Leadership derailers (Hogan)
Traits that look like strengths in normal conditions and become destructive under pressure, fatigue or power, causing otherwise capable leaders to fail. The HDS measures 11: Excitable (volatile, disappointed in people), Sceptical (cynical, distrustful), Cautious (risk-averse, slow to decide), Reserved (aloof, uncommunicative), Leisurely (passive-aggressive, privately resistant), Bold (overconfident, entitled), Mischievous (charming, rule-bending, risk-seeking), Colourful (attention-seeking, dramatic), Imaginative (eccentric, unfocused), Diligent (perfectionist, micromanaging) and Dutiful (deferential, eager to please upward).
What drives it
Each derailer is a way of managing anxiety in relationships: moving away from people (Excitable, Sceptical, Cautious, Reserved, Leisurely), against them (Bold, Mischievous, Colourful, Imaginative) or towards them (Diligent, Dutiful), following Karen Horney. Useful because it predicts how a person will fail, not just whether they are good.
How it shows
Work
In a leader: the visionary who stops listening once the company grows (Bold, Imaginative), the charming dealmaker who cuts one corner too many (Mischievous), the detail-perfect operator who becomes a bottleneck at scale (Diligent), the loyal number two who never tells the CEO the truth (Dutiful), the agreeable manager who says yes and does nothing (Leisurely). Derailers appear most when the person is tired, stressed, newly promoted or unsupervised. In a team: people working around the leader rather than with them, and the leader’s strengths being cited and feared in the same breath. As the leader: your derailers are your strengths overplayed, and others see them earlier than you do.
Relationships
The same traits show at home under stress: volatility, withdrawal, needing to be centre stage, perfectionism about the house, or never contradicting a dominant parent. In family businesses, Dutiful successors and Bold founders often lock together.
Self
The tell is the behaviour you fall back on when exhausted and the feedback you keep getting in different jobs from different people. If three bosses have said the same thing, it is probably a derailer.
What tells it apart
Personality disorder (general concept and dimensional model): Derailers are subclinical tendencies in functioning people that appear under strain and cause career damage; a personality disorder is pervasive, present in calm conditions too, and causes broad impairment in relationships and functioning.
Hubris syndrome: Derailers are stable traits the person brought into the role; hubris syndrome is acquired after a period of power and is said to fade when the power goes.
Dark Triad and Dark Tetrad: The Dark Triad measures exploitative traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) that are aversive at any level; the HDS also covers anxious, cautious and over-compliant styles that harm the leader more than others.
A test
Look at how the person behaved during their worst quarter or a hostile board meeting, and ask former peers what they would warn a new boss about.
Questions to carry
- During the worst quarter or a hostile meeting, how did the person behave, and what would former peers warn about?
- Which of my strengths turns into a problem when I'm tired or under pressure?
How strong the research is
moderate. Derailment is well documented in leadership research and the HDS scales relate to personality disorder dimensions as expected, but most validity data comes from the test publisher.
Where it comes from
Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo, 1983 (derailment research); Robert Hogan and Joyce Hogan, 1997 (Hogan Development Survey)
Sources
- Robert Hogan, Personality and the Fate of Organizations (2007)