If an isolated question asks you if you are more inclined to vote for one politician who lies about limiting his campaign financing or one who agrees to use only matching public funds in the interests of campaign finance reform and sticks to it, who would you pick?  Obviously if political campaigns were limited to that one topic, the honest politician would win - but quality leadership incorporates 'negative' personality traits too and President Barack Obama was able to spend double the money on advertising of his opponent because he used that strategy wisely.

 A new study looks at the benefits of 'negative' personality traits(1) and found that while being overly skeptical was uniformly bad for performance and development,  having a very cautious or hesitant nature was associated with both increased performance and developing leadership skills over time, among other traits and especially in combination.

Studies have shown that that clearly positive personality qualities, such as extroversion, emotional stability and conscientiousness, had helpful effects on both the performance and the development of leaders but several of the 12 "dark side" traits researchers examined – such as those associated with narcissism, being overly dramatic, being critical of others and being extremely focused on complying with rules – actually had a positive effect on a number of facets of leadership development over time.

The study tracked more than 900 officer cadets in their second, third and fourth years at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. It used the Hogan Development Survey, a comprehensive measure of sub-clinical traits, to predict changes in a variety of leadership areas that were regularly assessed in developmental reviews at the Academy.

"Mae West told us that when she's good, she's good. But when she's bad, she's even better. We chose to investigate so-called subclinical or 'dark side' traits because we really didn't know much about how and to what degree they affected performance or development," said Peter Harms, assistant professor of management at University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Business Administration and the study's lead author. "Was it possible that they might be beneficial in some contexts? For some of them, it turns out that the answer was yes.

"By themselves, these subclinical traits had fairly small effects, but when aggregated, they played a substantial role in determining which cadets developed leadership skills."

That's not to say that large doses of these traits will make someone a great leader. "Dark side" traits have always been considered to be adaptive up to point, Harms said. Even moderate amounts can be dismissed as personality quirks by co-workers and subordinates. But at extremely high levels, the characteristics become pathological and can lead to career derailment, Harms said. Leaders must be sensitive to their situation to understand when exactly they are going too far.

For example, narcissists perform exceptionally well in job interviews, where self-enhancement and self-confidence is expected, but their tendency to put themselves ahead of others and take too much credit can lead to friction among co-workers.

Workers who are very precise and rule-adhering may be considered noxious in sales or marketing divisions but may be considered normal or even high-functioning in accounting or legal departments.

The authors cautioned that the study's results might be unique to the military context for which the cadets were training. But the findings do prove that it isn't necessarily bad to be "bad," and that more research is needed to fully understand the role of sub-clinical traits in the workplace. 

The findings also could be used to tailor executive training programs and leadership intervention programs to employees' unique, individual needs.

"Organizations should take these 'dark side' traits into account when making decisions concerning training and promotion," Harms said.

NOTES:

(1) Even the "Star Wars" movies showed off the positive impacts of darker personality traits.    Darth Vader had more power than other Jedi and the only downside seemed to be he took orders from some Emperor who broke away from the Republic because rich, white people didn't want to pay their taxes.