Why bad guys win at work. (2015)

“…the dark side represents the toxic assets of our personality. You can turn them into career weapons, but the group will generally lose the more you win.”

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, University College London
Harvard Business Review. 2 Nov 2015

“…perhaps one may think about dark-side tendencies as overused strengths – tendencies that are fairly adaptive and conducive of short-term success, but may nonetheless lead to problems in the long term, especially if one is not aware of them. That is, the dark side represents the toxic assets of our personality. You can certainly turn them into career weapons, but the group will generally lose the more you win.

“Furthermore, when the primary goal is to ensure that a group or organization outperforms its rivals, it will be generally advantageous to minimize the incidence of dark triad leaders.

“Personality is an important career lubricant, but dark-triad traits are effective at the individual rather than group level.”

Access the full paper here: Why bad guys win at work.