He’s the passive aggressor, the one with the tight-jawed smile. Sure, he’s a great guy when he gets his way, but give him an unpleasant task and he’ll drag his feet. Need him to fill out that insurance paperwork? Yeah. He’ll get right on that.

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. Although the procrastinator is outwardly pleasant and sociable, team members may be putt off by his stubbornness.

Watch this video to see the Procrastinator at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiLeisurely #howdoyouderail

She’s the list maker, the fact checker, the one who always seems to be checking your work over your shoulder. Sure, some call it nitpicking, but isn’t anything worth doing worth doing right?

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. The same impossibly high standards that helped the perfectionist early in her career can earn her a reputation as a micromanager in the corner office.

Watch this video to see the perfectionist at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiDiligent #howdoyouderail

You make what seems like a promising hire – good resume, relevant experience, and solid references. And, at first, her performance matches that promise.

As time wears on, however, you start to hear grumbling around the water cooler. Nobody likes to work with your new hire. Her coworkers start to pull away, her work unit shows signs of waning engagement, and her performance starts to flag. Just like that, your promising new employee turns into a nightmare. Why? Odds are, your new hire is succumbing to the dark side of her personality.

Dark side personality characteristics emerge during times of increased stress, like the often-intense pressure to perform during the first several months of employment. If unchecked, these characteristics can disrupt relationships with a person’s coworkers and subordinates, which can impede their chances at success.

The Hogan Development Survey measures dark side personality along 11 characteristics, which can be grouped into three distinct reactions to conflict:

• Moving Away From Others – People in this group manage insecurities by intimidating and avoiding others. They tend to be alert for signs of criticism, rejection, betrayal, or hostile intent. When they think they have detected threat, they react vigorously to remove it.
• Moving Against Others – People in this group expect to be liked, admired, and respected. They tend to resist acknowledging their mistakes and/or failures (which they blame on others), and they are often unable to learn from experience.
• Moving Toward Others – People in this group want to please figures of authority. As a result, they are easy to supervise, and are popular with their bosses. However, in conflict, they tend to side with authority figures rather than sticking up for their team members or subordinates.

Unfortunately, dark side personality characteristics are nearly impossible to detect in a normal hiring process, making this story all too familiar. However, you can use targeted personality assessment to identify candidates’ dark side characteristics and focus onboarding efforts to ensure that you don’t wind up with a hiring horror story.

To learn more about our approach to dealing with people’s dark side, check out our whitepaper How your Greatest Strength can Become your Greatest Weakness.

He’s the hothead, the live wire, the one with the short fuse and explosive temper. His energy is infectious, but his mood can turn on a dime, and when he starts lobbing shells, boy you’d better take cover.

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. Although the loose cannon’s intensity makes him a favorite with his boss, his volatile emotions have the people around him walking on eggshells.

Watch this video to see the loose cannon at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiExcitable #howdoyouderail

Jon Bentz pioneered the study of managerial derailment when he launched a 30-year study of failed managers in the late 1970s at Sears. Bentz presented his research at the Center for Creative Leadership in the early 1980s. Bentz noted that they were uniformly bright and socially skilled; they failed because they:

• Lacked business skills
• Were unable to deal with complexity
• Were reactive and tactical
• Were unable to delegate
• Were unable to build a team
• Were unable to maintain relationships with a network of contacts
• Let emotions cloud their judgment
• Were seen as having an overriding personality defect

Inspired by Bentz’ findings, Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo replicated and extended the study by interviewing senior executives and asking two questions, one about a successful executive and one about a derailed executive. In their findings, they defined derailed executives as “…people who were very successful in their careers (spanning 20-30 years and reaching very high levels) but who, in the eyes of the organization, did not live up to their full potential…” McCall and Lombardo published The Lessons of Experience in 1988. Although it was not the point of the book, it contained relevant, useful data on derailment. McCall and Lombardo focused on behaviors, circumstantial factors, and dynamics, rather than an overriding personality defect.

