Keywords

Narcissism and leadership: it appears to be a perfect match. The unwavering confidence, extraversion, dominance and high self-esteem, all prominent characteristics of narcissists, are also characteristics often associated with leadership. In addition, narcissists’ own conviction in their leadership capabilities, their desire for status, power, and a platform to show off their superior abilities, draws them to such elevated positions. It is thus not surprising that many world leaders and CEOs have been ascribed with narcissistic characteristics (Deluga, 1997; Glad, 2002; Maccoby, 2000). Examples of these leaders range from dictators such as Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein (Glad, 2002) to business leaders such as Steve Jobs and Kenneth Lay of Enron (Kramer, 2003; Robins & Paulhus, 2001) and political leaders such as Donald Trump (Visser, Book, & Volk, 2017). What is disconcerting is that narcissistic leaders have many negative characteristics which might not be evident at first but which will become more evident over time. Examples of these include lack of empathy, aggression , manipulativeness , egocentrism . and a strong sense of entitlement . In this chapter, I will discuss if narcissistic individuals are an asset or a liability to the people they lead. First, I will discuss theory and research showing how narcissistic individuals attain leadership positions. Next, I will review work showing what happens once these individuals are in such positions. I will conclude this chapter with a short discussion of future research directions. I should note that the focus in this chapter will be on the grandiose rather than vulnerable dimension of narcissism. Grandiose narcissism is characterized by more externalizing features such as confidence, dominance, and extraversion. In contrast, vulnerable narcissism, or depressive narcissism, is characterized by more internalizing features such as introversion, low self-esteem, and high emotional distress (Miller et al., 2011, 2018). Given the overlap between grandiose narcissistic characteristics and prototypical leadership characteristics , such as confidence, dominance, and extraversion, grandiose narcissism is more relevant when examining leadership. For instance, a study on US presidents found that presidents had higher grandiose but not higher vulnerable narcissism than the general population (Watts et al., 2013). Moreover, grandiose but not vulnerable narcissism was related to several leadership effectiveness indicators.

Leader Emergence

Prior research has consistently shown that narcissistic individuals tend to emerge as leaders (Brunell et al., 2008; Grijalva, Harms, Newman, Gaddis, & Fraley, 2015; Nevicka, De Hoogh, Van Vianen, Beersma, & McIlwain, 2011). In other words, if there is a group of individuals and one of them has many narcissistic characteristics, this person will most likely be chosen as the group’s leader. One reason for this might be that with their confident demeanor, their dominance, and their seeming authority, narcissistic individuals seem to personify a prototypical leader . Implicit leadership theory (Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984; Lord & Maher, 1991; Offermann, Kennedy, & Wirtz, 1994) describes how people recognize others as leaders. According to this theory, observers match the leader’s behavior against their own implicit schema of what a leader should be like. The greater the overlap between their schema (i.e., leader prototype) and a person’s behavior or assumed characteristics, the more likely others will perceive this person as an effective leader. Characteristics that have been consistently associated with prototypical leaders include confidence, dominance, high self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, intelligence, extraversion, and empathy (Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Kellett, Humphrey, & Sleeth, 2006; Paunonen, Lönnqvist, Verkasalo, Leikas, & Nissinen, 2006; Smith & Foti, 1998).

With the exception of empathy, there is great overlap between the characteristics of narcissism and a prototypical leader, which helps explain why narcissists might be perceived as competent and emerge as leaders. In addition, narcissists’ ability to engender positive impressions in interpersonal contexts , at least in the short term or with unacquainted others (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2010; Carlson, Vazire, & Oltmanns, 2011; Leckelt, Küfner, Nestler, & Back, 2015; Miller, Price, & Campbell, 2012; Ong, Roberts, Arthur, Woodman, & Akehurst, 2016), could be another key to why they tend to rise in the ranks. Narcissists’ charm, enthusiasm, humor, dominance, and confidence (Back et al., 2010; Sedikides & Campbell, 2017) may bias assessors to rate them more favorably and enable narcissistic individuals to ascend to high-power positions. Indeed, acting dominantly enhances perceptions of competence regardless of actual competence, and thereby leads to attainment of influence in a group (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009). Furthermore, although narcissism is not related to objective intelligence (Gabriel, Critelli, & Ee, 1994), narcissistic individuals believe they are more intelligent, and this overconfidence may enhance the illusion that this is true (Murphy et al., 2015). Paulhus (1998) found, for example, that at first acquaintance, narcissists seemed to be perceived as intelligent by their fellow group members (see also Carlson et al., 2011).

