“A leader who allows their subordinates to suffer as proof of who is the boss likely quenches their thirst with salt water from a rusted canteen.”
―
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Karma comes after everyone eventually. You can't get away with screwing people over your whole life, I don't care who you are. What goes around comes around. That's how it works. Sooner or later the universe will serve you the revenge that you deserve.
For a man widely regarded as a cross between Machiavelli and Rasputin, Dominic Cummings has lost a lot of battles lately. The prime minister’s special adviser opposed both Huawei’s involvement in Britain’s 5g networks and the hs2 rail network (which he labelled “a disaster zone”). Boris Johnson has given the green light to the first and is shortly expected to approve the second. Mr Cummings’s plan to cut the size of the cabinet and create a super-department of business has been ditched. So have his schemes to turn Downing Street into a nasa-style mission-control centre and to ship Conservative Party headquarters to the north of the country
Angus Taylor: AFP washes its hands but still leaves a stain
Algeria: Poet receives 18-month prison sentence for “undermining the national unity”.
One bad Google review leads to $750,000 compensation payout for lawyer
An Adelaide lawyer who says he lost 80 per cent of his clients after a negative online review wins compensation from a woman he claims he never gave advice to.
'The politicisation of knowledge': Uni boss warns facts are falling victim to partisanship
The history and futures of work since the 50s
Quite interesting and well designed retrospective on the History of Work at Atlassian, looking at every decade starting in the 50s; what office
work looked like, technological innovations, and how the future of work
was imagined during each decade.
In a 1964 interview with the BBC, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke nailed almost all of his predictions for the year 2014. He predicted the use of wireless communications, making us “in instant contact with each other, wherever we may be,” as well as robotic surgery, only missing his prediction that workers would no longer commute to their offices and travel “only for pleasure.”
When office work and life-long hopes of employment started losing some of it’s potential and appeal:
Employees increasingly had doubts about the value of long-term company loyalty and started putting their own needs and interests above their employers’. “Office Space” debuted in 1999 and humorously brought this idea to life, satirizing the banal, everyday work of office denizens and their incompetent, overbearing bosses.
A toxic leader is a person who has responsibility over a group of people or an organization, and who abuses the leader–follower ... Toxic leaders are not confident with themselves and become aggressive to cope.
So how do you avoid creating a bad culture, and preventing toxicity from building in your organization? Here's a list of four notable ways that toxic leaders divide their team, destroy company culture, and ...
Rewarding incompetence and lack of accountability: Bad leaders can sometimes be so disconnected as to refuse to see toxic or incompetent employees also poisoning the workplace around ...
Researchers have studied managerial derailment — or the dark side of leadership — for many years. The key derailment characteristics of bad managers are well documented and fall into three broad ...
Related: What Bad Managers, Good Managers and Great Managers Do. What happens, for instance, if the ... Otherwise, employees may feel left in the dark and disconnected from ..
YOU CAN’T RATIONALIZE THE IRRATIONAL
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they didn’t rig the Iowa Caucus Conspiracy theories aren’t always true, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t up
Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish Inside Some Organizations?
YOU CAN’T RATIONALIZE THE IRRATIONAL
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they didn’t rig the Iowa Caucus Conspiracy theories aren’t always true, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t up
There is a growing incidence of toxic leadership in organisations across the world. This is clear from anecdotal evidence as well as research which suggests that one out of every five leaders is ...
Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish Inside Some Organizations?
It’s always been a mystery to me why so many arguably evil managers and leaders not only last but seem to thrive inside certain organizations.
You know the type. Hey, maybe you are one. If so, chime in. I’ve never actually heard from an evil leader that was willing to talk openly about why he is the way he is.
Evil leaders tend to fit one or more of these profiles:
- The dictator
- The assassin
- The two-faced politician (is that redundant?)
- The warlord
- The megalomaniac
- The evil genius
- The double agent
While this might sound like the cast of a great new movie, I know a few people that would agree that it looks a lot like a quorum at their senior management meeting.
Is it our nature to gravitate towards evil leadership in our pursuit of power and wealth?
I sure hope not, because I’m missing that gene.
I’ve worked in and with organizations that seem to cultivate and reward more than their fair share of villains, thugs and hoodlums masquerading as leaders. My observations as to why some environments seem to produce a bumper crop of these dysfunctional characters include:
- No visible sign of values in action—the sign might be on the wall outlining the values, but other than that, nothing. No teeth and no meaning behind those words.
