LEADING?
HOW MACHIAVELLIAN ARE YOU IN YOUR LEADING?
What? I hear you say. Me? Machiavellian??
I actually missed out on a job, a long time ago now, because of Machiavelli. Well, more because I once wrote an article about Machiavelli for ACEL’s The Practising Administrator, as I recall, in which I asserted that Machiavelli could be a mentor for school leaders.
No, wait a minute! I know it sounds bizarre. Weird even. But it was a well-reasoned argument. After all, The Prince was written by Niccolo Machiavelli as a manual for the young Cosimo Medici to help him rule Florence more effectively, and some of Machiavelli’s reflections on leading are actually quite useful.
But his reputation preceded him into my interview for the job. You would not believe it, but I was unlucky enough to have a Chairman on this particular Selection Panel who had actually read through the list of publications I had attached to my application, as we used to do in those long-ago days, and he asked me a seriously negatively-loaded question about what kind of leader I really was beneath my bland fa?ade!
Of course, Machiavelli still has an image problem! Kristin Delgado includes his name in what she calls the Dark Triad of personality, of which the other two traits are narcissism and psychopathy! Narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism are the dark traits of leadership, and are exhibited by many top political and business leaders, according to Delgado. Moreover, the dark traits in action damage organisations (Kristin Delgado, The dark traits of leadership – and how to avoid them, in Fastcompany, 10 Aug 22).
The psychological theory of personality known as the Dark Triad—narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—often carries a sinister undertone, Delgado observes, but then she goes on to admit that in fact, research has shown that these traits demonstrate a complex relationship with leadership and leader effectiveness.?See? Machiavelli might not be all bad after all!
So, what are these dark traits, and how are they expressed in observable behaviour?
While each of these three traits have elements that distinguish them from one another, you will see there is a substantial degree of overlap among them. The common behavioural subcomponents that are found, at least to some degree, in each of the Dark Triad characteristics include excessive self-interest, ruthless disregard for others, manipulative behaviour, and emotional insouciance, Delgado notes.?
Delgado explains that despite being negatively related to responsibility, job performance, and overall accomplishments, the Dark Triad traits have also been positively correlated with charisma, creativity, strategic thinking, and communication skills. It seems that leaders who manifest a high incidence of dark traits may appear successful in certain contexts, particularly if their work requires a rational and emotionless behavioural style, willingness to take risks, and a focus on achievement, even if that means harming others. This suggests that these leaders may actually be able work effectively at an individual level while simultaneously damaging the organisation, Delgado points out, by creating a toxic environment that can be detrimental to employees, co-workers, and an organisation as a whole.
HOW DARK TRAITS NEGATIVELY IMPACT ORGANISATIONS
According to Delgado, research has shown that, in general, individuals exhibiting dark traits have been linked to several negative and potential costly outcomes in a workplace including:
Unfortunately, she adds, those in a more senior role have the greatest potential to wreak havoc. They are in a position to influence others’ decisions, are party to confidential information and financial data, and are responsible for making executive decisions, good or bad.?
The impact on an organisation of leaders displaying dark traits can thus be highly significant, not only on individual performance and productivity, or on financial performance in a business setting, but reputationally as well.?
MITIGATING AGAINST DARK TRAIT BEHAVIOURS
Delgado suggests astute and punctilious recruiting is the best way to avoid having dark trait individuals on your team. In an institutional or business environment, where recruitment and retention of strong talent is a challenge, it may be tempting to skip or take a lighter approach to recruitment—sacrificing quality for speed, Delgado avers. Thus, time spent getting individual applicant assessment and evaluation right pays dividends.
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In education in Australia right now, a manifest shortage of suitably qualified teachers, especially in certain curriculum areas at secondary level, and the difficulty in finding casual teachers in all secondary subjects, has increased the urgency of quick decision making regarding successful candidates, alongside blatant poaching by some schools of outstanding teachers and/or leaders from other schools to an extent that is genuinely unprecedented. Staffing schools, especially in the independent sector, has become relatively cut-throat, increasing the risk that in order to have anybody to fill a post rather than no-one at all, the normally careful, risk-averse processes of recruitment are bypassed.
Then too, Delgado warns that it is not always easy at the recruitment stage to ascertain whether a particular candidate will display these dark-trait characteristics. In general, she affirms, at interview, everyone tends to de-emphasise their negative traits. Furthermore, she cautions, people with a strong indication of dark traits are more likely to underplay their dark traits because they have a natural propensity to self-enhance. She urges all of us involved in recruiting new staff for our schools to be aware that for the dark-trait individual, the recruitment context presents both an opportunity to gain a clear external reward (receiving a job offer) and an opportunity to perform. We need to be aware that individuals with dark traits are prone to manipulating their audience – even an audience as small as a selection panel - through the way they present themselves, to achieve a desired outcome.
