A complete guide to the dark triad: understand, recognize, and cope with the darkest side of leadership - Part 2 of 2.
When it comes to leadership, a boss with Dark Triad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) can make our lives almost impossible.
In Part 1, I described the Dark Triad, what a Dark Leader looks like on a Tuesday, why these people rise, and why their success is a house of cards. I also told you about the officer who kept me locked in my cabin for days.
This post is the other half: what you do when one of them is your boss.
I'll use the language I know. At sea, you don't choose the weather. You don't choose the captain either, most of the time. What you do choose is how you navigate, what you log, who you talk to on the bridge, and when it's time to make for a different port. That's really the whole post. The rest is detail.
Sensing the Dark Side
Not every difficult boss is a Dark Leader. Some are just bad at the job, or overwhelmed, or having the worst year of their life. Those people can change, and sometimes a direct conversation is all it takes.
A Dark Leader is different, and the difference isn't in what he does, but in what he will never do. A boss with Dark Triad traits:
Will never recognize his flaws.
Will interpret his flaws as strengths.
Will never admit to harming anyone, and will not care if you point it out.
Will sincerely believe he is the best leader you have ever had.
If all four hold, and you've seen them hold over months rather than days, you are not dealing with a person who is going to improve. You are dealing with weather. Plan accordingly.
Pro tip: unfortunately, they don't wear black capes. The recognition signs for each of the three traits are in Part 1, and I'd rather you read those than diagnose from a single bad meeting. Diagnosing personality is a professional's job. Protecting yourself is yours.
Five things to understand about the Dark Triad
Before the strategies, there are a few assumptions you need to accept.
Doing nothing changes nothing. The weather doesn't improve just because you quietly wait it out. I tried that, and it cost me two years.
Isolation is not protection. Shrinking, going quiet, quiet-quitting, keeping your head down feel like shelter, but they aren't. A Dark Leader reads withdrawal as weakness, and he feeds on it.
You are not his only target. There are others. They are probably as silent as you are. This matters later.
Someone will listen. A colleague, a mentor, a partner, a coach. You can count on me, too; my inbox is open.
Alcohol and drugs will feel like a way out. They are the opposite. They make recovery longer and thinking worse, and you'll need your thinking.
Ten things you can actually do
Dealing with a Dark Leader needs a careful, deliberate approach. Here are ten strategies that work. Not all apply to every situation, and the order is less important than the fact that you are actually taking action.
Set your boundaries, out loud if you have to. Decide what you will and will not tolerate in your interactions, and hold the line. A boundary you never state is just a wish, and the lantern genie won't help you.
Keep a log. Dates, times, what was said, who was present. Especially the humiliations, the broken promises, the public dressing-downs. Keep it outside the company's systems. This is the single most important thing on this list, because every other move you might make later (HR, legal, leaving well) depends on it. I wish someone had told me this earlier.
Build your bridge crew. Family, trusted colleagues, a mentor, a professional coach. People outside the situation see it more clearly than you can, and they will remind you who you are when the boss has spent six months telling you otherwise. This network is not a luxury. It's what helped me endure the pain and kept me in the Navy.
Stay professional, especially when he isn't. Kimberly Williams, one of my guests on "When Leaders Talk," put it well: stay composed in every interaction, because an emotional reaction will be used against you. Do the work, do it well, and let competence be your armor. In a toxic environment, being very good at your job doesn't guarantee safety, but it is the best protection you have.
Learn his patterns. Once you understand the Dark Triad, a lot of his behavior becomes predictable. Predictable is manageable. You'll know which topics trigger him, which days are dangerous, and how to communicate without lighting the fuse.
Push back. Carefully. You don't have to endure in silence. But choose the battles that matter: the ones that protect someone, or that serve a purpose larger than your pride. The rest aren't worth the emotional cost, and he has more energy for conflict than you do. Trust me.
Don't hand him the knife. Keep your personal life, your fears, your insecurities out of the conversation. Anything you share that could be exploited will be. Keep it about the work.
Take care of the machine. Sleep, movement, something outside work that is entirely yours. Mindfulness, if it works for you; counseling, if you need it. This isn't softness. It's maintenance, and a navigator who hasn't slept makes bad calls.
Escalate when it crosses the line. If the behavior becomes harassment, bullying, or anything with a legal name, report it: inside the organization if you trust it, outside if you don't. Some countries have real worker-protection law, and you should know yours. Do it carefully, and keep the log from strategy number two in hand.
Plan the exit before you need it. Sometimes the only winning move is to change crew. Deciding that is not failure. It's self-preservation, and I strongly suggest you start looking while you still have the energy to search well, before the damage is done.
After: the part nobody talks about
Here is what the strategy lists never tell you. Even when it's over, when you've left, or he has, it isn't over. The experience leaves a mark, and it can stay for years. I wrote the opening of Part 1 twenty years later, and I still had to steady myself to do it.
But I want you to know something about that mark. In her book The Bullied Brain, Jennifer Fraser describes how abusive relationships, including the workplace kind, physically affect the brain, and how the brain can recover. The mechanism is called neuroplasticity, and the short version is that the damage is real and so is the repair. You are not stuck with the version of yourself that he produced.
What helps:
Self-awareness. If you read this blog, you knew that was coming. Here it means naming what you feel, where it comes from, and what it's doing to you, without minimizing any of it. Read about this. I'd start with Fraser's book.
Mindfulness and meditation. Not because it's fashionable, but because the fear response he installed in you needs to be unlearned, and this is one of the few tools that works on it directly.
Self-care, the unglamorous kind. Sleep, exercise, food, a hobby. The ancient Romans had it right: mens sana in corpore sano. A healthy mind lives in a healthy body, and the body took the hit too.
Creativity. Writing, music, art, whatever lets you express what talking can't. I wrote a novel and started playing guitar partly for this reason.
Professional support. A coach, a therapist, a counselor, a support group. You need a safe place to process it and to catch the beliefs the dark leader implanted in you ("I'm not good enough," "I deserved it") before they become permanent furniture.
A loud voice. Use what happened to you. Write about it, as Fraser did and as I'm doing now. Change how your organization promotes people. Vicki Courtemanche, another guest on my podcast, helped draft workplace-wellbeing legislation after her own experience. You don't have to go that far, but you can be heard, and every person who speaks makes it harder for the next Dark Leader to climb.
Why I'm writing this
I have been there. For two years I woke up and counted the days left on a deployment the way you count in a place you're trying to survive. I nearly left a career I'd dreamed of since I was a child because of one badly equipped man, and I wasn't the only one he was pushing toward that edge.
That experience is why I became a leadership and executive coach, and why I wrote The Last Human Coach. I don't want others to sit where I sat, with no one to tell them the weather isn't their fault and that there is a way through it.
Suppose you are in it right now: two things. Read the list above and do number two today. And if you want someone on your bridge who has navigated this before, this is what I do.
The storm is real. So is the other side.
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OMG. Everything is so relatable. I had had the experience of dealing with a bad boss... what an awful experience.