- Some leaders just like to be surrounded by enforcers. One leader I encountered as a consulted tolerated a truly heinous individual because in his words, “I like to have a pitbull in the office looking out for my interests.”
- Some senior leaders enjoy the conflict. It is entertaining and it fits their Darwinian view of the world.
- Some leaders are sensory deprived—they are so preoccupied with their own issues they are truly blind to the carnage going on around them. While they hear isolated reports, they are not perceptive enough to see the patterns.
The Cures:
- If you have the chance, fire an evil leader or even a future evil leader. I actually enjoy this. Ooops, is that a sign that I might be moving to the dark side?
- Regardless of where you fit in the food chain, establish, promote and reward those that show character and reinforce proper values. Fire the others. Yep, still enjoyable.
- If you are in charge or starting up, establish clear, meaningful values from day one and build your culture and team around those values. Abstinence from evil leaders is still the best bet.
- Help the evil leader unmask himself or herself. This is not for the faint of heart or light of bank account, since you are in essence playing their game but often without the power.
- Find a new job and company, but remember to do a great job culture sensing before you sign up. You would hate to move from one evil den to another.
—
If you have a good evil leader story, the readers would love to hear it. Unlike most stories, we like these to end poorly for these people. It just makes us feel like the good people have a chance.
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Art Petty is a coach, speaker and workshop presenter focusing on helping professionals and organizations learn to survive and thrive in an era of change. When he is not speaking, Art serves senior executives, business owners and high potential professionals as a coach and strategy advisor. Additionally, Art’s books are widely used in leadership development programs. To learn more or discuss a challenge, contact Art.
It’s always been a mystery to me why so many arguably evil managers and leaders not only last but seem to thrive inside certain organizations.You know the type. Hey, maybe you are one. If so, chime in. I’ve never actually heard from an evil leader that was willing to talk openly about why he is the way he is.
Evil leaders tend to fit one or more of these profiles:
- The dictator
- The assassin
- The two-faced politician (is that redundant?)
- The warlord
- The megalomaniac
- The evil genius
- The double agent
Is it our nature to gravitate towards evil leadership in our pursuit of power and wealth?
I sure hope not, because I’m missing that gene.
I’ve worked in and with organizations that seem to cultivate and reward more than their fair share of villains, thugs and hoodlums masquerading as leaders. My observations as to why some environments seem to produce a bumper crop of these dysfunctional characters include:
- No visible sign of values in action—the sign might be on the wall outlining the values, but other than that, nothing. No teeth and no meaning behind those words.
- Some leaders just like to be surrounded by enforcers. One leader I encountered as a consulted tolerated a truly heinous individual because in his words, “I like to have a pitbull in the office looking out for my interests.”
- Some senior leaders enjoy the conflict. It is entertaining and it fits their Darwinian view of the world.
- Some leaders are sensory deprived—they are so preoccupied with their own issues they are truly blind to the carnage going on around them. While they hear isolated reports, they are not perceptive enough to see the patterns.
- If you have the chance, fire an evil leader or even a future evil leader. I actually enjoy this. Ooops, is that a sign that I might be moving to the dark side?
- Regardless of where you fit in the food chain, establish, promote and reward those that show character and reinforce proper values. Fire the others. Yep, still enjoyable.
- If you are in charge or starting up, establish clear, meaningful values from day one and build your culture and team around those values. Abstinence from evil leaders is still the best bet.
- Help the evil leader unmask himself or herself. This is not for the faint of heart or light of bank account, since you are in essence playing their game but often without the power.
- Find a new job and company, but remember to do a great job culture sensing before you sign up. You would hate to move from one evil den to another.
If you have a good evil leader story, the readers would love to hear it. Unlike most stories, we like these to end poorly for these people. It just makes us feel like the good people have a chance.
If you enjoyed this post, stay up to date with my latest leadership and management tips!
Get it delivered straight to your inbox!
Art Petty is a coach, speaker and workshop presenter focusing on helping professionals and organizations learn to survive and thrive in an era of change. When he is not speaking, Art serves senior executives, business owners and high potential professionals as a coach and strategy advisor. Additionally, Art’s books are widely used in leadership development programs. To learn more or discuss a challenge, contact Art.
