#Individuals Trivia no. 69

The Dark Side of Leadership

Jay Conger popularised the idea that there is a dark side to leadership. That is, that the very behaviors that distinguish managers from leaders and that influence groups toward common goals for the common good, may not actually produce this result.

Conger suggested that ‘when a leader’s behaviors become exaggerated, lose touch with reality, or become the vehicle for purely personal gain, they may harm themselves, their followers and the organization.’ This is particularly problematic, as the leader is usually the source of the vision that is driving the organization. So, there is a constant tension in the ego of the leader between providing a selfless vision and one that incorporates some personal worldviews or aspirations that may not be aligned to either their followers or that of the organization as a whole. The very drive that characterizes effective leaders can result in an inability to see problems and opportunities in the environment. This can result in the leader backing the vision beyond its potential, overcommitting the organization and their followers to costs of time and money, and exaggerating the outcomes of the vision to justify the cost. Such drive can also result in changes to their behavior for the sake of pursuing the vision.

Conger reported that the leader may begin to engage in exaggerated self-descriptions, departing from authentic depictions of themselves in favor of developing, promoting, and reinforcing caricatures of themselves, to manipulate audiences and control the flow and/or understanding of negative information.

At an individual level, they may begin to alienate peers, subordinates, and superiors alike through ever greater recourse to compliance methods of influence. They may fail to promote people with ideas that differ from their own, fail to manage the details of their project for fear of discovering the truth, or worse still, attack and remove those who question the vision or any aspect of the project or the leader. With the growing attention of the media and academia on the corporate failures and excesses of the 1990s and early 2000s, writers such as Kellerman suggested that bad leadership was more than simply the absence of leadership. Rather, leaders and therefore leadership was not the exclusive province of saints but included the incompetent, the rigid, the intemperate, the callous, corrupt, insular and sociopathic.

Leaders can, and often do, lead in such a way as to consistently produce poor outcomes, as much as they could lead to producing positive ones. The very power that enables leaders to produce positive outcomes for followers and organizations can be abused and misused for personal outcomes rather than the benefit of others. Einarsen, Aasland, and Skogstad termed this kind of leadership as ‘destructive leadership’ and defined it as: ‘The systematic and repeated behavior by a leader, supervisor or manager that violates the legitimate interests of the organization by undermining and/or sabotaging the organization's goals, tasks, resources and effectiveness and/or the motivation, well-being or job satisfaction of subordinates.’ In this definition, the effect or outcome of leadership behaviors is paramount, and therefore it does not simply include direct and overt actions by the leader but considers neglect and other behaviors. This highlights, as Kellerman noted, that destructive leaders do not necessarily set out to harm others, but nonetheless, they can, through thoughtlessness, ignorance, and incompetence. This definition also grapples with a key part of the definition of leadership, as requiring its exercise for the ‘common good.

In this instance, it refers to leadership being exercised for the legitimate interest of the organisation, though one could just as easily note that it should be exercised for the benefit of society. This requires effective leaders to constantly monitor and ensure that they influence with an aim towards serving a greater good, in so far as the legitimate interests of individuals, organizations, and societies are served by doing so. Not doing so, may violate the law, moral codes, or ethical norms of the organizations they lead and the societies in which they operate. Recent research on the dark side of leadership has focused on understanding the effects of destructive leadership on employee creativity, well-being and performance generally. Through sustained displays of coercive behavior, destructive leadership has been found to cause greater intentions of employees to quit, reduce organizational citizenship behaviors of followers, and reduce follower creativity. It has also been related to the reduced psychological and physical well-being of employees, as well as producing trickle-down effects.

Firstly, those subjected to abusive supervision are more likely to take out their frustration and anger upon friends and family. Secondly, supervisors or managers subjected to abusive supervision by their superiors are more likely to engage in this kind of supervision with their followers, leading to the spread of dark side leadership behaviors across the organization, depending upon the level of abusive supervision within the organizational hierarchy.

Recent leadership theories, such as Authentic Leadership, suggest that self-awareness, reflection, and regulation, openness to feedback, continuous learning, and alignment with moral and ethical codes shared by the organization and society generally, are defenses against falling into the trap of the dark side of leadership.

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