At first, the new leader seemed magnetic. People were drawn to the way they dismissed risks, led with excitement, and didn’t worry about consequences. But then things turned. The leader took reckless chances that backfired, ignored commitments to their team, and didn’t acknowledge mistakes. Their behavior caused discord, stress, and mistrust among the team.
At Hogan, we call this type of leader behavior Mischievous. Someone with Mischievous tendencies is likely to seem bright, charming, impulsive, and limit testing. In leadership, risk-taking can yield positive outcomes when leaders find the right balance.
Understanding the Risk-Taking Leadership Style
The Hogan assessments measure three aspects of personality: the bright side (everyday personality), the dark side (potential derailers), and the inside (motives and values). One of our three core assessments, the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), describes the dark side of personality, or how someone is likely to behave if stress, pressure, boredom, or complacency causes them to stop self-monitoring. Dark-side characteristics, or derailers, are counterproductive behaviors that can hinder career success. Mischievous is one of the 11 derailers Hogan measures using the HDS.
The HDS Mischievous scale measures behaviors ranging from quiet and conforming to charming and risk-taking. At first impression, leaders who tend toward risk-taking behavior can seem engaging. They usually make quick decisions, seem fearless, and avoid dwelling on mistakes, making them excellent entrepreneurs. People who score high on Mischievous will enjoy testing limits and seek out variety to alleviate boredom. They often live out the saying that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
This risk-taking style of leadership can be highly effective. Using charm to build rapport is a valuable skill for networking and engagement. Likewise, challenging rules and bypassing procedure to achieve goals can be productive. Leaders with high Mischievous behavior must maintain balance to discern which risks are worth taking and when.
An Expert Perspective on Mischievous Derailment
Ryan Rush, PhD, explains how the Mischievous derailer changes across career levels and what leaders can do to pair risk-taking with discipline.
Signs of Impulsive Leadership
A Mischievous style of leadership without any checks and balances can cause lasting negative consequences for leaders' reputations. Caricatures of risk-taking behavior in leaders include Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, Tyler Durden in Fight Club, and Commodus in Gladiator. These fictional portrayals show people who believe that if they don’t dominate others, they’ll be dominated. To them, breaking rules and exploiting others’ weaknesses is justifiable because they are smart or important enough to get away with it.
Leaders with risk-taking behavior patterns can appear defiant, hasty, or manipulative at their worst. Stress or boredom can trigger a leader to deliberately bend or break inconvenient rules. Their impulsivity is compounded when they ignore or dismiss the long-term consequences of their actions. At worst, they use charm to manipulate others to advance a personal agenda.
A risk-taking leader in derailment can fracture team trust by failing to follow through, alienate good organizational citizens by ignoring limits, and lose credibility by taking irrational risks. Even though such a leader might maintain strong upward and outward relationships, direct reports are likely to see Mischievous behaviors during times when the leader isn’t self-monitoring.
How to Balance Mischievous Tendencies
Using the stop-start-continue framework, a Mischievous leader can learn to balance risk-taking tendencies.
Mischievous leaders should start identifying triggers of derailing behavior. Many people who have high Mischievous scores hate to feel bored. A leader who is aware of their risk-taking impulses will be better equipped to exercise strategic self-awareness and manage their reputation.
They should stop viewing other people as obstacles to manage. Instead, they should start looking to them as allies. A circle of trusted peers and team members can hold Mischievous leaders accountable to their commitments, counterbalance impulsivity when needed, and share information about how others might perceive them. Assessment-based coaching can assist in designing context-specific development goals.
They should keep questioning whether rules are necessary. Often in bureaucracy, procedures are holdovers from prior leaders and may hinder progress. Mischievous behavior can also drive innovation when it earns buy-in from others and builds excitement. The main trick is knowing when it’s too much versus just right.
Expert Contributor
Ryan Rush, PhD, is a cognitive psychologist who works as a senior consultant on the talent solutions team at Hogan Assessments.