In addition to being perceived by others as being leadership worthy, narcissistic individuals are also likely to actively seek leadership positions themselves. They show a dislike of subordinate positions (Benson, Jordan, & Christie, 2016), unless it presents opportunities to climb the hierarchical ladder (Zitek & Jordan, 2016), and among the many competencies that narcissistic individuals rate themselves overly positively on is leadership (Judge, LePine, & Rich, 2006; Grijalva et al., 2015). Moreover, narcissists’ ceaseless pursuit of admiration (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001) leads them to seek social contexts that enable them to show off their superiority (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002). The leadership role thus provides them with an alluring stage from which they can receive the adulation they seek.

Thus, narcissists attain positions of power because, firstly, they are driven by a desire to become a leader, and secondly, they are being hoisted there by others who see them as quintessential leaders. In the next section, I will describe theory and research examining what happens once highly narcissistic individuals attain leadership: What kind of impact do such leaders have on those they lead?

Leadership Effectiveness

Because narcissists possess both positive as well as negative characteristics, narcissism in leaders has often been touted a mixed blessing (Campbell, Hoffman, Campbell, & Marchisio, 2011; Judge, Piccolo, & Kosalka, 2009; Rosenthal & Pittinsky, 2006; Sedikides & Campbell, 2017). Narcissists are decisive, show persistence in the face of failure (Wallace, Ready, & Weitenhagen, 2009), and increase performance in response to critique (Nevicka, Baas, & Ten Velden, 2016). They work well in contexts which provide opportunities to showcase their abilities, such as those characterized as having high pressure, being challenging, and having an evaluative audience (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002). Put differently, they seem to be well-suited for a leadership function.

Indeed, narcissistic leaders tend to communicate bold visions and are seen as charismatic (Deluga, 1997; Galvin, Waldman, & Balthazard, 2010; Maccoby, 2000; Post, 1993). This, in turn, may motivate their followers and inspire them to work toward a common (organizational) goal. Moreover, narcissistic leaders promote radical innovations (Gerstner, König, Enders, & Hambrick, 2013) and decrease experienced insecurity among followers in uncertain contexts (e.g., during economic crises; Nevicka, De Hoogh, Van Vianen, & Ten Velden, 2013). A study on US presidents further found that narcissism predicted better crisis management, public persuasiveness, and the ability to push through an agenda and initiate legislation (Watts et al., 2013).

On the negative side, however, narcissists’ unrealistic optimism, their overconfidence in their own abilities, self-serving behavior, impulsiveness, and their sense of entitlement and superiority can have potentially disastrous consequences for groups or organizations they lead (Judge et al., 2009). Narcissists have been found to use resources for their own gain at a long-term cost to others (Campbell, Bush, Brunell, & Shelton, 2005), which could end up hurting their organizations. Furthermore, narcissists tend to only listen to information they want to hear, believe that their ideas and solutions are the best (Maccoby, 2000), and disregard other people’s advice (Kausel, Culbertson, Leiva, Slaughter, & Jackson, 2015). Research on the influence of narcissistic leaders in decision-making teams found that narcissistic leaders were inclined to dominate the discussion and reduce information sharing among their followers, which led to reduced team performance (Nevicka, Ten Velden, De Hoogh, & Van Vianen, 2011).

Narcissists’ tendency to ignore expert advice and their need for glory and adulation might also lead narcissistic leaders to pursue unrealistic projects and risky investments or even display unethical and deviant work behavior. Indeed, narcissistic CEOs made riskier investment decisions which generated greater volatility in organizational performance (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007). Moreover, narcissism has been linked to white-collar crime (Blickle, Schlegel, Fassbender, & Klein, 2006) and engagement in counterproductive work behavior (Penney & Spector, 2002), such as theft, sabotage, interpersonal aggression, and work slowdowns. Importantly, power seems to exacerbate narcissists’ overconfidence (Macenczak, Campbell, Henley, & Campbell, 2016), which implies that the higher narcissists climb in hierarchy, the more toxic their negative characteristics might become. Finally, narcissists’ lack of empathy and their tendency to attribute failures to others while taking credit for successes (Stucke, 2003) could lead narcissistic leaders to abuse their power and bully their followers, thereby compromising follower well-being (Tepper, 2000). For instance, narcissists have been repeatedly found to show aggressive reactions toward criticism or anything they perceive as a threat to their ego (e.g., Barry, Chaplin, & Grafeman, 2006; Bushman & Baumeister, 1998), even showing displaced aggressive responses toward innocent others (Martinez, Zeichner, Reidy, & Miller, 2008). Finally, the same research which found narcissism in presidents to be related to a number of positive outcomes also found narcissism to be related to negative outcomes such as congressional impeachment resolutions and unethical behavior (Watts et al., 2013).