Then, Delgado attests, as soon as they are employed, these individuals lose no time in displaying their dark traits, as they begin to undermine your school’s culture and nurture a negative organisational climate, deploying their unacceptable immoral and unethical behaviours - including bully tactics, deceit, concealment, and general opposition to organisational rules or norms to achieve their self-centred, nefarious goals.
And it costs, in fallout from damaged relationships with peers and subordinates, as well as with students and their parents, and your school’s reputation.
The challenge, then, according to Delgado, is how to identify these people before irreparable damage is done. It starts at the recruitment stage, she affirms, making sure the right candidate is selected and has been vetted appropriately.
IDENTIFYING DARK TRIAD IN AN APPLICANT
There is no more important role a Principal, or their delegate, has in an independent school than to recruit and appoint the right staff, whose values align with those of the School, whose personal and professional attributes mesh with the School’s culture, and whose willingness to serve encompasses all that the school is and does and stands for.
Delgado’s methods of screening are more common in the business community than in schools, though schools may have something to learn from their approach. Most assessments are looking for well-rounded individuals who score highly in attributes that are valuable to an organisation and the role they are seeking to fill, Delgado says. Many of these assessment measures are traditional self-reporting personality instruments where individuals respond to a series of statements related to their attitudes and beliefs.
But, she counsels, there are some concerns that this type of measure can be subject to response distortion by the respondent.?Given the manipulative nature of some dark trait individuals, an off-the-shelf approach to assessment is less likely to reveal inconsistencies if the candidate understands how they are being assessed. The issue is, has the candidate ‘seen through’ what the assessment instrument is seeking, and ‘faking’ their responses to present what the candidate things the recruiter wants to see.
An alternative Delgado offers is is to use conditional reasoning, where responses are not linear and involve measuring a range of implicit emotions, beliefs, attitudes, or motives. It is an approach that is better able to mask an assessment’s explicit purpose and has successfully been used to identify undesirable traits such as aggression or lack of integrity.?
Delgado then refers to a hybrid approach to assessment, using both psychological theory and data-driven methodologies, which helps to detect and measure undesirable attitudinal traits and behaviours via algorithmic response patterns on self-report assessments. This allows recruiters and hiring managers to evaluate the probability of a candidate’s risk on specific toxic personality traits, which can be further scrutinised during interviews or references. Delgado asserts that it is encouraging to see that leveraging data science can help us measure traits that have been traditionally more difficult to capture, and which may have a significant impact on work behaviour.
But when schools are employing rank-and-file classroom teachers, they do not always resort to such comprehensive psychological assessments. They may be more common in the case of senior executive staff appointments. Most schools use a hybrid of their own, involving interviews, demonstration lessons, and comprehensive referee checks with more than one referee, perhaps triangulated by having the candidates meet other staff in their discipline or from the primary school if the appointment is at that level, just to get a sense of the person and of their goodness of fit. Some schools make a point of organising a tour of their school with a member of the administrative and support staff, whose perception of a prospective teacher or educational leader can be exceedingly informative and helpful.
Recruitment processes vary from school to school, but subjecting a candidate to a panel interview rather than just a one-on-one is both valuable professional learning for them, and also elicits a diversity of opinion as to the candidate who offers the best fit. Watching a prospective teacher - or a prospective mid-level or executive staff member - teach is always highly informative, as is a non-academic staff member’s input. In seeking referees, it is imperative to have the person’s current principal as the first referee, if the person has taught before. Faith-based schools these days also insist on having the person’s minister or pastor as a referee. These good folk, especially if they know the candidate well, see our prospective teachers and leaders in a different light, and can often testify to their character and what they are like ‘out of school’. A third referee can often triangulate the impressions of the other two.
Of course, even this selection process can be flawed, if a current Principal, for instance, chooses to compromise their true impression of a teacher or up-and-coming leader with a view to foisting an under-performing staff member onto an unsuspecting colleague. Interviews too are notoriously unreliable, and questions need to be carefully framed to elicit not only what candidates know but seek evidence of what they have actually done. At more senior levels, some schools like to serve up scenarios to their candidates, especially in second-round interviews, as a way to discriminate among candidates.
But as Delgado says, it really is a question of the potential risk to the organisation from making a bad hire, which can be context-dependent. The traits that contribute to effective leadership, she continues, are a function of the context in which the leader – or teacher - operates. In contexts where employees have responsibility for vulnerable people, like in education, or where health and safety are essential, Delgado says, the consequences of a bad hire and associated fallout can be far-reaching.
The first step, Delgado concludes, is for the recruitment process to be rigorous enough to facilitate early detection of people whose personality traits are not congruent with what their responsibilities require so that you can exclude their destructive forces from your ?organisational context.
Now, how Machiavellian are you?
Special Advisor - Schools at Odgers Berndtson Australia
1 年Thanks Len! We are living in very different times in regard to many aspects of leading and serving, as well as recruiting and retaining good staff with the right personal and professional values. Thanks for your positive comments! With best wishes Rod