In a world where the only constant seems to be constant change, it’s no surprise that many businesses are looking for disruptive leaders who can reshape the company or revolutionize an industry. In many organizations, there is an increasing feeling that “If it ain’t broke, break it!”, and the data indeed suggests disruptive leadership is a competitive advantage. The economic impact of disruptive technologies is estimated at $45 trillion, and 40% of companies that made up the Fortune 500 in 2010 have gone out of business. Given this rapid rate of change, it makes sense for businesses to seek disruptive leadership. However, leaders operating in environments requiring more moderate and iterative change, or those with the wrong motivations for change, can create more problems than they solve.
Leaders with higher levels of Disruptor traits have a natural ability and passion for finding loopholes, backdoors, and shortcuts that can accelerate innovation and disruption – they love to be the business that puts others out of business. They love nothing better than to challenge the status quo and established ideas. Their natural appetite for change and their comfort with chaos allow them to operate in extreme, high-stress environments where genuine innovations can thrive; however, essential cornerstones of organizational governance and culture can become collateral damage.
And with any personality trait, more isn’t necessarily better because context matters. When an organization has enjoyed a sustained period of success and built a robust, reliable operation, there is more at risk. While many organizations operate in an environment where they need to evolve to survive constantly, some businesses find themselves at a point where they need to consolidate and embed their competitive advantage and culture, so they need leaders who can incubate and iteratively improve the current state, acting as a ‘safe pair of hands’ to set the business up for the next stage of growth.
Disruptor personality traits are anchored in two things: the amount of change, ranging from complete transformations to minor improvements, and the pace of change, ranging from chaotic to methodical. The psychology underpinning the Disruptor leader is linked to Sociopathy, described by psychologist George Partridge as a failure to adhere to societal norms. Leaders with high Disruptor attributes are the ‘Defiant Disruptors’ who work to the maxim of “If it isn’t broken, break it!”. Whereas leaders with low Disruptor attributes are the ‘Iterative Improvers’ who thrive in situations where they can make modest and measured improvements to the status quo.
Unpacking the Performance Personality of ‘The Defiant Disruptor’
The most common misperception of the leader with high Disruptor traits is the belief that they are fearless. To the contrary, they ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ – the volatility and uncertainty that paralyzes many people engages and excites these leaders, driving them to take disruptive action. While some are worrying and waiting in times of complexity and ambiguity, the ‘Defiant Disruptors’ are celebrating, creating, and embracing radical ideas, trial, and error – they truly love to fail fast and learn. While this is useful in situations requiring rapid innovation and change, these personalities can create more problems than they solve if they are not well contained by healthy morality, ego-defences, and motivations.
While their ability to thrive in disruptive and volatile environments that require rapid change makes them incredibly valuable to businesses that need leaders to drive transformational ideas and initiatives, this behavior can create commercial and psychosocial risks for the business if it is not well contained. Disruptor leaders with unhealthy levels of sensation-seeking motivation and poor morality may continue to ‘double-down’ on disruption that drives massive cash burn, unacceptable debt levels, and the destruction of goodwill with investors, suppliers, and customers.
Conversely, Disruptors who drive meaningful and lasting change not only have an appetite for transformation, but they also have lower levels of defensiveness and take on board feedback. This lowers conformity in teams and creates healthy dialogue and robust debate, which is essential for true innovation and risk reduction. Additionally, Disruptive leaders with high levels of morality take actions based not only on the need for change but also on the outcomes it will create for their stakeholders, shareholders, and society at large. This lowers anxiety in teams because people are more connected and comfortable with the rationale for the change. When these ‘winning combinations’ of personality and containment factors come together, the leader is likely to have an incredible impact on both people and business performance.
Finally, leaders with high Disruptor traits can create overly stimulating environments that amplify anxiety and burn out their teams if their appetite for disruption is not contained by healthy levels of sensation-seeking motivation. A leader with a low tolerance for boredom who is constantly agitating ‘change for the sake of change’ may create more problems than they solve. Disruption and stability are not mutually exclusive – the Defiant Disruptors can drive change and create a psychosocially safe culture underpinned by innovation, but only when they possess the right levels of morality, ego defenses, and motivations for change.
Unpacking the Performance Personality of ‘The Iterative Improver’
While many sectors and organizations require rapid and frequent reinvention to survive and thrive, there are industries and businesses where it is essential to operate within the rules, regulations, and existing systems. Leaders with low Disruptor traits are the ‘Iterative Improvers’ who function best in heavily regulated or incumbent businesses that must focus on compliance and disciplined refinement to produce high-quality products rather than trail-blazing disruption. They take the view that “if it ain’t broke, then fortify it so it doesn’t break”.
Leaders with Improver traits operate best in environments that are calm and considered, rather than chaotic and constantly changing. Their predictability and focus provide consistent direction of effort towards a clearly defined outcome. Like water carving stone over the years or the captain steering a massive ship, their course corrections are subtle and minor yet consistently monitored and measured as they navigate the business on a long voyage that steers clear of anything that could sink the ship.
Iterative Improvers with healthy levels of sensation-seeking motivation create strong psychosocial safety in their people by managing stimulation and preventing burnout. Their teams are likely to experience more planned and predictable changes, which allows them time to adapt to innovations and incorporate them into their operating rhythm. A leader with these traits is like a steady hand, calming the situation and bringing clear plans and soothing processes to the volatile, uncertain, and complex situations businesses and teams often find themselves in.
When the Improvers operate consistently with high levels of morality, they also significantly minimize ambiguity in their people. If the leader’s playbook is known and replicated time and time again, then there is little uncertainty around ‘the way we do things around here’. This contributes significantly to the psychological safety, function, and productivity of the team. When the plan and the processes are written down, codified, and communicated clearly across the team, then ambiguity is reduced because everyone operates from the same playbook.
Additionally, these leaders have a strong ability to lower anxiety – they say what they’ll do and do what they say. Their reliability is often hard-wired into their systems, processes, and operating rhythms, so people know where they are, where they’re going, and how to get there. While this is overwhelmingly positive for businesses, there is a downside risk to this reliability. As the team relies on its dependable leader, it may lose competence in certain areas. It’s a little like having a reliable chauffeur – they are always there to pick you up on time, drop you off at the right spot, and get you there without incident, but after a while, your sense of direction and driving competence might decrease as your reliance on your chauffeur increases.
This highlights the key risk for teams working for leaders who are Iterative Improvers - conformity. If the team gets too used to being ‘chauffeured’ and healthy debate decreases because the plan, process, and system do the thinking for them, this can stifle innovation and erode alignment if people don’t feel they have a mechanism to speak up and challenge the direction of the business and how the leader is driving the organization. Conformity is often the ‘the silent killer’ of innovation and competitive advantage, and it can creep in if leaders don’t embed formats and forums for dialogue and debate into their reliable ways working.
Identifying and leveraging the Disruptors and Improvers
So how do you know if you have the Disruptors who can rapidly transform your business, or the Improvers who protect and extend your current competitive advantage? As business becomes more complex and challenging, organizations can no longer rely on assessments that measure a leader’s ‘identity’ - their self-perception and the view others have of them. As things get tougher, measurements and data related to a leader’s actual capability must get better. Organizations need scientific, reliable data on the true personality of their leaders.
The Greyscale is the only commercial leadership test that uses science and psychology to measure the type of Disruptor a leader is - are they the Defiant Disruptor, who thrives in chaos and change, or the Iterative Improver, who calmly and consistently makes modifications? To test your leaders and learn more, check out The Greyscale Assessment at http://tgsleadership.com.
