Series: Toxicity in the Workplace
This is the second in a series of posts on toxicity in the workplace. The first post named four behaviors that define toxic work environments: abusive supervision, knowledge hiding, interpersonal deviance, and undermining. This post looks at the kind of leader most likely to embody all four.
One of the questions people ask most often when they find themselves in a toxic workplace is “Why?”. Why does this person behave this way. Is it calculated? Deliberate? Surely such behavior can’t be deliberate when the consequences of their actions are so harmful. And, importantly, why is there no accountability?
The research does not offer a single answer, but it does offer a framework for understanding the personality traits that make certain leaders more destructive, and often regardless of the consequences to those around them. This framework centres on what psychologists call the Dark Triad.
What Is the Dark Triad?
The dark triad refers to three distinct but related personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. The term was introduced by Paulhus and Williams (2002) in a landmark paper that demonstrated that these three traits, while conceptually separate, tend to co-occur and share the common characteristics of callousness and a tendency to exploit others.
However, each trait has a distinct character. Together, they form a profile that helps explain not just individual harmful behaviors but the cluster of toxicity described in my previous post.
The Need to Be the Most Important Person in the Room
Narcissism is the trait most extensively studied in leadership contexts. Narcissistic individuals have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration, a pronounced sense of entitlement, and a notable inability to tolerate criticism (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). In leadership, these characteristics produce a distinctive and damaging pattern. Try challenging one, contradicting them in a meeting, or even outperforming them, and you see the mask slip right before your eyes.
Initially, narcissistic leaders can be compelling. They tend to project confidence, articulate bold visions, and generate enthusiasm. They may talk a lot about mission, values, growth and performance. Research has shown that narcissists are skilled at making strong first impressions and are often selected into leadership positions as they present as charismatic and decisive. The problems emerge over time, as their self-serving nature becomes apparent.
Of course, some people will see it quite quickly. These are the people who unsettle the narcissist the most: the competent ones, the confident ones, those whose performance or reputation makes the narcissist feel diminished by comparison and insecure. They are not a threat in any objective sense. But in the narcissist’s mind, anyone who shines too brightly is a problem.
The research is consistent regarding what narcissistic leadership looks like in practice. Narcissistic leaders prioritize their own reputation and visibility over organizational goals (although they will claim to act on behalf of the organization). They take credit for others’ successes and deflect blame onto subordinates when things go wrong (often in private, engaging in interpersonal deviance). They surround themselves with people who affirm and flatter them. They respond to those who challenge or outperform them with a hostility that is rarely obvious. It’s often invisible to everyone except their target, who may not even understand at first what the behavior towards them is, and why they have suddenly become the problem. As Gauglitz et al. (2023) show, narcissistic rivalry, i.e., the competitive, aggressive dimension of narcissism, drives abusive supervision. When a narcissistic leader perceives a subordinate as a threat to their status, the response is not engagement or mentorship, but elimination.
This connects directly to a finding from our own research (Chugh et al., 2025). We drew on conservation of resources theory to examine how narcissistic leaders manage their psychological and material resources under pressure. The picture that emerges is of leaders who hoard resources for themselves, protecting their own position and reputation while leaving others to bear the uncertainty and instability. In a workplace context, this resource-hoarding manifests as the knowledge hiding and selective information sharing described in my earlier post.
Charm Up. Exploit Down.
Machiavellian individuals are defined by a strategic, manipulative orientation to social encounters. They tend to view others as instruments. They believe that deception is a legitimate tool and pursue their own interests through calculated means while maintaining the appearance of competence and even collegiality (Paulhus & Williams, 2002).
In organizational settings, Machiavellian leaders are skilled political operators. They build coalitions of loyal supporters, reward compliance, and are adept at managing upward, presenting well to those above them in the hierarchy while behaving very differently towards those below. Research has found that Machiavellian leadership correlates with decreased trust, reduced knowledge sharing (or knowledge hiding), and higher employee turnover. A large-scale meta-analysis involving data from over half a million participants found that Machiavellian leaders consistently create toxic environments for those they lead, yet often emerge unpenalized (!), partly because their behavior is difficult to pin down and partly because they manage their reputations very carefully.
The plausible deniability discussed in my previous post is, in many ways, a Machiavellian specialty. Interpersonal deviance carried out through whisper networks, strategic exclusion from information, and the quiet sabotage of colleagues’ reputations are characteristic behaviors of the Machiavellian leader. They are skillful snakes in suits.