Hogan’s first published work on the dark side appeared in 1990 (Hogan, Raskin, & Fazini, 1990), and focused on one dimension of a taxonomy. In 1997, the first complete work on the derailment taxonomy was published in the Hogan Development Survey technical manual.

In 2003, David Dotlich and Peter Cairo suggest that everyone has derailment tendencies, but that CEOs are more vulnerable to them because of the pressure at the top of the pyramid, and that self-awareness can mitigate the influence of these tendencies on organizational effectiveness.

Rasch, Shen, Davies, and Bono (2008) offer a taxonomy of ineffective leadership behavior with three empirical findings warranting special attention: (a) they found no sex differences in the frequency of these behaviors, (b) the category of bad behavior that had the most toxic impact on staff morale was, “Failure to consider human needs,” (c) the frequency of this particular behavior increased with organizational status; the more senior the manager, the more abusive.

Most recently in 2011, a conclusive chapter on management derailment, personality assessment, and mitigation by Hogan, J., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B was published in the APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Vol. 3, 555-575). In this publication, Hogan et al. discuss the causes of incompetence, taxonomies of derailing characteristics, and factors for mitigating and preventing derailment.

In conclusion, the derailment research is based on a variety of methods and yields consistent findings across time, organizations, organizational levels, national culture, and even gender. The reasons managers fail all concern poor business performance, poor leadership, poor self-control, and especially, relationship problems. Moreover, the failure often occurs following major change and periods of increased stress. The reason these defects matter lies in the definition of leadership—which is the ability to build and maintain a team that can outperform the competition.

“What is your greatest weakness?”

A Google search using that common interview question yields more than 2 million articles, most of which outline ways to artfully dodge the answer. The most common trick is to list a weakness in the form of an exaggerated strength. However, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. The personality characteristics that help launch promising careers can turn into crippling derailers down the line. But they don’t have to.

Download How Your Greatest Strength Can Become Your Greatest Weakness and learn how to identify and mitigate potentially destructive behaviors.

You've seen him around the office, he's made sure of it. He’s the boaster, the big timer, the guy who never seems to mind tooting his own horn. Some call it hubris, but are you really going to question God’s gift to business?

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. The same confidence and willingness to take credit that helped 'that guy' early in his career can turn into a sense of entitlement under the pressure of the corner office.

Watch this video to see 'that guy' at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiBold #howdoyouderail

She’s the idea woman, the visionary, the one with incense in her office and flowers in her hair. She doesn’t just think outside the box, she lives her life outside the box. Sure, her methods may be a bit unorthodox, but you have to dream big things to do big things.

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. Although her unique approach to problems may be an asset early in her career, it can result in a reputation as a bit of an eccentric.

Watch this video to see the dreamer at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiImaginative #howdoyouderail

Here in the Hogan marketing department, we spend quite a bit of time talking about the dark side of personality – the way people experience us when we are at our worst.

There are three reasons for this:

First, we were the first, and remain the only personality assessment provider that deals with dark side personality characteristics.

Second, derailment, the often-disastrous, sometimes headline-worthy result of succumbing to your dark side tendencies, is the most demonstrable example of personality’s effect on our lives.

Finally, every now and then, the particular manner in which someone derails is downright hilarious. Like in the case of the Winnebago Man.

Winnebago Man is a (sort of) censored version of an outtake reel from a 1980s Winnebago infomercial. The seven-plus-minute clip features RV salesman Jack Rebney having a profanity-laden on-the-job meltdown that became so famous, it inspired an award-winning documentary.

Watch at your own risk.

He’s the charmer, the mischief-maker, the thrill-seeker. For him, spontaneity is the spice of life. Sure, his impulsiveness may occasionally find him climbing aboard a sinking ship, but you don’t mind bailing him out again, right?

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. The same charm and daring antics that helped the sweet talker early in his career can turn into manipulation and unwillingness to learn from his mistakes.

Watch this video to see the sweet talker at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiMischievous #howdoyouderail