Van Lill, X; Cruickshank, Lynne A

Harms (2022) argues that dark characteristics associated with a fight disposition represent a limited range of maladaptive behaviours. However, excessive use of these characteristics receives disproportionate attention due to their high noticeability among well-known people. By contrast, the negative consequences of a flight disposition or flock disposition are also likely to impact leadership competence negatively (Hogan & Hogan, 2009), even though these characteristics receive less attention. The present researchers conceive that leaders' likelihood to derail might be compounded by a combination (interaction) of leaders' cognitive ability and disposition to derail.

Some research suggests that an excessive display of charisma might be linked to a fight response when under pressure and, therefore, a decline in leadership effectiveness. For instance, excessive self-confidence could be perceived as narcissism, an overreliance on persuasion and risk-taking might be associated with manipulative and exploitative behaviour, being overly entertaining could be seen as attention-seeking behaviours that distract the organisation and very high creativity may be perceived as eccentric behaviour (Verggauwe et al., 2017). While the relationship between charisma and leadership effectiveness appears to be non-linear, cognitive ability adds a complex multidimensional layer to the impact of charismatic leadership. Preliminary evidence reported by Douglas et al. (2023) suggests that the incongruence or discrepancy between overconfidence and cognitive ability might decrease the self-rated ability to achieve results.

There is limited (if any identifiable evidence) on the impact of a combination of a flight disposition and cognitive ability, or a flock disposition and cognitive ability, on individuals’ reputations as competent leaders. Given an individual's standing on cognitive ability, the present study aims to shed more light on individuals' likelihood to undermine their reputations as competent leaders when either inclined to push others away (i.e., flight response) or excessively conform (i.e., flock response).

Utilising polynomial regressions with response surface analysis (Shanock et al., 2010) on a sample of 323 employees, primarily managers, the researchers found that task performance is elevated when the disparity favours higher business reasoning over charisma, as opposed to the reverse scenario. Similarly, task performance is also elevated with a flight disposition when the disparity favours higher business reasoning over a withdrawn response. By contrast, with a flock disposition, having both higher cognitive ability and conforming tendencies tends to undermine task performance. The relationships become more complex with finer-grained investigations of specific maladaptive characteristics in the flight, fight, or flock disposition, which will be outlined in greater detail.

Cognitive ability is often used to assess leaders' future effectiveness. However, selection and development practices frequently overlook the impact of a leader's cognitive ability in combination with their disposition to derail. This session will:

1. Assist practitioners in understanding the scientifically informed implications of leaders' combined scores on cognitive ability and maladaptive characteristics. This understanding enables leaders to become more informed about personal blind spots and find means to actively self-manage around these areas. Actionable suggestions provided during the session will offer practitioners insights into potential coaching and development opportunities based on a leader's combined dark personality and cognitive ability scores.

2. Provide insights into understanding and making selection decisions based on individuals' combined dark personality and cognitive ability scores.

3. Provide researchers with a method to explore non-linear combinations of other personality and cognitive ability results and their impact on related outcomes.