Why do some leaders fail?

The dark side of personality

One of the more provocative in the recent leadership literature concerns

the base rate of managerial incompetence. Hogan and Hogan, (2001), Curphy
(2003 a, b; 2004 a, e), Curphy and Hogan (2004 a, b) and Hogan and Curphy
(2004) maintain that approximately 50 percent of the person in leadership
position may be incompetent. This means that a half of these individuals are
unable to build the cohesive, goal-oriented teams needed to get long-terms
results through others. Some people in the leadership positions seem able to get
result without building a team, but these results are typically very short-term.
Other seem more focused on playing the role of a cheerleader and are able to
build cohesive teams, but these teams often do not get much accomplished.

Many of you might think that the base rate is actually closer to 5-7 percent
companise or organizations could not be successful with such a high level of
incomptence among the management ranks. But a simple test of managerial
people incompetence might help shed some light on the matter. Count up the
number of people you have ever worked for. These individuals might be former
teachers, volunteer group leaders, coaches, supervisors, etc. Of these former
bosses, how many of them would you work or play for again? If you are like
many of the other people who have answered this question, then the chances
are you need less than one hand to count the number of former bosses you
would work for again. Curphy and Hogan (2004a) state there are several reasons
for this high level of incompetence, some of which include invalid selection and
succession planning systems, ill-defined performance expectation, and poorly
design leadership development programs. But dark-side personality traits are
some of the other key reasons for the high failure rate of leaders. Dark-side
personality traits are irritating, counterproductive behavioral tendencies that
interfere with a leader’s ability to build cohesive teams and cause followers to
exert less effort toward goal accomplishment (Hogan&Hogan, 2001; Dolich &
Cairo, 2003). A listing of 11 common dark side traits can be found in table 7.2.
Any of these 11 tendencies, if exhibited on a reguler basis, will negatively affect
the leader’s ability to get results through others. And if you examined the
reasons why those former bosses did not make your short list of leaders you
would like to work for again, then it is very likely that these incompetent leaders
possessed one or more of these 11 dark-side personality traits.

There are several aspects of dark-personality traits that are worth

nothing. First, everyone has at least one dark-side personality trait. Figure 7.3
shows a graphic output from a typical dark-side personality measure, and
indicates that this individual has strong leisurely and diligent tendencies and
moderate cautious and dutiful tendensies (scores above the 90th percentile
indicate a high risk and 70-89th percentile indicate a moderate risk of dark-side
tendencies). Second, these dark-side traits have a bigger influence on
performance for people in leadership versus followership roles. An individual
contributor might have leisurely or cautious tendencies, but because they do not
have to get work done through others these tendencies have less of an impact
on their work units than if these same individuals were first-line supervisors or
business unit leaders. Let there be no doubt that individual contributors may not
be fun to work with, but their counterproductive tendencies will not be as
debilitating to their teams as they would if these people were leading their
teams. Third, the dark-side traits are usually only apparent when leaders are not
attending to their public image. In other words, people will not see the behaviors
associated with dark-side traits when leaders are concerned with how they are
coming across to others. These tendencies are much more likely to appear under
times of stress, when multitasking or focusing on task accomplishment, during
crises, or when leaders feel comfortable enough around others to “let their guard
down” (Hogan&Hogan, 2001; Dotlich&Cairo,2003; Curphy, 2003c;
Hogan&Curphy, 2004). And given the high level of stress, challenge, and
complexity associated with most leadership positions, the conditions are ripe for
the appearance of dark-side traits.

Fourth, many dark-side traits co-vary with social skills and difficult the
detect in interviews, assessment centers, or with bright-side personality
inventories (hogan&Curphy, 2004a; Hogan&Hogan, 2001; Dotlich&Cairo, 2003;
Brinkmeyer&Hogan, 1997; Curphy, 1997d; Curphy, Gibson, Asiu, Horn&
Macomber, 1994; Hogan, Curphy&Hogan, 1994; McDaniel, 1999; Rybicki&Klippel,
1997). Fifth, the 11 dark-side personality traits are related to extreme FFM
scores. For example, diligent is often associated with extremely high
dependability scores, and excitable is associated with extremely low adjustment
scores. However, just because a person has an extremely high or low FFM
dimension score does not necessarily mean they also posses the corresponding
dark-side personality traits. But there are strong relationships between the FFM
and the dark-side personality traits (Hogan&Hogan, 2001; Curphy 2003c). Sixth,
the behaviors associated with dark-side personality traits can be occur at any
leadership level, and any times organizations tolerate these behaviors bercause
the leader is smart, experienced, or possesses unique skills. Along these lines,
persons with bold tendencies are particularly adept at moving up in
organizations. Nothing ever got launched without a healthy does of narcissism,
and leaders with bold tendencies are quick to volunteer for new assignments,
take on seemingly impossible challenges, and consistenly underestimate the
amount of time, money, and effort it will take to get job accomplished. In some
cases these leaders pull out the seemingly impossible and get promoted because
of their accomplishments. But when things go south (which they often do), these
same leaders are quick to blame the situation or others for their failures, and as
a result never learn from their mistakes (Hogan&Curphy, 2004; Curphy&Hogan,
2004a; Kramer, 2003; Lubit, 2002; dotlich&Cairo, 2003; Hogan&Hogan, 2001).

