The Dark Side of Personality: What Your Best Leaders Are Like Under Pressure
- Marion Heil
- vor 3 Tagen
- 8 Min. Lesezeit
Aktualisiert: vor 2 Tagen
After thirty years of working with leaders, you develop a feeling for where things could go wrong.
Not with the obviously difficult ones. Those tend to announce themselves early. I am talking about the cases where someone is capable, successful, and still manages to derail in ways that, in hindsight, nobody quite saw coming.
An event in Vienna last week focused on the darker aspects of leaders' personalities and gave precise language to things that I am sure we have all watched time and again. It brought back an important question: Not whether someone is capable, but what they are like when the pressure has been on for six months and the honest feedback stopped coming.
The mechanism
The Hogan Development Survey identifies eleven personality tendencies, called derailers, that sit at the heart of this.
Not character flaws. Overused strengths.
The model groups them into three clusters:
Moving Away from others under stress
Moving Against others
Moving Toward others through over-compliance.
Most leaders have at least one elevated score, or more. But most have no idea that they do, which is rather the point.
Hogan's analysis globally found that executives tend to derail most often through the Moving Against cluster: Bold, Mischievous, Colorful, Imaginative.
Hogan's analysis globally found that executives tend to derail most often through the Moving Against cluster: Bold, Mischievous, Colorful, Imaginative.
The traits that read as leadership, confidence, drive, risk tolerance, charisma, are statistically the ones most likely to cause problems once people reach the top.
The traits that read as leadership, confidence, drive, risk tolerance, charisma, are statistically the ones most likely to cause problems once people reach the top.
It is not just CEOs. We see this in divisional heads, functional leaders, supervisory board members, high-potentials three years into their first real role - everyone in a leadership capacity, really.
Where these patterns come from
These tendencies did not originate in the office. They were shaped much earlier, and back then, they were not weaknesses. They were solutions.
These tendencies did not originate in the office. They were shaped much earlier, and back then, they were not weaknesses. They were solutions.
The child who learned that hypervigilance kept them safe was doing the right thing. The person who discovered that boldness and charm got them through difficult situations was being resourceful. The individual who learned that staying agreeable on the surface while quietly doing things their own way was the safest path to autonomy: that was a smart adaptation, given what was available at the time.
The problem is not the coping strategy. The problem is that it worked.
Over years and decades, a situational response becomes a default.
And so it got reinforced. Over years and decades, a situational response becomes a default. Under normal conditions it stays manageable, often showing up as a real strength. But under sustained stress, or when the external checks weaken, people reach for what has always worked. They apply it more heavily. More broadly. And somewhere in that process, the coping strategy starts doing the damage.
The Skeptical leader who learned early that people could not always be trusted might become, under pressure, someone who cannot trust anyone. The Bold leader who learned that projecting confidence got them through might become someone who cannot afford to show uncertainty, even to themselves. The Leisurely leader who learned that surface compliance protected their autonomy might become, in a role demanding real accountability, someone whose yes means something unreliable.
Same mechanism every time. A strength, once adaptive, now overused, now causing exactly the relational damage it was originally designed to prevent.
A strength, once adaptive, now overused, now causing exactly the relational damage it was originally designed to prevent.
This is also probably why standard development interventions often do not move the needle much.
If the pattern is old enough and the stress is high enough, insight tends not to stick. Under pressure, people do not reach for new learning. They reach for what has always felt safe.
Under pressure, people do not reach for new learning. They reach for what has always felt safe.
Four derailers worth knowing for leaders
Bold
Decisive, self-assured, willing to back their judgment against opposition. Organisations hire for this, and rightly so in many contexts.
The complication is what Hogan describes as an inflated view of one's own competency and worth, and that does not always stay benign under pressure. When Bold tips over, these leaders can become unable to admit mistakes, take more credit than is fair, and gradually distance themselves from anyone who challenges them. If you truly believe you are more capable than the people around you, the case for absorbing their feedback becomes harder to make.
The tell starts subtly: a flicker of impatience when someone pushes back, criticism quietly reframed as the other person's misunderstanding. Over time it can become a leadership team that has stopped bringing bad news and a board that feels it cannot quite have a straight conversation.
The strength did not disappear. It concentrated.
If you are someone who is regularly told you are confident and decisive, it might be worth asking the people closest to you when they last disagreed with you. And whether they felt safe doing it.
Mischievous
Charming, commercially sharp, fast-moving, good at persuading people to take a risk alongside them. Easy to understand why organisations want this in a senior leader.
When it becomes a derailer, the pattern is usually a chronic difficulty maintaining commitments. Decisions made too fast. Consequences not fully thought through. Rules experienced as suggestions rather than constraints.
