Leadership Matters: Values and Dysfunctional Dispositions

By Robert Hogan and Gordon Curphy

In the 1970s movie, "Dirty Harry", Clint Eastwood plays Harry Callahan, an Inspector in the San Francisco police department who is widely admired by his co-workers for his courage, honesty, and professionalism. The movie’s sub-plot concerns how shabbily Callahan is treated by his superiors; they are depicted as shallow and opportunistic, more concerned about career advancement than running an effective organization or serving the public. They take credit for Callahan’s successes but alertly blame any problems on him. The movie ends with a disgusted Callahan throwing his police badge in a lake. This sub-plot is also a frequent theme in popular fiction, suggesting that being exploited and betrayed by one’s superiors is a common if not universal experience in working life.

Kaplan and DeVries, a Greensborough consulting firm, report that failure rates for today’s managers average about 50%, and failure rates for high potential managers average about 30%. These data reflect a long-standing condition. When we began studying leadership in the 1980s, we quickly discovered two things. First, the empirical literature on leadership effectiveness was tiny, inconclusive, and contained few practical suggestions. Second, the popular business literature defined leadership in terms of the top people in each organization, and characterized them in uncritically positive terms (Barbara Kellerman recently points out in HBR that, for the most part, this is still true). In an important 1985 paper, V. Jon Bentz, a retired HR executive from Sears, noted that over 50% of the bright, ambitious, and socially skilled new managers hired at Sears subsequently failed; he also catalogued the reasons for their failure. Bentz's paper was quickly followed by a report from the Center for Creative Leadership that replicated his findings with a different sample. These papers prompted us to study the causes of managerial failure because: (a) although managerial success is often hard to define, failure is easy to define; (b) the supply of failed managers is altogether adequate for research purposes; and (c) no one had ever studied leadership in this way.

This essay summarizes our findings regarding the causes of managerial failure, and offers some suggestions about how to minimize the problem. We can sort the causes into two large categories which concern values and dysfunctional dispositions.

Leadership and Values

Values are a person’s most important and enduring beliefs. Leaders have many different values; however, virtually all of them belong to one of ten categories. These categories can be found in Table One, and it is relatively easy to assess their importance. For example, many leaders in the health care industry endorse Altruism, whereas leaders in the financial services industry are committed to Commercial values. Political leaders are often driven by a need for Recognition, and military and religious leaders believe Tradition values are important.



Table One: Key Work Values

Recognition: Wanting to stand out and be noticed, and dreaming of fame and success

Power: Wanting to be successful, to make an impact, and create a legacy

Hedonism: Wanting to have fun and enjoy the fruits of one’s success

Altruism: Wanting to help the needy and powerless and improve society

Affiliation: Wanting to be part of a group and seeking social stimulation

Tradition: Believing in family values and endorsing socially approved behavior

Security: Wanting occupational and financial safety and avoiding risk

Commerce: Wanting financial success and seeking business opportunities

Aesthetics: Wanting to be stylish and fashionable, being concerned about appearances

Science: Wanting to solve problems and make decisions based on data

Leaders tend to behave in a manner consistent with their values—values determine what data they pay attention to, what problems they see as critical, how they solve those problems, and how they evaluate the effectiveness of their solutions. Leaders enjoy activities consistent with their values and avoid activities that are inconsistent. In addition, the consensual values of top leadership determine organizational culture.

Because we like people who have similar values and dislike those with different values, values also determine organizational "fit". No matter how talented an individual may be, if his/her values are inconsistent with the culture, then he or she will sooner or later leave the organization. We worked with the marketing department of a large, multi-modal transportation company; the management group contained 11 men and 1 woman. In terms of the values in Table 1, the men had high scores for Commerce and Power, and low scores for Aesthetics, Affiliation, and Hedonism. The woman, an Asian American with an MBA from Harvard, spoke 5 languages and was in charge of international marketing. She had high scores for Aesthetics, Affiliation, and Hedonism; although we thought she was the most talented person in the group, she lasted only 6 months in the job.

