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Narcissistic leadership is a leadership style in which the leader is only interested in themself. Their priority is themself – at the expense of their people/group members. This leader exhibits the characteristics of a narcissist: arrogance, dominance and hostility. It is a sufficiently common leadership style that it has acquired its own name.^[1] Narcissism is most often described as unhealthy and destructive. It has been described as "driven by unyielding arrogance, self-absorption, and a personal egotistic need for power and admiration".^[2]

Narcissism and groups

A study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that when a group is without a leader, a narcissist is likely to take charge. Researchers have found that people who score high in narcissism tend to take control of leaderless groups.^[3] Freud considered "the narcissistic type... especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role of leaders and to... impress others as being 'personalities'.":^[4] one reason may be that "another person's narcissism has a great attraction for those who have renounced part of their own... as if we envied them for maintaining a blissful state of mind—an unassailable libidinal position which we ourselves have since abandoned."^[5]

According to the book Narcissism: Behind the Mask, there are four basic types of leader with narcissists most commonly in type 3 although they may be in type 1:^[6]

authoritarian with task oriented decision making
democratic with task oriented decision making
authoritarian with emotional decision making
democratic with emotional decision making

Michael Maccoby stated that "psychoanalysts don't usually get close enough to [narcissistic leaders], especially in the workplace, to write about them."^[7]

Corporate narcissism

According to Alan Downs, corporate narcissism occurs when a narcissist becomes the chief executive officer (CEO) or other leadership roles within the senior management team and gathers an adequate mix of codependents around him (or her) to support the narcissistic behavior. Narcissists profess company loyalty but are only really committed to their own agendas, thus organizational decisions are founded on the narcissist's own interests rather than the interests of the organization as a whole, the various stakeholders, or the society in which the organization operates.^[8] As a result, "a certain kind of charismatic leader can run a financially successful company on thoroughly unhealthy principles for a time.^[9]

Neville Symington has suggested that "one of the ways of differentiating a good-enough organisation from one that is pathological is through its ability to exclude narcissistic characters from key posts."^[10]

Impact of healthy v. destructive narcissistic managers

Lubit compared healthily narcissistic managers versus destructively narcissistic managers for their long-term impact on organizations.^[11]

Characteristic	Healthy narcissism	Destructive narcissism
Self-confidence	High outward self-confidence in line with reality	Grandiose
Desire for power, wealth and admiration	May enjoy power	Pursues power at all costs, lacks normal inhibitions in its pursuit
Relationships	Real concern for others and their ideas; does not exploit or devalue others	Concerns limited to expressing socially appropriate response when convenient; devalues and exploits others without remorse
Ability to follow a consistent path	Has values; follows through on plans	Lacks values; easily bored; often changes course
Foundation	Healthy childhood with support for self-esteem and appropriate limits on behaviour towards others	Traumatic childhood undercutting true sense of self-esteem and/or learning that he/she doesn't need to be considerate of others

References

^ Neider, Linda L. (2010). The Dark Side of Management. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing. p. 29. ISBN 978-1607522645.
^ Linda L. Neider/Chester A. Schriesheim, The Dark Side of Management (2010) p. 29
^ Narcissistic People Most Likely to Emerge as Leaders Newswise, Retrieved on October 7, 2008.
^ Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (PFL 7) pp. 362–63
^ Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) pp. 82–83
^ David Thomas, Narcissism: Behind the Mask (2010) – Chapter 4 Leadership
^ Maccoby M Narcissistic leaders: The incredible pros, the inevitable cons. Harvard Business Review, (January–February), pp. 69–77, p. 75 (2000)
^ Downs, Alan: Beyond The Looking Glass: Overcoming the Seductive Culture of Corporate Narcissism, 1997
^ Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Life and how to survive it (London 1994) p. 101
^ Neville Symington, Narcissism: A New Theory (London 2004) p. 10
^ Lubit, R. (2002). The long-term organizational impact of destructively narcissistic managers. Academy of Management Executive, 16(1), 127–38.