by Kelly Rogers
- 27 September 2026
As leadership scholars, we have become very good at identifying leadership behaviours. We can categorize leaders as transformational, ethical, authentic, servant, inclusive, or destructive. We have frameworks, models, competencies, and psychometric tools designed to help us understand what leaders do.
But there is a question that has received far less attention:
Where does dark leadership actually come from?
Much of the research on dark leadership focuses on what happens once an individual reaches a position of power. We examine toxic behaviours, narcissism, abusive supervision, authoritarian tendencies, or ethical failures. We identify the damage these behaviors create for individuals, organizations, and society.
Yet by the time these behaviors become visible, they are often deeply embedded.
As Barbara Kellerman (2004) argued, leadership studies has traditionally been much more comfortable celebrating exemplary leadership than examining leadership failure, abuse, and incompetence. While scholarship has increasingly acknowledged leadership’s darker dimensions, we still know relatively little about how destructive forms of leadership develop over time.
Drawing on my doctoral research into the experiences of Further Education (FE) principals (Rogers, 2021), and more recent work exploring dark leadership, I have become increasingly interested not simply in what leaders do, but how they become who they are. The more I listened to leaders’ stories, the more I realized that understanding leadership’s darker side requires us to look beyond behaviors and into biography, identity, and context.
This raises an uncomfortable possibility:
What if some of the very qualities that help people become successful leaders are also the qualities that, under pressure, create the conditions for destructive leadership?
Looking Beyond the “Bad Leader”
There is a tendency in leadership research and practice to view dark leadership as a problem of individuals.
When things go wrong, we often look for a narcissist, a bully, or someone displaying psychopathic tendencies. The popularity of concepts such as the Dark Triad has reinforced the idea that destructive leadership can largely be explained through problematic personality traits.
While these perspectives are valuable, they can also oversimplify a much more complicated reality.
Most leaders are not villains.
In my research, many leaders who described moments of excessive control, emotional detachment, or ethically questionable decision making did not see themselves as destructive. In fact, many viewed their actions as necessary, responsible, or even protective. They were not attempting to cause harm. More often, they were responding to pressure, uncertainty, and a perceived responsibility to maintain stability.
This does not excuse harmful behavior. But it does suggest that understanding dark leadership requires us to move beyond simple explanations based solely on personality.
Instead, we need to consider development.
As Antonakis and Day (2018) remind us, leadership is not a fixed characteristic but a process shaped through experience and socialization. If leadership develops over time, perhaps its darker manifestations do too.
The Stories Leaders Carry
One of the most striking findings from my work was the enduring influence of childhood experiences.
Many leaders described growing up in environments where achievement was strongly linked to worth. Success was celebrated. Failure was not.
Some recalled parents who held exceptionally high expectations. Others described experiences of poverty, instability, bullying, or exclusion. Many learned early that resilience, self-reliance, and emotional control were essential for survival.
One FE principal reflected simply:
“Failure was never an option.”
At first glance, such a statement appears admirable. In many organizations, determination and ambition are qualities that are actively rewarded. Yet when achievement becomes deeply entwined with identity, strengths can begin to take on a darker form.
A commitment to excellence can become perfectionism.
Self-reliance can become isolation.
Confidence can become certainty.
Resilience can become emotional detachment.
Several leaders described feeling unable to show vulnerability because they believed leadership required unwavering confidence. Others admitted becoming increasingly controlling during periods of organizational crisis because control felt safer than uncertainty.
What emerged from the narratives was not a story of inherently destructive individuals. Rather, it was a story about how adaptive coping mechanisms developed earlier in life can later shape leadership behavior in less adaptive ways.
It is perhaps one of leadership’s greatest paradoxes: The very experiences that help individuals succeed can also create vulnerabilities that emerge later under pressure.
The Hidden Influence of Leadership Identity
One of the strongest themes running through the research was identity.
Many leaders carried powerful narratives about who they needed to be. They saw themselves as problem-solvers, high achievers, protectors, or the person who could be relied upon when others struggled.
These identities had often served them well throughout their careers.
Yet leadership identity can also create vulnerability.
Leadership scholar Gianpiero Petriglieri (2011) argues that threats to professional identity can trigger defensive responses as individuals seek to preserve valued understandings of themselves. This idea resonated strongly with the experiences described by participants.
For some leaders, organizational setbacks, criticism, or uncertainty were experienced not merely as professional challenges but as threats to deeply held beliefs about competence and self-worth. When leadership becomes central to how an individual defines themselves, questioning their decisions can feel like questioning who they are.
This matters because defensive responses often sit beneath behaviors associated with dark leadership.
The leader who refuses challenge may not simply be arrogant.
The leader who micromanages may not simply be controlling.
The leader who struggles to admit uncertainty may not simply lack humility.
In some cases, these behaviors reflect attempts to protect a valued identity that feels under threat.
