Demystifying the Leaders’ Mindset

Abstract

It has been a common notion to attribute the success or failure of an organization to its leader and leadership style. To a large extent, transformational leadership style is considered to be charismatic and much romanticized about. This makes people focus on the positive side of the leadership style, ignoring the dark aspects1 . However, the failures of Enron, Worldcom or Lehman Brothers has drawn attention to dark leadership styles. It is often said that famous company heads have been identified with both charismatic as well as dark traits, popularly known as psycopaths and narcissists2 . In order to understand the effect of the apparent dark traits in a leader’s personality, it is important to understand first what are the dark traits that are generally found in people. In general, dark leadership is often associated with the dark triad personality. Developed by Paulhus and Williams in 20023 , it is a psychological theory of three personality traits: Narcissism, Machiavellanism, and Pyschopathy. All these three traits have different origins but contain overlapping characteristics like selfishness, impulsivity, grandiosity, manipulation, callousness, emotional insensitivity, etc. Yet, Narcissists are found to be attractive and popular. Machiavellanism and Psychopaths turn out to be visually identical and lesser attractive in the initial stages.4 This paper attempts to understand the key highlights of the each of the dark triad personalities along with its impact on leaders of the real world in business domain. The study also would map the real life instances of the business leaders to understand the particular dark triad trait in their personalities. It could explain the possible correlation between their specific traits and major business decisions taken by them.