The Dark Side of Leadership

The darker traits of leadership often lurk beneath the surface—emerging under stress, ambition, or unchecked confidence—and can devastate organizations when left unexamined. A new report from Hogan Assessments explores how personality derailers can turn leadership strengths into liabilities. To further explore these insights, Hogan Assessments will host a webinar tomorrow, November 12th—“The Role of Leader Personality in Mergers and Acquisitions”—offering expert perspectives on how personality dynamics shape success or failure in high-stakes corporate deals.

November 11, 2025 – When the dark side of leadership emerges, organizational catastrophe is just a step away. Financial news proves this year after year, according to a recent report from Hogan Assessments. For instance, former CEO Adam Neumann contributed to devaluing the commercial real estate company WeWork by approximately $37 billion in mere months. “Now, we all know that the dark side of personality can derail everyone’s behavior from time to time,” the report said. “But leadership derailment is a higher-order problem. As in the case of WeWork, the dark side of leadership can result in bankruptcy and ruin.”

Organizational performance is tied to effective leadership, which is the ability to build and maintain a high-performing team, according to the Hogan Assessments report. “In contrast, executive derailment directly impacts organizational culture and effectiveness, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, productivity, and brand reputation,” it said. “A leader’s context and rank also affects how publicly or disastrously they tend to derail. The scale of consequences would be completely different for a first-time manager versus an Adam Neumann.”

The personality strengths that help top leaders win big can also cause them and their organizations to lose big. Mr. Neumann’s charismatic leadership approach, which bordered on recklessness, exemplifies how strengths can become liabilities. “When a leader is under stress and pressure, becomes bored, or otherwise stops monitoring their behavior, their derailers can emerge,” the Hogan Assessments report said. “Derailers are potentially overused behavioral strengths. For example, charm as an overused strength may seem manipulative, and creativity as an overused strength may seem like impracticality.”

Hogan measures 11 potential derailers using the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) alongside two other personality assessments. Dark-side characteristics combine with each other and with personality strengths and values in complex ways. In general, however, derailers may be grouped into three categories based on how the dark side tends to manifest:

Moving Away, which relates to withdrawal or isolation—the HDS Excitable, Skeptical, Cautious, Reserved, and Leisurely scales
Moving Against, which relates to intimidation or manipulation—the Bold, Mischievous, Colorful, and Imaginative scales
Moving Toward, which relates to conformity or acquiescence—the Diligent and Dutiful scales

As in the case of Mr. Neumann, leaders who lean too much on dark-side behaviors can easily derail. It’s not surprising that Mr. Neumann took risks and tested limits since these same strengths are required for the type of role he held. But these behaviors were taken to the extreme. So in what ways do executives around the world tend to derail?

The Dark Side of Leadership

Hogan Assessments has built the world’s largest database of global personality data. This means they know which strengths, values, and motivations enable people to advance in nearly any job or industry, anywhere in the world. And of course, it means they can describe how people in particular roles, such as entrepreneurial CEOs, are likely to derail. To determine how executives tend to derail, Hogan Assessments analyzed personality profiles of more than 700 CEOs globally. They found that executives typically derail by Moving Against. (Note that this sample heavily features U.S. males aged 40 and older.)

“Positive behaviors associated with high scores in the moving against category often cause people to seem leaderlike and get placed in leadership roles,” the company said. “With this profile, an executive might appear self-confident, driven, gregarious, risk-tolerant, and innovative when performing at their best. During derailment, however, this same person could appear arrogant, stubborn, dramatic, limit-testing, and undisciplined.”

Bold

The strengths of someone with a high bold score are confidence and assertiveness, the Hogan Assessments report explained. “As an overused strength, bold might show up as impulsive, self-promoting, competitive, and demanding behavior,” it said. “The leader’s extreme self-confidence may stem from the belief that they have unusual, unique talents. To others, they probably seem arrogant, hypercompetitive, unrealistic, and unresponsive to negative feedback.”

Mischievous

“Someone with a high mischievous score may seem bright, charming, and daring when at their best,” the Hogan Assessments report noted. “In derailment, a high mischievous person may take ill-advised risks, seek excitement, behave impulsively, and push limits. Their impulsivity makes them seem disorganized, impetuous, and unpredictable, and they probably have a reputation for overreaching or holding unreasonable expectations.”

Colorful

Leaders with high colorful scores can seem outgoing, fun, and socially skilled. But colorful derailers can manifest in dramatic, attention-seeking, distractable behavior, the Hogan Assessments report explained. They’re curious, they’re easily bored, and they seek constant stimulation. The next new idea, goal, or project will usually appeal more than any that are currently in progress.

Imaginative

A person scoring high on the Imaginative scale tends to have the strengths of being unconventional, innovative, and creative, according to the Hogan Assessments study. “Their Imaginative derailer will likely show up as preoccupied, eccentric, and impractical behavior,” it said. “They may believe that they can see and understand things that others don’t. This conviction that they have superior perception likely causes them to generate ideas that seem eccentric or just plain odd. Now when it comes to entrepreneurs, our leadership derailment data tell a slightly different, more extreme story, especially on the Imaginative scale.”

The Dark Side of Entrepreneurs

“Entrepreneurs differ from the enterprise CEOs described above in that these leaders tend to have even higher scores across the moving against category,” the Hogan Assessments report continued. “Compared with the global average for executives, their moving against scales are elevated. Their Imaginative scale scores are extremely elevated, which makes sense for their context. After all, today’s volatile startup market calls for a high degree of unconventional thinking.”