This does not make the consequences any less damaging. However, it does help us understand why otherwise capable leaders can find themselves adopting behaviors that undermine trust, relationships, and psychological safety.
Heroic leadership leaves little room for doubt, reflection, vulnerability, or shared responsibility.
The Problem With Heroic Leadership
Another recurring theme was the influence of leadership culture itself.
Many participants had spent decades operating in environments that rewarded decisiveness, confidence, and perseverance. They were often promoted because they delivered results in difficult circumstances.
Over time, this reinforced a particular image of leadership: the leader as hero.
The hero solves problems.
The hero takes control.
The hero protects the organization.
The hero always has the answer.
The difficulty is that heroic leadership leaves little room for doubt, reflection, vulnerability, or shared responsibility.
When leaders are repeatedly rewarded for projecting certainty, they can become less willing to seek challenge, admit mistakes, or engage with alternative viewpoints. Under pressure, the need to appear strong can encourage behaviors associated with dark leadership, including micromanagement, information control, and an increasing reliance on solitary decision-making.
Ironically, the organizational systems that celebrate heroic leadership may simultaneously create the conditions for its darker expressions.
If leaders are expected to be unwavering, decisive, and always in control, it becomes difficult for them to acknowledge uncertainty, ask for help, or reveal vulnerability.
And yet these may be precisely the qualities needed to prevent leadership from becoming destructive.
When Pressure Activates the Shadow
Perhaps the most important lesson from this research is that dark leadership rarely develops in isolation from context.
The FE principals in my research worked within a sector characterized by financial uncertainty, shifting policy priorities, heightened accountability, and continual external scrutiny. Leadership often involved navigating competing demands while being held personally responsible for institutional performance.
Under such circumstances, behaviors that might normally be questioned can become normalized.
Control can look like good management.
Emotional distance can look like professionalism.
Withholding information can be framed as protecting the organization.
Reducing consultation can be justified as necessary decisiveness.
This observation resonates strongly with Malcolm Higgs’ work on dark leadership. Higgs argues that leadership becomes dark not simply because of individual characteristics, but through the interaction between leaders, organizations, followers, and contextual pressures. From this perspective, dark leadership is not solely an individual problem. It is also a systemic one.
Several leaders described organizational crises as moments when they became more controlling, more directive, or less open to challenge. Such responses often felt entirely rational at the time. During periods of institutional threat, leaders frequently believed they were doing what was necessary for organizational survival.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply identifying dark leaders.
It is understanding the conditions under which otherwise capable and well-intentioned leaders can begin to engage in behaviors that ultimately prove damaging.
Rethinking Leadership Development
If dark leadership emerges through a combination of biography, identity, career experience, and context, then leadership development may need to evolve.
Too often, leadership development focuses on competencies, behaviors, and skills. These remain important. However, they may only tell part of the story.
My research suggests that leadership development should also create opportunities for deeper reflection.
Leaders need opportunities to explore the experiences that shaped them.
They need to examine their assumptions about success, authority, failure, and vulnerability.
They need to understand how their experiences influence their responses to pressure.
And perhaps most importantly, they need to recognize when strengths are beginning to become liabilities.
Too often, leadership development asks leaders what they do.
Rarely does it ask why.
Understanding the origins of our behaviors may be just as important as learning new leadership techniques.
A Final Reflection
Leadership has always had a shadow side.
The challenge is not to eliminate it. That is neither realistic nor likely to be possible.
The challenge is to understand it.
Dark leadership is rarely the result of a single bad decision or a fundamentally bad person. More often, it emerges gradually through experiences, identities, habits, and pressures that leaders themselves may not fully recognize.
My research suggests that the roots of dark leadership often extend far beyond the workplace. They can be found in childhood experiences, educational encounters, career socialization, and the organizational contexts within which leadership is enacted.
If we are serious about developing better leaders, we need to pay closer attention not only to what leaders do, but to who they have become, how they got there, and the environments that shape them.
Because the shadow of leadership does not begin in the boardroom, the principal’s office, or the executive suite.
It often begins long before the spotlight arrives.
Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2018). The nature of leadership (3rd ed.). Sage.
Higgs, M. (2022). A dark side of leadership. Routledge.
Kellerman, B. (2004). Bad leadership: What it is, how it happens, why it matters. Harvard Business School Press.
Petriglieri, G. (2011). Under threat: Responses to and the consequences of threats to individuals’ identities. Academy of Management Review, 36(4), 641–662. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2011.65554645
Rogers, K. (2021). Understanding the journey to leadership: The experiences of principals in the further education sector [Doctoral dissertation, University of Birmingham]. UBIRA eTheses. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/11220/
Dr Kelly Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Leadership at the University of Birmingham. Having held leadership roles in education, she brings practical experience to her research on leadership journeys, leadership development and dark leadership. Her current projects explore dark leadership and the experiences of women founders. She has also written book chapters on dark leadership and its impact.
