Machiavellian Traits Give 31% Edge in German Management as Government Unveils Job-Mobility Reform

Germany’s cabinet approved a package on July 15 designed to loosen the country’s notoriously sticky corporate career ladders. Starting August 1, 2027, the maximum fees for advanced training courses covered by the Aufstiegs-BAföG will jump from €15,000 to €18,000, while the loan-forgiveness rate after passing an exam rises to 60%. More innovatively, the reform introduces a “Job-to-Job Erprobung” — a four-week trial period that lets employees test a new employer without resigning from their current position. The goal, officials say, is to boost professional mobility and make it easier for people to leap into leadership roles.

The new rules target a corporate landscape where internal promotion remains the default path. According to a Handelsblatt Research Institute (HRI) analysis from late 2025, nearly two-thirds of DAX-40 board members rose through their own company’s ranks. Executive recruiters point to three success factors: strong internal networks, visible performance, and the right sponsorship. Yet critics argue that too many German firms treat leadership as administration rather than inspiration, and that over-reliance on internal candidates risks stagnation. “Mis-hires can slow an entire organization down,” one industry expert warned, calling for more openness to outside applicants.

Just one day after the cabinet decision, a study from the University of Trier offered a psychological twist on who gets ahead in that internal pipeline. Authors Uwe Jirjahn and Mehrzad Baktash examined the “Dark Triad” of personality traits — Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy — and found that only one consistently predicts managerial ascent. Individuals with Machiavellian tendencies, the study released on July 16 shows, are 31% more likely to be promoted into management. Their Machiavellianism score sits 14.5% higher than that of employees without a leadership role. For narcissism and psychopathy, no comparable effect emerged.

The internal promotion culture also perpetuates representation gaps that the government’s mobility push only indirectly addresses. A federal report from July 16 documents that East Germans make up 20% of the national population but hold just 8.8% of department-head positions in federal ministries. In the highest federal authorities, their share climbed from 14% to only 15.5% over four years. Women in municipal leadership, meanwhile, reached 23.4% in April 2026 — a meager 0.4 percentage-point increase from the year before, according to Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen. For context, the DAX-40 managed 25.7% women on boards as of September 2025, per the Allbright Foundation. A longer-term analysis by LMU Munich and the University of Cologne covering the 600 largest listed European companies found that female top-management representation rose 9.2 percentage points between 2014 and 2023.

Technology is also redrawing the requirements for executives. In firms with a heavy tech focus, traits such as curiosity and impact-orientation now carry more weight. Artificial intelligence can massively boost performance, causing traditional lines between design, engineering and product management to blur. The German government hopes its new trial-and-training scheme will help workers adapt to these shifting demands. For anyone eyeing the corner office, the study makes one thing clear: internal networks and Machiavellian savvy may help, but the real key is a high capacity to learn new ways of working.

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