Dark triad and destructive leadership to power strategic goal achievement

Abstract

In my thesis, I examine the characteristics of the Dark Triad traits and these relation-ship to destructive leadership and its manifestations during my 20 years of work experience in different industries, as well as its role in achieving strategic objectives. I examine the importance of destructive leadership in achieving goals, because creating the new inevitably requires the destruction of the old. My work is intended to argue that there is no such thing as bad or good leadership, but there is cold-blooded strategic leadership, with an emphasis on Homō hominī lupus, a Latin phrase meaning "man is a wolf to man", which reflects the predatory dynamics often found in organizations, where leaders may exploit their position for personal or organizational gain, like wolves among sheep (Ferris G. R. et. al., 2007, pp. 195-206).

Destructive leadership can be defined as a systematic effort by managers at the middle and top of the organization to achieve the goal by any means, which, in the worst case, sabotages or damages the organization's interests, goals and resources. Those on the ladder of organizational performance experience the consequence of destructive leadership as sabotage, which upsets the organization's goals and resources. Destructive leadership can be like a part of Sunzi's Chinese art of war, where one bluffs, creates illusions and drives the change of power and action strategy through the levels of the organization explosively (Giles L, 2004, pp. 28-129). In my thesis, it is not intended not to discuss bad or good leadership, because leadership is ultimately the brutal execution of strategy and a constant balancing act between good and bad, where both always exists. Destructive leadership damages employees' efficiency, motivation and job satis-faction (Einarsen S. et. al., 2007, pp. 207-216), (Krasikova D.V. et. al., 2013, pp. 1308-1338) . Destructive leadership includes bullying, abuse of power and control, coercion, social isolation, verbal belittling and insults, and dismissive leadership that leads to a loss off locus of control (Schyns B. et. al., 2013, pp. 138-158), (Brandebo, 2020, pp. 567-580), (Mackey J. D. et. al., 2021, pp. 705-718). Each of these is clearly harmful and damages the well-being of the organization and the employee in a way that can take a lifetime to recover from.

My research is qualitative and deductive, based on 20 years of career experience, numerous leadership and strategy trainings, and leadership psychology. The starting point of my deductive research is the theory that destructive leadership is necessary, and that there is no clear line between bad and good leadership, and I try to test this empirically in my work as a fictitious story with the means winged by experience. It is understandable that deductive research is more clearly related to quantitative research and inductive research to qualitative research. However, this dichotomy is misleading. It is also possible to conduct qualitative research with a deductive approach, and inductive-ness in qualitative research does not mean the same as non-theoretical (Hammarsley M. et.al., 1995, p. 187). Based on my analysis, I identified the forces of the Dark Triad traits as essential for the implementation of the strategy. My research also suggests that corporate boards make conscious choices based on psychological profiling of middle and senior management, which weaken corporate accountability. I dare to claim that destructive management has entered the business world to stay and is part of the systematic monopoly game of human resource management and the company.