Co-authored by Jean-François Coget, PhD, Chair of Management, HR & IS at the Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic State University
Current trends in effective leadership theory stress diversity and inclusion, emotional intelligence, collaboration, superhuman cross-cultural team sensitivity and multi-tasking leadership skills. This inclusive and embracing style of leadership can produce remarkable results. Ironically, however, many of history’s most successful and enduring leaders, regardless of gender or nationality – just think of Elizabeth the First, John Lennon, Steve Jobs, Peter the Great or Elon Musk – have led from the Dark Side.
Dark Side leaders are autocratic, charismatic and in-your-face aggressive. Disruptive, often irascible and highly transformational, they welcome competition, feel comfortable with organizational hierarchies and value individualism over traditional teamwork. Rather than seeking harmony, they embrace conflict, seeing it at a means to gain clarity – and to identify and possibly destroy opponents. Conflict is seen as energizing and as a way to clear the fog of indecisiveness, hesitancy and the fear of making mistakes. In this way, Dark Side leaders can achieve innovative and creative breakthroughs.
Welcoming and shouldering both responsibility and accountability, Dark Side leaders instinctively or cynically tap into human beings’ psychological desire to obey and follow. They realize that the majority of people demand that their leaders inspire, drive, lead and motivate them, and they do not shy away from this calling. They comprehend that certain industries – haute cuisine restaurants, cutting-edge pharmaceutical or high-end engineering firms, for example – require military-like precision, hierarchical authorities and unquestioned directives to produce results and guarantee quality. Yet their ultimate goal is to inspire innovation and creativity in their teams. Their managerial methods mirror the physicist’s belief in the Big Bang theory: transformation via powerful disruptive forces.
In this way, Dark Side creative leadership incorporates a mindset, behavior and palette of actions which very often fly in the face of how effective and inclusive leadership is currently promoted and taught in MBA programs and modern HR thinking.
Ironically, Dark Side leaders – many of them celebrated and some even attaining the status of near-mythical “lone geniuses” -- often achieve impressive results in part by “abusing,” intimidating or dictatorially commanding their employees/bandmates/followers and placing enormous stresses upon them. These tactics are typical of the often male-dominated hierarchies of, for instance, professional kitchens, consultancies, the army, musical bands, and Hollywood film studios.
In practice, this means the boss is a rough, insensitive, pirate-figure leader. This autocrat demands and receives acceptance and obedience through her/his singular vision and, in a sense, a certain tolerance by their team members for their particular emotional, psychological and intellectual mindset and complexes. Fascinatingly, kitchen staffs, band members and sales teams etc., often energetically respond to and eagerly follow such dominant personalities because of their own emotional, psychological, intellectual and even spiritual needs and desires to be led by a powerful charismatic leader who possesses ingenuity and farsightedness.
The cost on employees, however, may be brutal. Some strong characters will clash with the Dark Side leader. These typically leave the organization or are destroyed in one way or another by the Dark Side manager. Equally, team member responses to such a dominant force range from a broad spectrum of cringing acceptance, intimidation, joyful embracement, neurosis, rebellion, passive acceptance or impassioned following. Yet while Dark Side leaders may possess genuinely genius-like skills or abilities, the notion of the Lone Genius leader may arguably be a “myth,” as they could never succeed alone without the highly creative and well-functioning teams, which do most of the groundwork to turn the leader’s visions into reality.
The most effective – and well-admired – Dark Side leaders are those who possess self-awareness, self-understanding and the ability to grow and self-develop. US General George Patton comes to mind. They realize that they can best foster employee creativity – and thus their own personal and organizational profitability – by understanding their role as a creative catalyst, and then standing back to let others develop this into other forms. They know and understand that very few are born risk-takers, entrepreneurs, rebels. Those who are, lead.
Creative team members perform best when given transparent goals, assigned clear roles and provided with ample room for self-expression and creativity, acknowledged by sincere constructive feedback. The Dark Side leader’s challenge is to recognize and support this, while integrating her or his sparkling insights and innovations with those of their team members.
The elements of creative and inspirational leadership are complex, mysterious and deeply rooted in human beings’ ur-needs to obey and follow forceful, magnetic and successful leaders. Throughout history, people have desired powerful and visionary leaders, while heaping scorn upon indecisive or weak ones. The creative Dark Side leader consciously or subconsciously understands this and achieves results by unabashedly wielding power and authority.
Dark Side leaders drive innovation and get results through forceful, autocratic behavior, not “soft skills.”