So if virtually everyone has dark-side personality tendencies, what can he

or she do about them? First and foremost, leaders to be need to identify their
dark-side personality traits. This can be done by asking trusted others about how
one acts under pressure or what behaviors interfere with their ability to build
teams, or by completing a dark-side personality assessment. Once these
counterproductive tendencies are identified, leaders than need to understand
the situations or conditions in which these tendencies are likely to appear. Again,
dark-side traits are most likely to appear during times of stress and heavy
workload, so finding ways to better manage stress and workload will help reduce
the likelihood of these dark-side tendencies. Just being aware of one’s dark-side
tendencies and understanding the circumstances in which they appear will go a
long way toward controlling the manifestation of counterproductive leadership
behaviors. Exercise and other stress reduction technique, and having trusted
followers who can tell leaders when they are exhibiting dark-side traits, can also
help control these tendencies. Finally, having higher scores on the FFM
dimension of adjustment also helps with some of these dimension, as these
leaders seem to be better able to cope with stress than those with low scores
(Curphy, 2003a, c).

Intelligence and Leadership

What is Inteligence?

The first formal linkage between intelligence and leadership was

established around 1115 B.C. in China, where the dynasties used standardized
test to determine which citizens would play key leadership roles in the
institutions they had set up to run the country (DuBois, 1964). Using intelligence
test to identify potential leaders in the United States goes back to World War 1,
and to a large extent this use of intelligence testing continues today. Over 100
years of very comprehensive and systematic research provides overwhelming
evidence to support the notion that general intelligence plays a substansial role
in human affairs (Arvey et al., 1994; Humphreys, 1984; Neisser et al., 1996;
Ree&Earles, 1992,1993; Riggio, 2002; Schmidt&Hunter, 1992; Scarr, 1989;
Sternberg, 1997, 2002, 2003a; Salgado, Anderson, Moscoso, Bertua, de
Fruyt&Rolland, 2003). Still, intelligence and intelligence testing are among the
most controversial topics in the social sciences today. There is contentious
debate over questions like how heredity and the environment affect intelligence,
whether intelligence test should be used in public schools,a nd whether ethnic
groups differ in a average intelligence test scores. For the most part, however,
we will bypass such controversies here. Our focus will be on the relationship
between intelligence and leadership. (See Atvey et al., 1994; Azar, 1995; Brody,
1992; Cronbach, 1984; Humphreys, 1984; Linn. 1898; Neisser et al., 1996; and
Sternberg, 1997, for reviews of these controversies).

We define intelligence as a person’s all-around effectiveness in activivities

directed by thought (Arvey et al., 1994; Cronbach, 1984). So what does this
definition of intelligence have to do with leadership? Research has shown that
more intelligent leaders are fastern learners; make better assumptions,
deductions, and interferences; are better at creating a compelling vision and
developing strategies to make their vision a reality; can develop better solution
to problems; can see more the primary and secondary implication of their
decision; and are quicker on their feet than leaders who are less intelligent
(Hermstein&Murray, 1994; Lord, DeVader,&Allinger, 1986; Ferris,
Witt,&Hochwarter, 2001; Curphy, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003b, 2004e; Stenberg,
1997, 2002, 2003a,b; Salgado et al., 2003; Nutt, 1999). To a large extent people
get placed into leadership position to solve problems, be they customer,
financial, operation, interpersonal, performance, political, educational, or social
in nature. Therefore, given the behaviors associated with higher intelligence, it is
easy to see how a more intelligent leader will oftentimes be more successful in
influencing a group to accomplish its goals than a less intelligent leader. Like
personality traits, however, intelligence alone its not enough to guarantee
leadership success. There are plenty of smart people who make poor leaders just
as there are less intelligent people who are great leaders. Nevertheless, many
leadership activities do seem to involve some degree of decision making and
problem solving ability, which means that a leader’s intelligence can affect the
odds of leadership success in many situations.