How to manage your dark side to successfully lead teams

Crises tend to bring out both the best and the worst in people. On one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has people picking up groceries for their elderly neighbors, sewing masks, and sending hand sanitizer to those in need. At the same time, others are hoarding toilet paper, spreading conspiracy theories on social media, and failing to follow health directives from authorities.

Hardly anyone is going through the normal routine of getting ready for work, commuting to the office, spending the day with colleagues, returning home, and enjoying the evening with family and friends. People are struggling to work from home while simultaneously providing education and day care to their children. Healthcare workers and others deemed essential are working longer hours than ever before, whereas those in the restaurant, bar, entertainment, fitness, hospitality, airline, and cruise industries sit idle.  Consultants and gig economy workers have seen most sources of income dry up, and those who are still employed have no idea whether their companies will be in business next year.

The disruptions to our daily routines, uncertainty about finances, concerns about becoming infected or losing loved ones, and isolation are creating unprecedented levels of stress. No one is going to be at his or her best under these circumstances; the COVID-19 pandemic has created a perfect storm for our dark sides to emerge.

Dark-side personality traits were first identified by Robert Hogan, who defined them as counterproductive behavioral tendencies that emerge when people are not actively managing their reputations. Dark-side personality traits emerge during times of high stress and are essentially coping mechanisms people use to manage these situations. Hogan noted that seemingly normal people can blow their tempers, disappear, avoid making decisions, or micromanage others when stressed.

They are also more likely to demonstrate these dysfunctional behaviors at home because people tend to manage their public reputations at work more than they do their reputations with their families. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly increased the odds that leaders and employees will exhibit the dysfunctional behaviors associated with dark-side personality traits.

During these unprecedented times, strategic self-awareness becomes crucial: knowing your strengths and weaknesses in comparison to those of your competitors is what will make you, your team and your organization be a success after the pandemic.

The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) is the industry standard for assessing dysfunctional behaviors related to performance in the workplace. Leaders throughout the world understand the value the HDS brings to their strategic self-awareness and uncovering their “dark side”. These derailers are not day-to-day behaviors, but overused strengths that surface during times of crises and can impede leaders from being successful.

Effective leadership is defined as the ability to build and maintaining a high performing team. How does your own dark side impact this core ability in VUCA times?

To answer this question, we have created a short guide about how to manage own team during crisis, taking into account the most common derailers identified in Romanian leaders: Bold and Diligent.

In 2019 Hart Consulting, together with Hogan Assessments conducted a comprehensive study of leadership behaviors of Romanian leaders.

The data were collected between 2016 and 2019 and included 800 eaders’ profiles from a wide range of industries and business sectors. The study showed that Romanian leaders have the right “ingredients” and are similar in many ways to other high performing leaders around the world: they are ambitious, have good drive and energy, are action oriented and focus on business issues. However, there are some strengths, when overused, that can derail their success. Romanian leaders are courageous, charismatic, but may seem somewhat self-absorbed, stubborn and sometimes arrogant (“Bold”). They also tend to be perfectionistic, focused too much on unnecessary details, picky, hard to please, controlling (“Diligent”).

To help managers understand the impact of these two derailers on the engagement of their teams and overall business and to monitor these tendencies, we have built a practical guide:

Bold leaders

Bold leaders are very easy to notice due to their self-assured, confident manner of approaching tough problems. They may seem fearless and during times of crises their team will heavily rely on them to create a way forward. However, there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

What to do if you are a Bold leader during the pandemic?

Tip 1: Your team will follow since you display the confidence necessary to push beyond the crisis. However, you must ensure that you still listen to them and ask for feedback periodically; when your team works from home or is very busy with business continuation activities, they might not be as inclined to come to you with their concerns. This is the best time to encourage feedback from your team and calibrate plans and activities accordingly. This way, your team members will feel heard and be more willing to “push for results” when you ask them to put in extra effort.

Tip 2: Sharing credit with your team. This is the best way to create and maintain engagement and positive morale when your team might be down. Share credit even for smaller successes with them in a way they see their contributions recognized: this can be in a public team call, forwarding a congratulations email etc. It is a very good way to gain status as an effective leader and increase the cohesiveness of the team. Positive reinforcement can build commitment from the team and keep them motivated to follow your leadership.

Tip 3: Be realistic in your promises. As an energetic, driven, ambitious leader, you may want to hit the ground running and get ahead of the competition as soon as possible. However, there are pragmatic concerns and limitations that affect your team: some have to attend to childcare and more house related routine tasks than usual, while others could be highly affected by anxiety or have to take care of someone who has become ill. What this means is that your team might not be running on 100% capacity at this time and you should account for that in your strategic plans. Remember that it is better to over-deliver than to over-promise and remain realistic in what you team can accomplish during the crisis, by engaging periodically in “what-if” planning.

Diligent leaders

Diligent leaders are hardworking and have a reputation for focusing on quality and being detail-oriented. They have high standards of performance for themselves and others.

What to do if you are a Diligent leader during the pandemic?

Tip 1: You have a reputation for always following through on your promises and being able to get results at a high standard; however, as you are aware, not everyone in your team can keep up with you.

Instead of falling back on controlling habits that you may have used in the office, you should avoid micromanaging your team.

Focus on delegation instead. Make a list with the strengths and abilities of each team member and delegate appropriate tasks, in a realistic manner. As their mastery increases, your level of trust in their ability to manage situations independently will grow as well. The team will feel empowered to take on bigger challenges on their own when they feel you trust them and you will save precious time that you can redirect to focus on more important goals.

Tip 2: Don’t fall back on old, fixed routines. These unprecedented times require new ways of thinking and doing things. Be mindful of the morale of team, of their needs to be more flexible – if they have family responsibilities, they may need more time off to take care of those needs during regular working hours and may not always be able for a fixed time daily check-in/ too many virtual team meetings. Even you might be dealing with work-life balance issues during the pandemic and might not be as effective while working from home. The main idea is to be flexible and prioritize!

Instead of trying to do everything on your to-do list or be updated on every small work task your team is doing, try to understand which objectives are critical for the business and which can be delegated or postponed, in order to retain the same high level quality of work.

Tip 3: Focus on the big picture. While your applied nature is constantly focused on working in the business, you should also focus on working on the business. While you are creating your prioritization list of activities, you should also try to determine what is the best amount of time you should be working on making the business successful for the post-pandemic world. While it is important to supervise the activity of your team and finish your own projects, it is also important to reserve some time to build relationships and focus on long term goals. These important goals should be in balance when it comes to invested effort, in order to be fully prepared for the next steps.

As it can be seen here, personality truly is important in matters of leadership. Personality drives behaviors in times of crises and they effect everything from business results and increased financial performance to employee satisfaction, engagement, turnover and greater customer satisfaction. Strategic self-awareness can be an important asset in regaining and maintaining performance after a crisis.

Be aware of how you react under stress. Knowing your dark side is an important first step in being able to cope with the stresses and strains of the coronavirus pandemic.