According to Hogan’s Matt Lemming, director of knowledge and infrastructure, the difference in personality data may also be related to differences in age. Entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s have high aspirations and ideals, while later-career CEOs have more stable, established personalities. “Those who are aspiring and showing initiative are more extreme, especially on Moving Against, because they are fighting for relevance and success,” Mr. Lemming observed.

Upcoming Webinar: The Role of Leader Personality in Mergers and Acquisitions

Behind every merger or acquisition lies a complex web of leadership dynamics that can determine success—or derail integration. While financials and strategy often take center stage, the personality of the leaders involved may be the hidden factor that makes or breaks the deal.

In this interactive panel hosted by Hogan Assessments (tomorrow, November 12th), experts will share how personality assessments can uncover strengths and potential risks within leadership teams during the high-stakes M&A process.

The discussion will explore:

How personality assessments guide integration planning and cultural alignment
Why leading consulting firms leverage Hogan for data-driven talent insights during M&A
The critical red flags and strengths consultants look for when evaluating leadership teams

Free registration … Click here to sign up!

Speakers

Ted Bililies is global leader of transformative leadership, partner & managing director at AlixPartners. He is an internationally recognized expert on leadership and organization development. Mr. Bililies advises investors, CEOs, and boards globally to help them select the right leaders for key roles and to position and develop those leaders and their teams for maximum value creation. He is often sought out for challenging succession issues and when boards of directors need to make strategic leadership change.
Serving three decades as a business psychologist, performance coach, human resources executive, and management consultant, Mr. Bililies is an expert on talent and value creation in the private equity and alternative investment space. He is also on the Executive Education faculty of the Harvard Business School. He has helped leaders around the world achieve enduring change in their organizations, their teams, and themselves by expanding their psychological, behavioral, and organizational insights into leadership.

Mary Rachide is managing director and operating partner at ICV Partners, a lower middle market private equity firm focused on founder and family-owned business. She plays a key role in recruiting and assessing executive talent for both ICV and the portfolio company teams. Prior to joining ICV, Ms. Rachide founded Think Forward Consulting where she provided business strategy, human resources, and brand development consulting services to private equity and venture backed companies. Previously, she held senior executive roles in strategy, sales, product development and implementation, and operations at a number of large public and smaller private companies, including: Surterra Holdings , FleetCor Technologies, PulteGroup, Family Dollar, and Clement Pappas. Her largest operating P&L was $2 billion. Ms. Rachide was also a consultant for McKinsey & Company, where she was a leader in the growth strategy practice and served clients in the retail, consumer goods, and private equity practices. Earlier in her career, Ms. Rachide was a divisional controller at Liz Claiborne.

Kevin Impelman is principal consultant with Summit Leadership Partners. He is a highly experienced and growth-oriented consulting leader who has served as a trusted advisor to help a wide variety of organizations across different industries meet their goals through maximizing their human capital. Mr. Impelman is a client-focused, data driven consultant who is comfortable advising the C-suite as well as stakeholders across the organization on to implement talent initiatives. He is a continuous learner with a strong research background and interest in emerging technology who regularly presents applied research. Mr. Impelman specializes in organization and executive assessment, leadership team effectiveness human capital strategy, organization health, leadership development, and people analysis. Mr. Impelman previously served as the VP of consulting and R&D at Hollweg Assessment Partners, where he was responsible for developing new consulting offerings, conducting senior leader assessments, and leading talent audits and succession planning initiatives for leadership teams. Kevin also served as executive consultant leader for IBM where he led consulting engagements including large-scale assessment and selection systems, talent acquisition and recruitment processes, organizations and engagement projects, leadership development programs, and people analytics applications.

Moderators

Kelsey Klausing is the director for Hogan’s solutions partners team. She is responsible for assisting in the growth, delivery, and support of Hogan’s partners in their journeys to leverage personality assessments in their talent management strategies. Ms. Klausing plays a key role in delivering projects and driving continuous value in partner relationships and identifying new opportunities to implement assessments to enhance partners’ talent management services. She joined Hogan as a senior consultant, responsible for overseeing effective vendor partnerships with a number of Hogan’s partners. Prior to joining Hogan, Ms. Klausing was the senior manager, assessment and measurement at Macy’s Inc., where she led the research, design, and implementation of pre-hire assessment tools to identify the best external talent. She built and secured assessments, interview guides, and case studies. She also conducted ongoing scientific analysis of tools to ensure effectiveness and minimize risk. As an external consultant with Talogy, Ms. Klausing helped hundreds of clients integrate science into the art of hiring and development. She led client-facing projects involving job analyses, competency modeling, structured interview guides, assessment recommendations, and validation studies.

Emilie Seyfang is a solutions partners consultant at Hogan Assessments. She is passionate about helping her clients leverage personality insights in talent selection and development to empower individuals and organizations to reach their maximum potential. Before joining Hogan, Ms. Seyfang served in a variety of roles across different industries, focusing primarily on human capital issues within organizations. In her work, she has partnered with senior executives on business transformation initiatives, coaching them on their role in ensuring employee adoption and leading their teams through transformation. Ms. Seyfang has partnered with clients to evaluate their culture and provide actionable recommendations to create culture change in rapidly growing organizations. She has also worked with organizations to improve talent selection and promotional processes.