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.
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.
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
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).
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.
Facilitative Leadership is all about involving the employees in the decision-making process at all levels enhancing their sense of ownership, responsibility, and motivation. Facilitative leadership style uses a number of indirect communication patterns to help the group reach consensus and build commitment for the decision taken. To be effective in modern organizations, managers need to become facilitative leaders, learn what it means to be a one.
Collaborative leadership is all about collaborative problem-solving and decision-making or can also be defined as the leadership of a collaborative effort. . The term started to appear in the mid-1990s in response to the formation of long term public-private partnerships to rebuild public infrastructure. Learn how you can use principles of collaborative leadership to enhance your leadership skills for being an effective leader.
“Level 5 Leadership”, this term was coined by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” and it is all about achieving "Greatness" as a leader. This article will explain what we mean by Level 5 Leadership and what the characteristics of a Level 5 leader are. What it takes to achieve greatness as a leader, and what are the steps and strategies that one can use to move up to this top level of leadership.
The ten most important qualities that define a good leader are self-awareness, interpersonal and communication skills, ethical values, organizational consciousness, self-confidence, adaptability and flexibility, imagination and creativity, focus & result-orientation, continuous self-development and accountability and ownership for his actions. These ten qualities of leadership every good leader should possess to a certain extent and must continually strive to develop them.
Have you ever resonated that there seem to be as many different ways to lead people as there have been great leaders? When we recall the success of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte to Steve Jobs and Jack Welch, we also notice that they all used different approaches that were suitable to their specific situations and circumstances. Over the last century, researchers and psychologists have developed simple ways to describe the “Styles of leadership” and in this section, we will explore these commonly known leadership styles.
Laissez-faire is a style of leadership that affords the group members a great deal of independence. Tasks are delegated to the group members and they are responsible to see the project through to fruition. Research has shown that this style of leadership leads to the lowest levels of productivity. This article explains this style and covers the implications of having a hands-off approach and the situations where this style could be effective.
Adaptive leadership is a style of leadership that emphasizes the importance of each and every person and role within the company. Adaptive leadership views the organization as an ever-changing, living organization, where employees can learn, adapt, and grow. Adaptive leaders mobilize people towards a common goal and also have the courage to experiment with new ideas and approaches. Adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing groups of people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. Learn how to adopt this style and how to become an adaptive leader!
Authoritarian Leadership Style
Although generally considered as a traditional, outdated, and non-preferred style of leadership, the autocratic style still can be used effectively in certain situations. It is a leadership style characterized by individual absolute control over a group. If you work for an autocratic leader, your job is usually to do what you're told. Learn more about this style and situations where this could be an effective style to use and when to avoid this type of approach. Analyze the characteristics of this style to evaluate if your followers consider you an authoritarian leader!
A good leadership style is something that every effective leader must have in order to succeed, but identifying what that entails or does not entails might be difficult to understand. Most of the research on leadership focuses on the exemplary, best practices, and positive attributes of effective and successful leaders. This article talks about a new approach to learn leadership using lessons from bad leadership. That is the lessons to be learned by examining leaders who have not effectively exercised their power, authority, or influence.
Crisis leadership is a very important part of leading in today's world. The skills a leader needs in order to guide people during a crisis are different from the skills needed to help a group grow. Are you a good crisis leader? What is your leadership style in case of a business crisis situation? A business crisis can test the strongest of leaders, read this article to explore how to ensure you’re ready to take action and weather the storm when one strikes you.
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