A willingness to take risks is a valuable quality in a leader. It encourages innovation, speeds up decision-making and makes it possible to question convention. But when boldness turns into impulsiveness, it can weaken trust, damage relationships and undermine team performance.
How do you tell bold leadership apart from reckless behaviour? Through the Mischievous derailer, identified by the Hogan personality inventories, this article looks at the strengths and the risks attached to this leadership style. It also offers practical ways to build self-awareness, channel impulsive behaviour and turn risk-taking into a genuine lever for lasting performance.
At first, the new executive came across as remarkably charismatic. Those around him were won over by the way he played down risks, by his infectious enthusiasm and by how carefree he seemed about the consequences of his decisions.
Then, little by little, things went downhill.
He began taking ill-considered risks that came back to bite him. He stopped honouring some of his commitments to his team and would not admit his mistakes. In the end, his behaviour created tension, stress and a loss of trust across the group.
At Hogan Assessments, this kind of behaviour is linked to the Mischievous dimension.
People with high tendencies on this dimension often come across as clever, appealing, spontaneous and inclined to test limits.
In a leadership role, these characteristics are not necessarily negative. Kept under control, risk-taking can in fact produce remarkable results.
The whole challenge lies in striking the right balance between boldness and judgement.
The Hogan personality inventories assess three broad dimensions of personality:
One of the three main Hogan inventories, the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), explores the dark side of personality.
It shows how someone is likely to behave when stress, pressure, boredom or overconfidence lead them to loosen their self-regulation.
These characteristics, known as derailers, are counterproductive behaviours that can hold back professional success and leadership effectiveness.
Mischievous is one of the 11 derailers assessed by the HDS.
The HDS Mischievous scale measures behavioural tendencies that range from a discreet, conforming attitude to a way of operating more strongly marked by charm and risk-taking.
At first sight, leaders with a strong inclination to take risks can prove highly captivating.
They usually make decisions quickly, seem largely unaffected by fear and avoid dwelling on their mistakes. These traits can make them excellent entrepreneurs, among other things.
People who score high on Mischievous particularly enjoy pushing boundaries. They look for novelty and variety as a way to escape boredom.
Their philosophy could be summed up like this: "Better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission."
In some settings, this leadership style can be especially effective.
Being able to use charm to build trusting relationships quickly is, for instance, a valuable asset for growing a professional network and mobilising others.
Likewise, challenging certain rules or working around procedures to reach a goal can help move the organisation forward.
This readiness to challenge convention sometimes fosters innovation and makes it possible to overcome obstacles that others would see as insurmountable.
Even so, leaders who score high on Mischievous need to learn how to keep their balance.
Their real challenge is to tell the risks worth taking from those whose consequences could damage their credibility, their relationships or their effectiveness.
Ryan Rush, PhD in psychology, explains how the Mischievous derailer plays out at different career levels and what leaders can put in place to pair risk-taking with greater personal discipline.
His perspective highlights a central issue in leadership development: keeping the benefits of boldness while learning to rein in its excesses.
When a Mischievous leadership style operates without any regulating mechanisms or checks and balances, the consequences for the leader's reputation can be long-lasting.
Some fictional characters, in a deliberately exaggerated way, illustrate where this inclination to take risks can lead.
Think of Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones, Tyler Durden in Fight Club or Commodus in Gladiator.
These characters share one belief: if they do not dominate others, others will end up dominating them.
By their logic, breaking the rules and exploiting other people's weaknesses becomes acceptable, since they consider themselves clever or important enough to escape the consequences of what they do.
At their most problematic, leaders with a strong inclination to take risks can appear provocative, hasty or manipulative.
Stress or boredom can push them to deliberately sidestep, or even break, the rules they find restrictive.
Their impulsiveness grows when they ignore or downplay the long-term consequences of their decisions.
In the most extreme cases, they may even use their charm to sway or manipulate others in pursuit of their own interests.
What began as a relational strength can then become a source of imbalance for the team.
When a leader's Mischievous behaviours have become counterproductive, the fallout can be significant.
Failing to keep commitments erodes employees' trust. Disregard for limits or rules can drive away the people most committed to the organisation running smoothly. And a growing number of irrational risks can gradually wear down the leader's credibility.
One feature of this profile deserves particular attention, however.
A leader can keep excellent relationships with senior management and external contacts while showing far more problematic behaviour within their own team.
Direct reports are often the first to witness the Mischievous derailer in action, particularly at moments when the leader lets their guard down and stops regulating their behaviour well enough.
This gap in perception is a key issue for personality assessment and leadership development.
To support leaders with Mischievous tendencies, the Stop, Start, Continue model offers a particularly useful development framework.
It turns awareness into concrete action while preserving the qualities that give this leadership style its strength.
The first step is to recognise the situations that make behaviours liable to derail leadership more likely to appear.
Many people who score high on Mischievous find boredom hard to bear.
They may then seek fresh stimulation, launch initiative after initiative or take risks simply to break the monotony.
A leader who can spot these impulses will be better prepared to exercise strategic self-awareness.
That ability will help them step back from their decisions, anticipate their consequences and manage their professional reputation more effectively.
Leaders with Mischievous tendencies sometimes see other people as obstacles to be handled, influenced or overcome in order to get what they want.
It is essential that they let go of this way of viewing working relationships.
They will gain far more by seeing the people they deal with as potential allies.
Surrounding themselves with a circle of trusted colleagues and team members can play a decisive part in this shift.
These people can help them keep their commitments, temper their impulsiveness when needed and better understand how their behaviour is perceived.
Along the way, coaching grounded in personality assessment is another relevant lever.
It makes it possible to set development goals suited to the leader's context, responsibilities and the relational challenges they face.
The aim is not to remove the leader's ability to question convention.
Quite the opposite.
In bureaucratic organisations, many procedures are sometimes legacies of practices put in place by former leaders. Some of them can become outdated and slow teams down.
The ability to question whether they still make sense is then a genuine strength.
Behaviours linked to the Mischievous dimension can also spur innovation, provided that initiatives win the support of stakeholders and generate shared enthusiasm.
The challenge, then, is to preserve this creative energy without tipping into excess.
The real subtlety of leadership lies in recognising the moment when boldness helps and the moment when it becomes excessive.
Risk-taking is neither an absolute virtue nor an inherent flaw. Its impact depends above all on the context, on the leader's ability to regulate their behaviour and on the way their decisions affect the people around them.
The tendencies associated with the Mischievous derailer illustrate this duality perfectly: the very characteristics that encourage initiative, charisma and innovation can, when taken too far, undermine trust and collective performance.
This is precisely where personality assessment shows its full value within a talent management approach.
By identifying behavioural strengths and potential derailers, Hogan inventories provide reference points for supporting the development of leadership potential.
Combined with targeted coaching and sharper strategic self-awareness, they enable leaders to build on their strengths while limiting the risks tied to how they behave under pressure.
For organisations, the stakes go beyond individual development: the goal is to build leadership that is more clear-sighted, more responsible and more sustainable, able to support innovation without compromising trust, team cohesion and long-term performance.
Because effective leadership is not about avoiding every risk, but about knowing which ones to take, when to take them and what they will mean for others.
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Ryan Rush, PhD, holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology and works as a senior consultant in the Talent Solutions team at Hogan Assessments.
The 11 derailers series: Excitable · Skeptical · Cautious · Reserved (coming soon) · Leisurely · Bold · Mischievous · Colorful · Imaginative · Diligent · Dutiful
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: Risk-Taking Behavior in Leadership: Finding the Right Balance
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