But their success may not last, Minda Zetlin* says once their behaviour is fully known, they may find themselves very much alone.
Have you ever wondered why so many highly successful entrepreneurs and other leaders seem to be toxic people?
It’s not your imagination, and it’s not just that wealth and power turned them into jerks.
Depressingly, research actually shows that people who push others aside, manipulate others, always act in their own self-interest, and rarely help anyone else–these are the people who wind up with successful companies and corner offices, particularly if they’re men.
But that success may not last.
When these bad behaviours become fully exposed, their seemingly great accomplishments can all come crashing down, and they may find themselves very much alone.
That’s according to Jonny Thomson, associate director of university partnerships-EMEA at Coursera, a philosophy teacher, and host of the popular Instagram account Mini Philosophy.
In a post at Big Think, he explains how research shows that toxic behaviour really can lead to career success for some.
But it only works for as long as they can hide their Machiavellian behaviour.
Once they’re found out, they may be cast out of their communities, fending for themselves and friendless.
Why do toxic people prevail?
Organizational psychologists have long recognized the Dark Triad–narcissism, manipulativeness, and psychopathy–as qualities that can help any entrepreneur or business leader in their career.
Narcissists are great at selling their ideas and inspiring others to follow them.
Manipulators are good at influencing others to do what the manipulators want, which is a great skill to have if you’re managing people and trying to incentivize or motivate them.
And “sub-clinical” psychopaths (i.e., people with some psychopath behaviours, not the people who turn into serial killers) don’t suffer from guilt or regret as much as the rest of us do and so are sometimes more able to take risks or make bold moves.
Multiple studies have shown that these Dark Triad qualities often correlate with career success.
Conversely, another study suggests that agreeableness, one of the Big Five personality traits, is correlated with a lack of career success as measured by income, at least for men.
The researchers hypothesized that agreeable men and disagreeable women “disconfirm” expected gender roles, and so agreeable men are punished for not conforming to the stereotype.
Depressingly, the researchers also found that being agreeable or disagreeable did not seem to significantly affect women’s earnings–they were far behind men, even agreeable ones.
Should we all be toxic?
So if toxic behaviour is the way to get ahead, should we all head into work tomorrow with a plan to lie, cheat, and shove others out of our way to get what we want? Well, maybe not.
Though there aren’t statistics about this, Thomson and others argue that it usually only works for so long.
If you think about it, the functioning of society pretty much depends on people not behaving this way, but instead cooperating with each other and helping one another when in need.
As historian Rutger Bregman explains in a Big Think video, “Imagine living in the Ice Age, being a nomadic hunter-gatherer.
What did you need most? Well, you needed friends.
You weren’t going to survive without friends, because, you know, there could be a tough day, you could get an injury or something like that, and then you really needed those friends.”
Thus, he says, friendliness and collaboration became an evolutionary advantage, and so our species evolved to be friendlier and friendlier.
And, although we rarely stop to think about it, our entire business world, and society at large, depends on our assumption that people are generally trustworthy and inclined to be helpful.
If we call a pizzeria, even one we’ve never dealt with before, and give them our credit card number over the phone, we expect that they will charge the correct amount and deliver us a pizza that is hot and tastes as good as they can make it.
And if they do, they trust us to post good reviews about them (or at least not bad ones), and not to reverse the charge on our card.
In this instance and countless others, perfect strangers trust each other because that’s how society works.
Being toxic works until it doesn’t
This presumption of trustworthiness puts untrustworthy people at an advantage, because they can exploit it, at least temporarily.
For example, if you trust a toxic person enough to tell them your idea, they may present it as their own.
That might help their career in the short run, but they’ve now made you into an enemy, which could well harm them in the long run.
Not only that, you’re liable to tell others about it, and as news of their toxic behaviour spreads, the toxic person may lose their ability to exert influence.
They may find themselves out of the company altogether.
This may be one reason why gossip is such an important part of human interaction in every society.
As Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford, put it, “A key function may be related explicitly to controlling free riders.” And it’s why Thomson argues that advantages gained through toxic behaviour usually have an expiration date.
“Jerks might temporarily win the battle, but nice guys win the war,” he writes.
That’s a lesson about success for all of us.
Toxic behaviour may help you prevail for a little while.
In the long run, being a good person is a better path to lasting success.
*Minda Zetlin, Author of ‘Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work’
This article first appeared at inc-aus.com