The dark side of leadership and management
The contemporary field of educational leadership and management is replete with accounts of transformational leadership, instructional leadership, distributed leadership, and turnaround leadership practices (e.g. Leithwood and Sun (2012); Fullan 2018; Harris and Deflaminis 2016). Focusing on the positive and normative aspects of leadership tends to be a preoccupation within the field, as a large corpus of empirical evidence reinforces a strong relationship between certain models of leadership and positive organisational change (Leithwood et al. 2008). There is also a wealth of popularist literature highlighting the positive features and potential of certain types of leadership and management practices.
These optimistic accounts of leadership and management, however, tend to overshadow and surpass any reflections upon the negative aspects of leadership and management. The destructive or counter-productive forms of leadership and management have received considerably less attention, in the empirical literature, than those associated with more positive outcomes. Yet there is a growing body of literature that highlights why and how leadership and management may not always be a force for good (Cohen 2018). This evidence base points towards the negative features or the ‘dark side’ of leadership and management practices (Woestman and Wasonga 2015).
Among scholars in the fields of organisational behaviour and industrial psychology, there is increasing interest in the less palatable side of leadership. A growing number of studies have focused on abusive behaviours, toxic relationships, and the bullying tactics of those in positions of power (Neves and Schyns 2018; Simonet et al. 2018). For example, Neves (2014) found that submissive employees, characterised by a lack of social support from peers, received more abuse from their leaders than those more well-connected to others within the organisation. The findings from this study imply that those who were more socially or personally vulnerable, within the organisation, were more likely to be subjected to harassment and bullying.
Other evidence suggests that negative leadership or management behaviours manifest themselves in certain actions that are directed towards specific individuals or groups (Cohen 2018). These actions include: the deliberate marginalisation of certain groups, often minority groups within the organisation, blatant favouritism of some colleagues over others, using existing personal relationships within the organisation to influence the progression of some colleagues and not others and punitive emails to bully and repress the views of those deemed to be a potential threat to the status quo (Schyns and Schilling 2013).
Most recently, Samier and Milley (2018) have explored the concept of ‘maladministration’ in education focusing upon examples of weak or toxic leadership and management practices. They describe ‘maladministration’ as the phenomena of harmful administrative and organisational behaviours in educational systems. They outline a range of destructive practices that occur in educational organisations, such as negligence, the mistreatment of people, professional dishonesty, fraud and embezzlement, abuse of power, and corrupt organisational cultures. In their work, Blase and Blase (2018) highlight how leaders and managers, in some schools, mistreat teachers and how this mistreatment and abuse, over time, can be personally devastating.
Other empirical work has focused on the actions or behaviours of a destructive or weak leader. Evidence suggests that such individuals: are highly conscious of positional authority, particularly their own; will tend to shift blame and assume the success of others; won't ever apologise for being wrong or unjust; will find authority from a small group of like-minded individuals while perversely championing the ‘collegiate’ nature of the organisation (Danişman 2010; Cohen 2016; Furnham 2017)
Toxic leaders or managers, empirical findings suggest, tend to focus predominantly on issues of compliance, are conflict adverse in person, and normally have a powerful advocate, at some level in the organisation, supporting them in the shadows (Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser 2007). Such leaders or managers often take any perceived breaches of their authority very personally and respond in a range of ways, e.g. aggressive emails, intimidating one to one conversations, an increase in workload for those who challenge them, and ignoring the bullying of certain individuals. They tend to hide their true leadership identity from others within the organisation, at all costs, thus maintaining a favourable persona with their closest allies and their superiors (Krasikova, Green, and LeBreton 2013; Neves2014).
For such leaders or managers, control is often the over-riding factor, sometimes accompanied by a severe lack of personal self-confidence or professional ineptitude which serves to inhibit any real dialogue and to restrict meaningful innovation. This concentration upon maintaining the mask of competence can affect others within the organisation in various negative ways, sometimes to the detriment of their mental health (Shin, Taylor, and Seo 2012).
These optimistic accounts of leadership and management, however, tend to overshadow and surpass any reflections upon the negative aspects of leadership and management. The destructive or counter-productive forms of leadership and management have received considerably less attention, in the empirical literature, than those associated with more positive outcomes. Yet there is a growing body of literature that highlights why and how leadership and management may not always be a force for good (Cohen 2018). This evidence base points towards the negative features or the ‘dark side’ of leadership and management practices (Woestman and Wasonga 2015).