What we see most often: a leader who is brilliant in the room and who, every so often, makes a commitment with no real intention of honouring it, or takes a risk that blindsides people who trusted them. Those who have worked closely with this person for years tend to mention, carefully, that it helps to get things in writing.
The interesting thing about Mischievous is that it activates not under pressure but under comfort. The more familiar the territory, the more the leader trusts their instincts, the more likely they are to skip the analysis. The charm that built the reputation quietly starts to erode it.
If people around you tend to be surprised by your decisions, or quietly relieved when things are confirmed in writing, that is worth paying attention to.
Skeptical
Moderate skepticism is a real asset. Asking hard questions, spotting risks others are too optimistic to see, not being easily swayed by a polished deck: useful qualities, especially at senior level.
The Hogan description starts sensibly: being alert for signs of deceptive behaviour in others. At normal levels, that is just due diligence. Under sustained stress, it can tip into something that looks more like a systematic expectation of betrayal.
What tends to happen: a leader once known for rigorous thinking who, after a difficult period, a restructuring, a change of ownership, a run of setbacks, becomes someone whose default assumption about others' motives has quietly turned corrosive. Direct reports start choosing their words carefully. Peers stop raising concerns. Feedback goes underground.
From the outside, the organisation looks functional. From the inside, people are managing around the leader rather than working with them. Nobody tells them what is actually happening, not because they are hiding things, but because the price of being the messenger has become too high.
If you find that people rarely bring you bad news, it is worth asking why. Sometimes it means things are going well. Sometimes it means something else entirely.
Leisurely
The one that often runs longest before anyone finds a way to name it.
Hogan's definition: appearing friendly and cooperative, but actually following one's own agenda and quietly, stubbornly resisting everyone else's.
Pleasant in meetings. Agrees to things. No visible conflict. What happens beneath the surface tends to be something different: private resentment of direction, irritation at requests that cut across personal priorities, a slow accumulation of non-compliance that leaves everyone else confused about what went wrong.
How it tends to surface: a transformation initiative losing momentum without a clear reason. A decision agreed in the leadership meeting that somehow never gets implemented. A colleague who describes this person as easy to work with, then adds, after a pause, that you can never quite be sure where you stand.
The word yes becomes unreliable. And organisations that value harmony can mistake the pleasant surface for trustworthiness, sometimes long after the evidence suggests otherwise.
If you often leave meetings having agreed to things you privately have no intention of prioritising, that gap between public yes and private resistance has a cost. Usually paid by the people waiting for things to happen.
What this does to your teams
Hogan's research found that 56% of employees report an unhealthy work environment as a direct result of their leader's behaviour. The leaders involved almost never believe their behaviour is the problem.
That gap, between how leaders see themselves and how they land on the people around them, is where a lot of the damage happens. Not through misconduct. Not through some sudden change in character. Through a strength, applied too heavily, in a context that no longer rewards it, by someone who gradually stopped getting honest feedback and did not notice.
That gap, between how leaders see themselves and how they land on the people around them, is where a lot of the damage happens. Not through misconduct. Not through some sudden change in character. Through a strength, applied too heavily, in a context that no longer rewards it.
And before anyone asks: no, I am not immune to this. If I am honest, I can see Bold, Colorful, and Diligent in my own profile without trying very hard. The confidence that occasionally tips into not wanting to be told I am wrong. The enthusiasm for making things vivid and engaging that can, on a bad day, tip into a little too much drama. And the attention to detail that makes me really good at my work and, I suspect, occasionally really exhausting to work with. I am not cured. But I am paying attention and working on those flaws. Which, as far as I can tell, is where it starts.
If any of this feels familiar, that is probably worth sitting with for a moment. Not as a judgment, but as useful information. Most of the leaders described in this article are not difficult people. They are capable people whose best qualities ran a little too hot, in a context of pressure or a context that stopped correcting them.
The question is not whether you recognise yourself in one of these patterns. Most leaders do, at least a little. The question is what you do with that recognition. A good coach, an honest sparring partner, someone who knows you well enough to name the pattern and is not afraid to: that is usually where it starts. Not with a personality overhaul, just with a bit more awareness of what your strengths look like to the people on the receiving end.
The question is not whether you recognise yourself in one of these patterns. Most leaders do, at least a little. The question is what you do with that recognition.
Your teams will notice the difference. Probably faster than you expect.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marion Heil is the founder and managing director of Board+CEO Advisors, a Vienna-based executive search and board advisory boutique. She advises listed companies, family businesses and investors on C-suite and supervisory board appointments across DACH and CEE. According to her own Hogan profile, she brings Bold conviction, Colorful enthusiasm, and Diligent attention to detail to everything she does. She is working on it.
