A news study has found that when leaders have heightened levels of the psychopathic trait known as dispositional meanness and are in positions that give them lots of power, their teams tend to perform worse. Teams under dispositionally mean leaders perform worse the more power the team leader holds. The study was published in Personality and Individual Differences.
Factors that determine whether one will be a good or a bad leader have been the focus of public debate since the dawn of history. Sayings like “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” “Great men are almost always bad men,” “Bad things are caused by bad people,” and many similar sayings are well known throughout the world.
One factor that is often the focus of this debate is the amount of power a leader wields. In this meaning, power is defined as “an individual’s capacity to control other’s outcomes as a function of their formal hierarchical position.” This type of power is seen as a potential, because possession of power by itself does not yet determine if and how one will use it. While many societies utilize systems with various checks and balances meant to prevent any single person from gaining too much power, other societies support the idea of having a strong, supreme leader with great power.
Aside from power, another important thing to consider is how the leader prefers to behave. In this regard, the constellation of traits known as psychopathy has attracted a lot of research attention. This is particularly the case with the aspect of psychopathy known as meanness. Meanness entails low empathy, callousness, and a tendency towards aggressive manipulations of others. Mean individuals in leadership positions are often prone to being hostile to others and to creating conflicts. But what about their effectiveness as leaders?
Study author Iris Kranefeld wanted to know how meanness of a leader and his/her power interact to determine the performance of the team the leader leads. The performance of the team than translates to effectiveness of the leader. Her expectation was that with increasing meanness and position power the performance of the team will decline and so will the effectiveness of the leader.
“The chimera of psychopathic leaders has sparked a lot of media attention within the past decade. However, dysfunctional leader behavior is rarely just a product of toxic personality traits (e.g., psychopathic personality), but is often fostered or buffered by situational characteristics,” explained Kranefeld, who is affiliated with the University of Bonn and Kölner Institut für Managementberatung.
“Hence, I aimed to provide a more nuanced picture of when and how leaders high in psychopathy are more (or less) inclined to negatively impact the performance and well-being of their team. Specifically, in this study, I investigated how the amount of power psychopathic leaders possessed related to their team’s performance. Further, I investigated how this subsequently related to their leadership effectiveness (perceived by a supervisor).”
She conducted the study by having students, who were unaware of the study hypothesis, contact individuals in Germany in leadership positions as potential participants. There were no limitations regarding participants’ line of work. Participants were 281 leaders who were required to each have at least one supervisor and at least one subordinate to invite to participate in the study.
About half of the leaders were women. Their average age was 42 years, they worked 40 hours per week, and reported having 8 years of experience, on average, in their current position. 11% were from upper management, 48% were middle management, 32% were lower management, and 10% reported holding a different leadership function (e.g., project leadership).
The leaders completed study assessments, but were also rated by a supervisor and 1-5 of their subordinates. Leaders completed assessments of psychopathy (the Triarchic Psychopathy measure) and position power (a 4-item scale asking about things a leader can be in charge of e.g., “I am in charge of my employees’ raises,” “I am in charge of my employees’ promotions,” etc.).
Team performance was assessed through ratings given by subordinates. They were asked to rate how good the workgroup led by the target leader is at different tasks. Leadership effectiveness was assessed by having the supervisor of the target leader rate the target leader’s performance in 12 different activities (e.g., “leading a group at work” or “motivating others”).
The results showed that meanness of the leader and position power interacted in predicting the team performance. When power of the leader was high, subordinates of mean leaders tended to see their team as worse performing compared to subordinates of leaders who are not mean.
“The more power is bestowed on a psychopathic leader, the more they tend to express detrimental behaviors that take a toll on their team’s performance (and also on their overall performance as leaders),” Kranefeld told PsyPost. “Hence, companies might be well advised to monitor the amount of power their managers and leaders have and consider employing control mechanisms, or to screen for psychopathic traits when selecting leaders.
“On the other hand, the good news is that the saying that ‘power corrupts’ does not seem to apply to everyone: Instead, leaders with low expressions of psychopathic traits showed a tendency for heightened leader performance when they held more power.”
But when power was not taken into account, meanness of a leader was not associated with team performance.
“I was expecting that leaders with higher expressions of psychopathic traits are always perceived as bad leaders by their team,” Kranefeld said. “However, I did not find such a main effect in my data.”
The study makes a valuable contribution to the scientific understanding of factors determining leadership effectiveness. However, it also has limitations that need to be considered. Notably, the study design does not allow any cause-and-effect conclusions to be made. Additionally, subordinates and the supervisor who gave ratings were all nominated by the leader participating in the study. This might have introduced bias that could have affected the results.
“Participants of this study were middle managers in Germany from a variety of jobs and industries, so it might be interesting for future research to address the role of power and psychopathy in higher management or specific job types as well,” Kranefeld said.
The study, “Psychopathy in positions of power: The moderating role of position power in the relation between psychopathic meanness and leadership outcomes”, was authored by Iris Kranefeld.