It is this combination of dark and bright sides of narcissism that has led researchers to wrestle with the question of whether narcissistic leaders would be an objectively desirable or an undesirable addition to groups and organizations (e.g., Campbell et al., 2011; Judge et al., 2009; Rosenthal & Pittinsky, 2006; Sedikides & Campbell, 2017). To complicate matters, past research on how followers subjectively perceive narcissistic leaders shows inconsistent findings. For example, some studies showed that narcissistic leaders were evaluated negatively on task and relational leadership behaviors (Martin, Côté, & Woodruff, 2016), while others show that they are evaluated more positively in terms of transformational leadership or their overall leadership effectiveness (Judge et al., 2006; Nevicka, Ten Velden et al., 2011). A recent meta-analysis found no linear relationship between leader narcissism and follower perceptions of leader effectiveness (Grijalva et al., 2015) but did find a curvilinear relationship. Thus, while a certain level of narcissism in leaders appears to be associated with positive evaluations, beyond a certain threshold narcissism is considered negative.

To reconcile these findings, recent theory and research on narcissistic leadership has argued that context is important to take into account when evaluating the effectiveness of narcissistic individuals (Campbell & Campbell, 2009; Campbell et al., 2011; Nevicka et al., 2013; Sedikides & Campbell, 2017). Specifically, narcissistic leaders are proposed to be beneficial for organizations in the “emerging zone” (i.e., in short-term contexts following ascent to leadership position; during brief periods of instability, insecurity, or crisis; in situations involving unacquainted individuals or early-stage relationships) and detrimental in the “enduring zone” (i.e., in long-term contexts, in situations involving acquainted individuals or continuing relationships; Campbell et al., 2011). This proposed negative representation of narcissistic leaders in the long-term stems from narcissists’ many toxic interpersonal characteristics, which would be expected to become more evident and impactful over time. For instance, over time narcissistic leaders’ aggressive reactions toward others’ criticism could become increasingly stressful for followers. While these propositions have not yet been examined in organizations where narcissists hold legitimate power positions, research on narcissistic individuals in small student groups shows support for this idea. While narcissistic individuals are initially perceived positively due to their expressiveness and humor, as time progresses (as little as a few weeks or months) more socially, toxic characteristics become noticeable, such as hostility, lack of empathy, and untrustworthiness, and consequently the popularity and leadership status of narcissistic individuals decreases (Carlson & DesJardins, 2015; Carlson et al., 2011; Leckelt et al., 2015; Paulhus, 1998).

To summarize, narcissistic leadership has both positive and negative consequences for groups, organizations, or even countries. Incorporating additional factors such as time or context as moderators might be a fruitful avenue to reconcile the seemingly contradictory findings. In the next section, I will discuss important developments in research on narcissistic leadership and provide suggestions for future research.

Future Directions

As mentioned above, recent theory on narcissistic leadership suggests that time might be an important potential moderator to further our knowledge about the consequences of narcissistic leaders. If we would generalize findings showing declining positive perceptions of narcissists in student groups to legitimate leadership contexts (e.g., in organizations), we would expect narcissistic leaders to be perceived positively by their followers in the short-term but more negatively in the long-term . However, the complexities of leader-follower relationships (Thomas, Martin, Epitropaki, Guillaume, & Lee, 2013) are not captured merely by the length of acquaintance of a leader and follower. Prior research found that accuracy of personality judgments was associated with increasing amount of new behavioral expressions but not with the length of acquaintance per se (Biesanz, West, & Millevoi, 2007). Thus, it is important to take into consideration how likely it is for followers to “pick up” on or discern certain behaviors and gain better insight into their leaders. This might indeed depend on how long followers know their leader, but it might also be dependent on the amount of opportunities that followers have of observing various samples of the leader’s behavior (Hinds & Cramton, 2013). Thus, leader visibility (Napier & Ferris, 1993) could be examined as a potentially important moderator when looking at the relationship between leader narcissism and perceptions of leadership effectiveness. One would expect that the more visible and frequent a person’s actions are, the more likely that the observer will obtain an accurate picture of that person’s character (Vazire, 2010). In addition, the intensity of leader follower contact would likewise be important to examine. Both these concepts are related to leader distance, which indeed has been shown to affect not only followers’ perceptions of leaders’ behavior but also the impact that leaders’ behavior has on followers (Antonakis & Atwater, 2002).

