BUT, personality DOES play a large role in determining the effectiveness of someone as a leader.
More to the point, personality and the discernment of its characteristics and consequences is an intrinsically subjective thing. You will not find clearly actionable data nor systematic rules for figuring this stuff out.
That subjectivity doesn't stop people from trying to quantify this stuff, like for example, those insipid HR-driven DISC personality surveys and workshops. Some folks dive into minutia about Myers-Briggs classification. There's grains of truth in all these approaches, but it never works the way it was intended. HR departments and individuals aren't psychometric professionals, and even if they were, what they could actually use this for in a workplace isn't at all clear even in the best case scenario.
IMHO, the way you identify a destructive leadership pattern is by having experienced it before (as well as its opposite), by being mindful of your interactions with others and with organizational politics, and being self-critical of your own reactions to it. None of that is easy, It can't be learned in advance. It takes experience, trial and error.
The real harm of poor quality “checklist psychology” articles like this one is that uninformed HR or aggrieved employees will treat it with too much respect and legitimacy, meanwhile the actual psychopath or destructive leader is going to get out in front of this and start disingenuously saying other people are destructive leaders and cut off their credibility to push back or undermine the psycho’s authority.
For example, if you see a high ranking leader trying to deflect valid criticism of their choices by saying “assume positive intent” you can be sure this is happening.
“Assume positive intent” is a siren call of a destructive leader because the plan is to reframe their challenger’s valid criticisms in an “us vs them” abstract debate about who is or isn’t acting in good faith, completely tabling the merits of the argument out of scope. The genius of it is that “assume positive intent” allows you to sidestep the usual reputation hit you would take for making something “us vs them” - basically “assume positive intent” is HR-permitted code for framing us-vs-them blame to sabotage otherwise legitimate criticisms of leadership - “criticism” itself becomes politically disallowed.
Articles like this one act like legitimizers for that kind of stuff, since it’s all just vague, fluffy pop-psychology statements that could virtually apply to any coworker whether their situation is legitimate or they are being a destructive leader or they are just having a bad week.
Appreciate your perspectives and happy to share the many years of research we have conducted. We have been sharing the positive version of this scientific model based on 12 character strengths for years and have some awesome tech clients who have used it for years. This is the first time we have shared the pathological version during this election. Great leaders choose to take responsibility for their negative impact and commit to growth. We help people choose that every day and have served many great tech leaders startups and companies. Of course there is a LOT of detail not included in this short blog. If you are interested we will post more here about the science and positive version. Pam
Personality is largely genetic but doesn’t limit who we can become thru choice and moral reasoning. We built a personality profile that is based on character science and doesn’t limit people to type. Enjoyed your post. Agree that experiencing a destructive leader is what catalyzed the 30 years of research and devotion of my life's work to creating a scientific framework for identifying positive vs destructive leadership. quickly. I found that having a heuristic helps keep all of us choose to grow and lead more consciously. Myself especially! Pam
BUT, personality DOES play a large role in determining the effectiveness of someone as a leader.
More to the point, personality and the discernment of its characteristics and consequences is an intrinsically subjective thing. You will not find clearly actionable data nor systematic rules for figuring this stuff out.
That subjectivity doesn't stop people from trying to quantify this stuff, like for example, those insipid HR-driven DISC personality surveys and workshops. Some folks dive into minutia about Myers-Briggs classification. There's grains of truth in all these approaches, but it never works the way it was intended. HR departments and individuals aren't psychometric professionals, and even if they were, what they could actually use this for in a workplace isn't at all clear even in the best case scenario.
IMHO, the way you identify a destructive leadership pattern is by having experienced it before (as well as its opposite), by being mindful of your interactions with others and with organizational politics, and being self-critical of your own reactions to it. None of that is easy, It can't be learned in advance. It takes experience, trial and error.