Management failure and derailment

Abstract

The careers of as many as 50% of leadership careers end in failure, the causes of which can be broadly divided into incompetence or ‘derailment’. The causes of incompetence include over promotion due to misguided choices or policies (such as nepotism) and are summed up in the well-known ‘Peter Principle’ that ‘in any hierarchy people tend to rise to their level of incompetence’. The causes of derailment are more difficult to identify and do not, as a rule, include incompetence. Indeed many such leaders are people who showed remarkable talent early in their careers. Derailment is likely to be due to a combination of factors, including the nature and culture of the workplace, the prevailing political and perhaps economic circumstance through which people need to be led, and the checks and balances imposed by the organisation on its leaders. Personal factors are also critical, however, and are reflected in an individual’s ability to maintain relationships with others, their self-knowledge, and adaptability. Using more formal scales and categories of personality Prof Furnham reviews a series of published studies that link a range of personality dimensions, which can be initially attractive, but ultimately destructive (‘dark-side traits’), to the development of features of the Hubris Syndrome and ultimately derailment.