Another fruitful development to further unravel the influence of narcissistic leaders is to take a contextual approach to leadership. Different contexts or features of the environment can activate the need for different leadership traits (Lord, Brown, Harvey, & Hall, 2001). Given that narcissistic individuals are perceived to reduce uncertainty and were therefore selected as leaders particularly in uncertain contexts (Nevicka et al., 2013), future research could investigate whether narcissistic leaders are actually more effective in unstable or dynamic contexts in comparison to stable contexts. For example, crises, which trigger uncertainty and are potentially threatening to individual interests (Pearson & Clair, 1998), require a leader who can signal a swift resolution of the situation (Madera & Smith, 2009) and can restore order and certainty (Shamir & Howell, 1999). When people feel threatened or afraid, they seek assertive or authoritative leadership to help them restore their sense of security (Madsen & Snow, 1991; Padilla, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2007) and find agentic attributes such as dominance and confidence to be more important than communal attributes such as warmth and empathy (Hoyt, Simon, & Reid, 2009). Thus, uncertain or crises contexts might represent situations in which having a narcissistic leader can actually have a reassuring influence on followers and reduce their stress. Here it would also be particularly interesting to distinguish between actual performance and perceptions of followers. Would narcissists’ problem-solving abilities actually be superior to lower narcissistic leaders in a highly uncertain or stressful context? Or would their benefit reside more in their presence allaying followers’ fears and concerns? If the latter is the case, whether or not narcissistic leaders actually make sound decisions to deal with a crisis or uncertain situation might not even matter, as long as followers believe they have a decisive and confident leader at the helm.

Finally, given that leaders do not operate in isolation but depend on their interactions with followers, an interesting avenue for future research would be to examine fit between narcissistic leaders and followers based on followers’ personality. For example, dominance complementarity theory would suggest that narcissistic leaders might fit better with followers who are more submissive rather than dominant (Grijalva & Harms, 2014). This theory posits that more satisfying relationships are achieved when dominant, assertive behavior by one person corresponds with submissive, passive behavior by the other (Carson, 1969; Kiesler, 1983). In contrast, when two individuals both demonstrate dominant behavior, this leads to irritation and anger (Shechtman & Horowitz, 2006). Thus, a narcissistic leader with a dominant follower might get frustrated in his/her efforts to exert influence over this follower, and likewise, proactive or more dominant followers might get frustrated with assertive leaders. Conversely, submissive followers will feel more comfortable in a position where they are controlled by a leader, because this provides them with structure and direction (Thoroughgood, Padilla, Hunter, & Tate, 2012). In support of the dominance complementarity theory, prior research found that extraverted leaders had a positive influence on performance of followers who were passive, but a negative influence on performance of proactive followers (Grant, Gino, & Hofmann, 2011).

Concluding Thoughts

At the beginning of this chapter, I posed a question: Does the apparent match between narcissism and leadership make narcissistic individuals an asset or a liability to the people they lead? I provided a summary of prior research which showed that, through self-selection, positive first impressions, and the possession of prototypical leadership characteristics, narcissistic individuals emerge as leaders. While these findings have been consistent, research on the consequences of narcissistic leaders and perceptions of narcissistic leaders’ effectiveness leads to more complex conclusions, with some studies pointing toward a positive and some pointing toward a negative impact. The reason for these discrepancies rests most likely in the paradox that is narcissism: narcissistic leaders possess both positive (e.g., charisma, extraversion, confidence, and bold vision) and negative characteristics (e.g., lack of empathy, aggression, tendency to exploit others, and egocentrism). Thus, a more suitable question to ask is not if but when are narcissistic leaders effective. Pursuing this question leads to a better understanding on how to harness the positive side of these leaders while curbing the negative effects. One thing is certain however: power appears to exacerbate narcissists’ overconfidence. To ensure that the toxic side of narcissists is contained, it is imperative to put checks and balances in place to ensure that such leaders are held accountable. Narcissists’ need for adulation and desire to work with submissive followers might lead them to curb voices of opposition and surround themselves with sycophants. This makes it all the more important to not be blinded by the positive, sometimes charming, side of narcissistic leaders without realizing that this leadership package also comes with many toxic sides.