The Absence of Empathy
Subclinical psychopathy, as it manifests in workplace settings, involves shallow emotional affect, very low empathy, impulsivity, and a willingness to harm others in pursuit of personal gain. Unlike the dramatic portrayals in popular culture, workplace psychopaths are not necessarily explosive or obviously threatening. They can be charming, even charismatic. What is absent is any genuine concern for the people around them.
Research by Boddy (2011) on corporate psychopaths demonstrated how leaders with psychopathic traits significantly increase workplace bullying, reduce employee wellbeing and productivity, and destroy organizational culture over time. The environment they create is characterized by fear and unpredictability, where employees never quite know where they stand and are always, at some level, on guard.
How They Rise and Why They Stay
A striking and troubling finding in the leadership research is that dark triad traits are not a barrier to reaching leadership positions. In many organizational contexts, they are an advantage, at least in the short term. The confidence and charisma of narcissists, the strategic manipulating of Machiavellians, and the fearlessness of psychopaths can all look like leadership qualities to those making promotion and appointment decisions, particularly in competitive, high-pressure environments.
But this is a question that colleagues and employees ask with genuine frustration, often after watching a toxic leader survive complaints, outlast good people who left, and continue to be promoted and rewarded. How can this happen? Part of the answer lies in their performance. Dark triad leaders frequently deliver on the metrics that organizations use to evaluate success. They are ambitious, driven, politically skilled, and willing to do things that more conscientious leaders wouldn’t. Our research on CEO dark triad personality traits has shown that narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy can be significant enablers of firm performance, including in the context of internationalization, where the boldness, risk tolerance, and ruthlessness, associated with these traits, can drive organizational growth (Nooshabadi, Mockaitis, & Chugh, 2024). Related work on narcissistic CEOs has shown how they mobilize cognitive and affective resources to pursue entrepreneurial goals aggressively, particularly during periods of disruption (Chugh et al., 2025).
The uncomfortable implication is that organizations are not simply naive about these leaders. In many cases they are, knowingly or not, complicit. The costs of toxic leadership, burnout, attrition, damaged careers, eroded wellbeing, are borne by individuals. Any benefits accrue to the organization. As long as the numbers look good, there is a powerful structural incentive to overlook, minimize, or rationalize what is happening to the targets or victims of the dark triad types. This also somewhat explains what many employees find mind boggling – why formal complaints so rarely lead anywhere. HR functions, where they exist, report upward into the same organizational hierarchy that benefits from the leader’s performance. Investigating and acting on a complaint against a high-performing leader carries organizational risk. Not acting carries little to none, at least none that is immediately visible. The person who raises the complaint is, in many cases, left more exposed than before they raised it.
Padilla, Hogan and Kaiser’s (2007) toxic triangle helps explain why destructive leadership persists. The triangle has three elements: the leader, susceptible followers, and a conducive environment, and toxic leadership needs all three to work together. Toxic leadership endures because followers either comply out of fear or actively collude and enable it for their own benefit, and the organizational environment has weak accountability structures and a culture that prioritizes loyalty over integrity. Later I will look more closely at the roles of those who surround the toxic leader. These are the people who enable, sustain, and often amplify the damage!
Have you experienced any of the behaviors or characteristics discussed in this series in your workplace? Please feel free to leave a comment below.
Further reading. Books I recommend
Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters
Snakes in Suits, Revised Edition: Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office
The Narcissist You Know: Defending Yourself Against Extreme Narcissists in an All-About-Me Age
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
References
Boddy, C. R. (2011). Corporate psychopaths, bullying and unfair supervision in the workplace. Journal of Business Ethics, 100(3), 367–379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-010-0689-5
Chugh, R., Mockaitis, A. I., Lanivich, S. E., & Nooshabadi, J. E. (2025). It’s all about resources: Narcissistic CEOs and entrepreneurial orientation during disruptions. International Small Business Journal, 43 (1), 30-52. https://doi.org/10.1177/02662426241269774
Gauglitz, I. K., Schyns, B., Fehn, T., & Schütz, A. (2023). The dark side of leader narcissism: The relationship between leaders’ narcissistic rivalry and abusive supervision. Journal of Business Ethics, 185 (1), 169–184. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05146-6
Nooshabadi, J. E., Mockaitis, A. I., & Chugh, R. (2024). Chief executive officer’s dark triad personality and firm’s degree of internationalization: The mediating role of ambidexterity. International Business Review, 33 (4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibusrev.2024.102296
Padilla, A., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18 (3), 176–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.03.001
Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The dark triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 556–563. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00505-6
Professor Audra I. Mockaitis 