There is a second way in which values induce managerial failure. Some of the values in Table One, when taken to an extreme, can lead to reprehensible conduct. For example, managers as a group tend to have strong Power and Commerce values and place little importance on Altruism and Security. Strong Power and weak Security values are associated with energy, drive, risk-taking, and upward mobility — essential ingredients of a successful business career. On the other hand, strong Commerce and weak Altruism values are associated with greed and selfishness; when these tendencies are unchecked, they lead to the sort of corporate misbehavior that has been so visible in the news over the past few years. Bad values — greed and selfishness – are another way in which values contribute to managerial failure.

How to Fix the Values Problem: The problems associated with organizational fit reflect the fact that leaders tend to hire people with similar values, which means that good candidates with dissimilar values will not get hired. However, these people will question many of the assumptions, strategies, processes, and decisions of top management, which may be precisely what is needed for future progress. To fix the “fit” problem, companies must be willing to hire people with diverse values and then learn to act on those values. Companies whose leaders have diverse values will be slower to make decisions, but the decisions should ultimately yield better results than those made by leadership teams with homogenous values.

How can companies be protected from the problems associated with greed and selfishness? First, they need to determine what their corporate values really are by assessing the values of the top corporate leaders. If their values are aligned with the public values of the organization, then all is well. If not, then organizations will need strong codes of conduct and active Boards of Directors, because, if unchecked, top leaders will tend to act according to their own rather than the corporation’s values.

Leadership and the Dark Side of Personality: There are two sides to personality—the bright side and the dark side. The bright side reflects the ways in which leaders act when they are at their best. Dark side personality traits interfere with a person’s ability to build a cohesive and goal oriented team. These tendencies appear when leaders are at their worst—during times of stress and crisis, or when they are otherwise distracted.

A list of eleven common dark side traits can be found in Table Two. Several features of these tendencies are worth noting. First, they often coexist with good social skills so that they are hard to detect during interviews; for example, people with Bold, Mischievous, and Colorful characteristics typically make a very positive impression. Second, these dark side tendencies can help people cope with stress. For example, Reserved people shut others out in order to focus during crises. Diligent people cope with stress by planning and micromanaging details. These are useful tendencies for individual contributors; in leaders, however, they alienate followers and destroy team work. Third, virtually everyone (including the present writers) has one or two of these tendencies. Fourth, as seen in Table Two, a moderate level of dark side tendencies promote leadership success. At the extreme, however, these tendencies erode trust and credibility in others. As a way of making this discussion more concrete, we describe four examples of these dark side tendencies. Further examples can easily be found in any periodical covering business and politics.

Table Two: Dark Side Personality Traits

Excitable: Approaches new projects and people with energy and enthusiasm, becomes easily disappointed, then blows up — emotional fireworks

Skeptical: Expects to be betrayed, reacts aggressively to real or imagined signs of betrayal, but is very smart about organizational politics

Cautious: Overly concerned about making mistakes and being criticized; very slow to make decisions, but makes few foolish errors

Reserved: Insensitive to social or emotional cues; remote, aloof, and communicates poorly, but handles negative feedback with ease

Leisurely: Insists on working at own pace, resists requests for increased output, procrastinates, is always late, engages in aggression that is hard to detect, but has excellent social skills

Bold: Arrogant, feels superior and entitled, claims more credit for success than is fair, blames failures on others, but is willing to take on daunting projects

Mischievous: Enjoys risk, excitement, and testing the limits, ignores failure, is careless about commitments, but is very cool under pressure

Colorful: Sociable, outgoing, lively, entertaining, seeks attention, is disruptive and easily distracted, but is bright and engaging

Imaginative:Eccentric thinking, impulsive decision making, unable to learn from bad choices, but is smart and visionary

Diligent: Micromanages others, won’t delegate, can’t prioritize, but is very hard working with unusually high standards of performance for self and others

Dutiful: Overly concerned with pleasing superiors, poorly represents concerns of staff, but is an excellent organizational citizen

Leadership Matters: Values and Dysfunctional Dispositions - To learn more about this author, visit Bryan Feller's Website.

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