Week 5-Theories in Action: The Dark Triad

In Theories and Models we spent a day learning about the Dark Triad of Leadership. The Dark Triad consists of psychopathy, narcissism and machiavellianism. We learned that this is a short-term exploitive social strategy that values short term gains over long term benefits. According to this theory, narcissists tend to emerge more as leaders. This could be because narcissists tend to be more extraverted or social. This could also be because narcissists also tend to be overconfident. A narcissist often thinks that they know more than they actually know and other people tend to agree based off of that person’s confidence. Machiavellians tend to be highly manipulative and use people as a means to an end, they have a cynical view of others and are very good at lying. While I don’t want to say that for certain I have seen the Dark Triad playing a role within leadership at KPMG, I have made a few observations. There is a woman (I will call her Nancy, though that is not actually her name) who is currently a director within KTech (KPMG Technology). Over my two years as an intern I have heard and observed some behaviors that make me believe Nancy is a bit of a narcissist and perhaps even machiavellianism. Nancy has only been at KPMG for 3 short years. Each year she has worked at the company she has risen from a senior associate, to an associate director to a director. While this may seem impressive, I believe it is due, in part, to her machiavellian and narcissistic tendencies. I have heard from another employee that she is extremely flirty or sexual in nature with her superiors that are men and has made a point to befriend men that have the power to promote her. I have heard from people that worked below her that she was not a very kind boss, does not want to help people “move up”, does not like to let other people do work because she wants to appear that she does all the work herself and that overall she is very manipulative. It is not just the few people I have talked to that have worked under her that say these things. I have also heard this from other people who have worked alongside her as equals. I am not saying that Nancy is a bad person, I am just saying that I believe she exhibits some narcissistic and machiavellian behaviors that have contributed to her rise as a leader. These traits have possible contributed to her fast climb up the ladder, so much so that I have heard her called “the rocket”. She has traded off the long-term benefits of having a strong and loyal network of friends and coworkers for the short-term gain of “rising through the ranks”. I am curious to hear or observe more of her behavior. I am interested in working with KPMG in the future and if that is the case I am also very curious to see where her career path goes in the next few years and how she gets there.