ABSTRACT
Chapter 4: Personality Disorders compares some toxic leadership characteristics to personality disorders. A personality disorder has characteristics related to the inner experience and the behaviors of the person that are inconsistent with expected norms and standards. The authors provide the American Psychiatric Association’s clinical definitions for paranoid personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. Toxic leaders sometimes exhibit behaviors included in the diagnostic definitions of these personality disorders. The authors also describe potential relationships between toxic leadership and the Big-Five personality traits. For example, some researchers found that leaders who exhibit toxic traits, such as narcissism, register higher on the Big-Five areas of extroversion and neuroticism and lower on agreeableness. Also, leaders who scored lower on extroversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness were considered poor leaders by their peers.
