Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

There is also the question of which personality does the most good for a company. I'll hope you will all forgive me if I quote myself here. At the end of my book "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps" I concluded with this thought:

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If you read much of the business press, you're aware that there are two competing theories about what makes a great business leader. One theory says the leaders should be extremely aggressive psychopaths who crush all their competition. For an example of this theory, you can read almost any biography about Steve Jobs. The second theory says that humble, egoless leaders build the most successful companies, because they do the best job facilitating cooperation and communication. James Collins, in his book Good to Great, makes this case about several leaders, including Darwin E. Smith of the paper company Kimberly-Clark.

Nonetheless, we can find examples of both types of leaders succeeding. Steve Jobs was successful. So was Darwin E. Smith. Is there any way to reconcile the conflicting theories? I believe there is: simply assume that the most important quality any business leader can have is the willingness to quickly fire weak players. Therefore ruthless psychopaths damage their businesses with their pathology, but then make up for it by firing people quickly. And humble, egoless leaders help their companies with their healthy attitudes, but then undermine the business by being too slow to fire weak players.

Humble, egoless leadership, ready to fire fast — that is a rare combination. I would say that Andy Grove of Intel had that combination of traits. And of course, there is Ray Kroc of McDonald's. Due to some people's aversion to the food sold at McDonald's, the sheer brilliance of Kroc's entrepreneurship often goes unsung. But he was willing to take a risk on complete unknowns, most notably on June Martino, one of the all-time great hires in the history of USA business. At the same time, Kroc was willing to fire anyone who didn’t work out. That combination of willingness to take risks on unknowns and quickly fire any mistakes is something to which all business leaders should aspire.

How to spread awareness of what is needed in the leadership of startups?

Recently, I exchanged some email with my friend Colin Steele (currently CTO of TypeZero and formerly CTO of RoomKey.com). We discussed another startup that had failed, and he wrote:

"It's sad and disheartening. I think few people understand how amazingly difficult it is to start a new business, and run it successfully. Drama, people, and personalities, seem to have an outsized role in how these things crash and burn. There needs to be some codification of best internal practices for creating startups, like Steve Blank's book “4 Steps To The Epiphany,” but for the culture; a co-routine that runs alongside "customer development" – call it "culture development" or something."

https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-eboo...

This comment seems highly lauded, but it doesn't ring true to me. You can't really split people up into light and dark, can you? Like most people, I try to do the right thing, and usually succeed. In most cases where I got to know someone who had "dark traits", I eventually learned that they were doing the best they could within the framework of their own lives, and that she is those decisions made a lot more sense when you understood more context of their situations.

After all, the fundamental attribution error is the human tendency to assign agency over decisions to people instead of situations.

To start, I'll define what I view "dark traits" to mean personally to me. They mean having an internal moral system where it is acceptable to harm others in some ways.

The more harm a person is willing to do, the more we generally label those people with the personality traits that we say are "dark".

There is some measure of psychology that would indicate that many such people who we label that way have neuro-atypical thought patterns. They may even simply feel differently about things.

I personally view freewill / personal decision as the primary factor in harming/not-harming others though.

A single person can be all of the following simultaneously: 1. Empathetic ( able to understand what others feel and also feel those emotions themselves ) 2. Willing to harm others ( disregarding how they feel ) 3. Successful. 4. Appear to be neurotypical ( for the most part ) 5. Be "team players" 6. Be narcissistic 7. Be manipulative 8. Be happy

The false conclusion made by most is that harming others is incompatible with the other modes of thinking. That is unreasonable as it is relying on "holistic stability of the mind". There is no guarantee that the thought process or emotions of a human being are internally consistent.

There is also no guarantee that the observable actions of an individual reveal their internal processes.

Since this is a throwaway, I'll take this a step further. I'm okay with actively harming others, either for my own amusement or my own gain.

I can understand how those I would harm feel about it, and understand how terrible that feeling is. It doesn't prevent me from causing this feeling in others. I simply choose to do so. I may occasionally become overly fixated on the emotion, but I am capable of dismissing it.

I am very successful and command a high salary. I am well liked by my peers. I am commended regularly for my work. I am considered a "team player" and am regularly asked to mentor others ( and do so as well ).

Those around me believe and say that they think I am neurotypical even when I have confronted a select few that I am not.

I morally believe that taking advantage of others is "wrong", but I still am capable of doing it, and I do.

I'm happy about who I am. While I do occasionally ponder the morality of my actions, and feel what you might call "guilt" over them, I choose to actively dismiss these emotions and carry on anyway.

I don't think I'm the only person who is this way. In fact, I'd wager that the majority of people are capable of harming others for their own gains, and able to dismiss guilt over it given a bit of effort.

I do agree that I am atypical in the amount of harm I could do and easily dismiss it... but I don't think any of these studies are able to easily "detect" me.

Put simply: if there exist light/dark people, I'm definitely on the dark side, and it absolutely enables me to succeed in ways those on the light side could not.

I will though meter this statement a bit by saying that being on the dark side also can be constraining. There is less mental effort needed to simply choose a solid moral base and stick to it. Most of the atrocities in history have come from highly religious groups with strict principles. Blinding believing in some set of morals is very enabling.

So it is inaccurate to say that being dark/light will cause success either way. There is simply too much variance and complexity with the ways a human can approach life.

You're talking pattie makers/distributors there, and they don't give 2 cents about what people want directly. They care about what sellers are ordering.

The sellers care about what people want, but they either hear "Just the usual, Sam" or if they're picking up more interest in the veggie stuff, they might broach it, but until the suppliers/distributors get enough signal/investment to ramp up, they won't make a bold move, because sticker shock due to potentially competitive pressure and very low supply.

Businesses, done right, involve very little mustache twirling, and lots of spreadsheet jockeying and getting things acquired and staged where they need to be.

Interesting, I didn't know that had been shown. Do you know any good resources to learn more about the 50/50 split?