Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of organisational psychology at University College London and CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems, asked this question in an interesting article on the Harvard Business Review website.
He notes that narcissism among senior managers has been growing for decades and the situation is made even more complicated by the way people who assess leadership potential in companies mistakenly equate confidence with a real ability to lead people and businesses.
Pride goes before a fall
Overconfident narcissistic leaders are able to gain followers both face to face and via the media. However, the fact that Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or John Rockefeller achieved huge success does not mean narcissism is a positive leadership trait. Most overconfident leaders are ultimately not only inefficient but also destructive both to themselves and their surroundings. Their companies stagger between huge successes and huge crashes; they more often act fraudulently and abuse their power.
When we have so much evidence about the negative consequences of narcissistic leadership and know how to identify narcissistic leaders, why do we simply not send them packing? Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic believes the cause may lie in the archaic archetypes of leadership ingrained in our way of thinking. This needs to be changed. Leaders face very different challenges today.
"If we are serious about evidence-based talent management and able to apply what we preach, then narcissistic leaders ought to be a species facing extinction," concludes Chamorro-Premuzic.
-kk-