Abstract
Hubristic leaders systematically and repeatedly take over-confident and over-ambitious decisions, often to the point of recklessness and harm. They are immune to, and contemptuous of, the advice and criticism of others. Their rashness is fueled by prior successes and praise, so much so that they are seduced into significantly overestimating the chances of success and seriously underestimating the possibility of failure. Hubristic leadership has been associated with destructive outcomes in politics (e.g., the Iraq invasion) and business (e.g., the 2008 financial crisis). It is a hazard that needs to be taken into account in the management of risk in organizations and institutions. This chapter argues that leaders' lexical choices in the form of "linguistic markers" can serve as an early warning of emergent or incipient hubristic leader behaviors and the potential for damaging outcomes. It reviews the literature on language and hubris and offers a preliminary list of linguistic markers of hubris. It outlines the practical implications of the research and discusses future directions, including the use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence for the automated and scalable identification of linguistic markers of hubris. As such linguistic analysis, and computerized text analysis (CTA) in particular, is a potential "canary in the coalmine" of hubristic leadership which could alert stakeholders to impending dangers.