Among scholars in the fields of organisational behaviour and industrial psychology, there is increasing interest in the less palatable side of leadership. A growing number of studies have focused on abusive behaviours, toxic relationships, and the bullying tactics of those in positions of power (Neves and Schyns 2018; Simonet et al. 2018). For example, Neves (2014) found that submissive employees, characterised by a lack of social support from peers, received more abuse from their leaders than those more well-connected to others within the organisation. The findings from this study imply that those who were more socially or personally vulnerable, within the organisation, were more likely to be subjected to harassment and bullying.
Other evidence suggests that negative leadership or management behaviours manifest themselves in certain actions that are directed towards specific individuals or groups (Cohen 2018). These actions include: the deliberate marginalisation of certain groups, often minority groups within the organisation, blatant favouritism of some colleagues over others, using existing personal relationships within the organisation to influence the progression of some colleagues and not others and punitive emails to bully and repress the views of those deemed to be a potential threat to the status quo (Schyns and Schilling 2013).
Most recently, Samier and Milley (2018) have explored the concept of ‘maladministration’ in education focusing upon examples of weak or toxic leadership and management practices. They describe ‘maladministration’ as the phenomena of harmful administrative and organisational behaviours in educational systems. They outline a range of destructive practices that occur in educational organisations, such as negligence, the mistreatment of people, professional dishonesty, fraud and embezzlement, abuse of power, and corrupt organisational cultures. In their work, Blase and Blase (2018) highlight how leaders and managers, in some schools, mistreat teachers and how this mistreatment and abuse, over time, can be personally devastating.
Other empirical work has focused on the actions or behaviours of a destructive or weak leader. Evidence suggests that such individuals: are highly conscious of positional authority, particularly their own; will tend to shift blame and assume the success of others; won't ever apologise for being wrong or unjust; will find authority from a small group of like-minded individuals while perversely championing the ‘collegiate’ nature of the organisation (Danişman 2010; Cohen 2016; Furnham 2017)
Toxic leaders or managers, empirical findings suggest, tend to focus predominantly on issues of compliance, are conflict adverse in person, and normally have a powerful advocate, at some level in the organisation, supporting them in the shadows (Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser 2007). Such leaders or managers often take any perceived breaches of their authority very personally and respond in a range of ways, e.g. aggressive emails, intimidating one to one conversations, an increase in workload for those who challenge them, and ignoring the bullying of certain individuals. They tend to hide their true leadership identity from others within the organisation, at all costs, thus maintaining a favourable persona with their closest allies and their superiors (Krasikova, Green, and LeBreton 2013; Neves2014).
For such leaders or managers, control is often the over-riding factor, sometimes accompanied by a severe lack of personal self-confidence or professional ineptitude which serves to inhibit any real dialogue and to restrict meaningful innovation. This concentration upon maintaining the mask of competence can affect others within the organisation in various negative ways, sometimes to the detriment of their mental health (Shin, Taylor, and Seo 2012).
Reflections
Much of the literature on organisational change focuses on the transformational practices of the formal leader and the resulting positive effects upon those within the organisation (Leithwood and Sun 2012). Less is said about the way in which such influence could be detrimental and damaging, when in the wrong hands. The ‘black box’ of destructive or punitive leadership needs to be explored in greater depth in order to capture the experiences of those who find themselves at the sharp end of certain leadership behaviours and practices.More research studies are required that provide insights into the organisational contexts, cultures, and conditions that enable and, indeed, reinforce negative leadership and management behaviours. The available research evidence would suggest that ‘dark-side’ leadership traits are closely related to greater employee stress (Furnham 2017), reduced job satisfaction (De Clercq and Belausteguigoitia 2017), and significantly lower levels of personal well-being (Mathieu et al. 2014).
More empirical evidence is certainly needed to illuminate the relationship between destructive leadership and organisational change, to document the nuances of such processes and their consequences on individual and organisational health (Lennard and Van Dyne 2018). Why is it the case, for example, that certain leaders and managers feel able and indeed personally empowered to misuse their influence and power in ways that are ultimately harmful to those they are charged with nurturing, supporting, and leading?
