Narcissistic Leadership

Narcissistic leadership is a leadership style in which the leader is only interested in him. Narcissists are good for companies that need people with vision and the courage to take them in new directions. Such leaders sometime might be highly successful, but is it a style to be followed. Learn the various types of narcissistic leadership and the characteristics of such leaders.

What is Narcissistic leadership?

Freud named the narcissistic personality after the mythical Greek hero; Narcissus, who became pathologically obsessed with himself and his reflection, an obsession that ultimately ended his life (Maccoby, 2000).

Sigmund Freud (1931) defined a narcissistic personality type as an individual whose main interest is self-preservation, is independent and impossible to intimidate. Freud (1931) suggested that individuals belonging to this type of personality group impress others as being strong personalities, and are especially suited to act as bastions for others, essentially in leadership roles.

Narcissistic leadership is a leadership style in which the leader is only interested in him. Their priority is themselves - at the expense of their people/group members. This leader exhibits the characteristics of a narcissist: arrogance, dominance, and hostility. It is a common leadership style. A study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that when a group is without a leader, you can often count on a narcissist to take charge. Researchers found that people who score high in narcissism tend to take control of leaderless groups.

Narcissism may range from anywhere between healthy and destructive. To critics, "narcissistic leadership (preferably destructive) is driven by unyielding arrogance, self-absorption, and a personal egotistic need for power and admiration.

Types of Narcissistic leadership:

There are four basic types of a leader with narcissists:

1. Authoritarian: With task-oriented decision making

2. Democratic: With task-oriented decision making

3. Authoritarian: With emotional decision making

4. Democratic: With emotional decision making

Characteristics of Narcissistic leadership:

1. Narcissists leaders profess company loyalty but are only really committed to their own agendas.

2. They pursue their own interests rather than the interests of the organization

3. Their organizational decisions are highly influenced by their personal agendas

4. Productive Narcissists have an interrelated set of skills, foresight, systems thinking, visioning, motivating, and partnering

5. Productive narcissists tend to be over-sensitive to criticism, over-competitive, isolated, and grandiose

6. Productive narcissists have a sense of freedom to do whatever they want rather than feeling constantly constrained by circumstances

7. Productive narcissists through their charisma are able to draw people into their vision and gather many followers who follow them.

8. Narcissists Leadership is good for companies that need people with vision and the courage to take them in new directions.

9. Narcissists Leadership can also lead companies into trouble by refusing to listen to the advice and warnings of their managers.

10. Narcissists Leaders have difficulty in forging long-term relationships because they are continuously seeking recognition from others to reinforce their own self-worth.

11. As leaders, narcissistic individuals have fantasies of power and success, an exaggerated, grandiose sense of self-importance, and little empathy or concern for the feelings and needs of others (Yukl, 2002).

12. Such innate characteristics lead to the exploitation and manipulation of others for the primary purpose of indulging a narcissistic leader’s desire for personal enhancement. They expect special favors without feeling any need to reciprocate, oversimplify relationships and motives and have extremely bipolar worldviews; seeing things as either extremely good or extremely bad and see others around them as either loyal supporters or mortal enemies (Yukl, 2002).

Conclusion:

Narcissists, by definition, are arrogant, have splendid visions about their own importance, believe they are special and have unique gifts that others do not, have a sense of entitlement, are exploitive, and lack empathy. These qualities are not considered to be desirable leadership traits by most scholars. However, they could be highly successful in certain circumstances where the organization wants to pursue a new line of business that faces resistance within the organization. They could be highly effective in transforming phases as they are strategic thinkers who can see the big picture and take risky challenges.