Thankfully, there are many talented, empathetic, energetic, and skilful leaders working at all levels in education. Without question, they far outnumber those leaders who are careless, emotionally absent, controlling, and punitive. But such leaders, or rather micro managers, exist. It is time to acknowledge the darker side of leadership and actively break this mould by developing more leaders, within schools, colleges, and universities, who care deeply about those they are privileged to lead.
- Blase, J. J., and J. Blase. 2018. "Mistreatment of Teachers." In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 1–7.
New Jersey :John Wiley & Sons, Inc. - Cohen, A. 2016. “Are They among Us? A Conceptual Framework of the Relationship Between the Dark Triad Personality and Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs).” Human Resource Management Review 26: 69–85. doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2015.07.003.
- Cohen, A. 2018. Counterproductive Work Behaviors: Understanding the Dark Side of Personalities in Organizational Life.
London : Routledge. - Danişman, A. 2010. “Good Intentions and Failed Implementations: Understanding Culture-Based Resistance to Organizational Change.” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology19: 200–220. doi:10.1080/13594320902850541.
- De Clercq, D., and I. Belausteguigoitia. 2017. “Overcoming the Dark Side of Task Conflict: Buffering Roles of Transformational Leadership, Tenacity, and Passion for Work.” European Management Journal 35 (1): 78–90. doi: 10.1016/j.emj.2016.06.008
- Fullan, M. 2018. The Principal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact.
New York : John Wiley & Sons.
- Furnham, A. 2017. “Dark Side Correlates of Job Reliability and Stress Tolerance in Two Large Samples.” Personality and Individual Differences 117: 255–259. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2017.06.020
- Harris, A., and J. DeFlaminis. 2016. “Distributed Leadership in Practice: Evidence, Misconceptions and Possibilities.” Management in Education 30 (4): 141–146. doi: 10.1177/0892020616656734
- Krasikova, D. V., S. G. Green, and J. LeBreton. 2013. “Destructive Leadership: A Theoretical Review, Integration, and Future Research Agenda.” Journal of Management 39: 1308–1338. doi:10.1177/0149206312471388.
- Leithwood, K., and J. Sun. 2012. “The Nature and Effects of Transformational School Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of Unpublished Research.” Educational Administration Quarterly 48 (3):387–423. doi: 10.1177/0013161X11436268
- Lennard, A. C., and L. Van Dyne. 2018. “Helping that Hurts Intended Beneficiaries: A New Perspective on the Dark Side of Helping Organizational Citizenship Behavior.” In The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Vol. 169.
Milton Keynes :Open University Press.
- Mathieu, C., C. S. Neumann, R. D. Hare, and P. Babiak. 2014. “A Dark Side of Leadership: Corporate Psychopathy and Its Influence on Employee Well-being and Job Satisfaction.” Personality and Individual Differences 59: 83–88. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2013.11.010
- Neves, P. 2014. “Taking It Out on Survivors: Submissive Employees, Downsizing, and Abusive Supervision.” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 87: 507–534. doi:10.1111/joop.12061.
- Neves, P., and B. Schyns. 2018. “With the Bad Comes What Change? The Interplay Between Destructive Leadership and Organizational Change.” Journal of Change Management 18 (2): 91–95. doi:10.1080/14697017.2018.1446699
- Padilla, A., R. Hogan, and R. B. Kaiser. 2007. “The Toxic Triangle: Destructive Leaders, Susceptible Followers, and Conducive Environments.” The Leadership Quarterly 18: 176–194. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.03.001.
- Samier, E. A., and P. Milley, eds. 2018. International Perspectives on Maladministration in Education.
London : Routledge. - Schyns, B., and J. Schilling. 2013. “How Bad Are the Effects of Bad Leaders? A Meta-analysis of Destructive Leadership and Its Outcomes.” The Leadership Quarterly 24: 138–158. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.09.001.
- Shin, J., M. Taylor, and M. Seo. 2012. “Resources for Change: The Relationships of Organizational Inducements and Psychological Resilience to Employees’ Attitudes and Behaviors Toward Organizational Change.” Academy of Management Journal 55: 727–748. doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0325.
- Simonet, D. V., R. P. Tett, J. Foster, A. I. Angelback, and J. M.Bartlett. 2018. “Dark-side Personality Trait Interactions: Amplifying Negative Predictions of Leadership Performance.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 25 (2): 233–250. doi:10.1177/1548051817727703