Narcissists are not easy to work for. But when the narcissist is the CEO, what happens to organizational performance? Does a more narcissistic CEO deliver better (or worse) performance than a less narcissistic CEO?

That is one of the questions answered in an exceptional study by Arijit Chatterjee and Donald C. Hambrick published in one of our top research journals, Administrative Science Quarterly. The data from the study come from 111 CEOs in the computer hardware and software industries from 1992-2004. Here is what they found:

In our sample, narcissistic CEOs did not generate better or worse performance than less narcissistic CEOs. Rather, they tended to undertake relatively bold, risky actions, and they generated performance that was either very good or very bad and that tended to swing between these extremes. (p. 382).

The authors caution that although narcissism had no effect on performance in the highly dynamic industry they studied, this finding might not hold true in other industries. They suggest that “narcissism could have a negative effect in more stable settings, which call for strategic persistence and continuous improvement of existing formulas” (p. 379).

Based on the findings of this research, here is what narcissism in the C-suite will do for your organization: Your narcissistic CEO craves attention, so get ready for new initiatives and new strategic directions that will keep him/her on stage in ways that strategic stability cannot. And get ready to meet new people, because numerous and large acquisitions will give your narcissistic CEO the ability to expand the size and scope of his/her kingdom boldly and rapidly. These new initiatives and acquisitions are going to result in either big wins or big losses, so hang on. And even if you do get a big win, don’t think it will last forever. Fueled by the proof that he/she really is a superior leader, your narcissistic CEO will have an intense need to have that superiority reaffirmed, so prepare yourself for the climax to the drama that is playing in the theatre of the CEO’s mind.

Given the evidence of the negative interpersonal effects narcissistic leaders have on the folks that work for them, is it ever worth it to trust the future of your organization to a narcissist? If they could deliver superior organizational performance, it might be. But there is no evidence to suggest that a narcissistic CEO will outperform a less narcissistic CEO, so my advice would be to save yourself and your organization the headache and avoid them altogether.

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Related Posts at Positive Organizational Behavior:

Hubris: The Other Side Of Level 5

• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)
• August 22, 2010 -- Seven Things to Expect From Your Narcissistic Employee (47)
• August 18, 2010 -- Want Your Employees To Display Positive Emotions? (0)
• July 14, 2010 -- EBM: Transformational Leadership (0)
• January 19, 2010 -- LeaderLab Episode 0101 – Scholar-Practitioner (3)

Still, objectives are not purpose.

Some have suggested that the purpose of business is profits, increase profit and shareholder value. For obvious reasons, this view is held by a majority of shareholders. The overwhelming majority of companies, though, are not publicly traded, even if the majority of wealth is in public traded companies. Most business are small, owned by a sole proprietor or small partnership. Sure profits are a part of any business, but it’s typically not the reason entrepreneurs start a business. Profits are a measurement. Charles Handy makes the case that measurement can NOT be purpose. No one plays baseball in order to increase their batting average. They increase their batting average in order to keep playing baseball. Profits are a measurement.

Measurement is not purpose.

Customers, Profits, Shareholder values. These are the measurements that determine if you can keep playing. Profits keep you in business so you can keep making or doing something. Every business was started by someone who wanted to make or do something and be able to eat at the same time.

Don’t confuse what keeps you in business, with why you’re in business.

• September 5, 2010 -- Is A Narcissistic CEO Good For Your Organization? (0)
• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)
• August 22, 2010 -- Seven Things to Expect From Your Narcissistic Employee (47)
• August 18, 2010 -- Want Your Employees To Display Positive Emotions? (0)
• August 11, 2010 -- Front-line versus Top-down (6)

Once again, there are very few articles on narcissism in the top Management and I-O Psychology research publications. But I do want to share the results of one very well done study recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology entitled “The Bright-Side and the Dark-Side of CEO Personality: Examining Core Self-Evaluations, Narcissism, Transformational Leadership, and Strategic Influence.” This study of 75 CEOs of Major League Baseball organizations over a 100 year period examined how positive and negative personality characteristics affected the individual’s leadership style and ultimately important outcomes for the organization.

Terms like confident, determined, optimistic, stable, persistent, and positive were associated with the bright-side of leadership, while terms like arrogant, boastful, conceited, egotistical, self-centered, show-off and temperamental were associated with the narcissistic dark-side of leadership. The authors of the study suggest the following five things based on their findings (pp. 1373-1374):

The Bright-side of personality

1. Leaders who have an overall positive self-concept are better able to articulate a vision in a manner that builds commitment to the organization’s goals.

2. Positive leaders may role model the efforts needed for the organization to be successful and are comfortable empowering others because they have a realistic sense of their own and their organization’s capabilities

3. Positive leaders are more comfortable with the focus being on the good of the organization rather than on their individual success.

The Dark-side of personality

4. Narcissistic leaders are unlikely to be concerned about developing equitable exchange relationships with members of their organization. When followers meet objectives, narcissistic leaders do a poor job of allocating recognition and rewards to reinforce desired behavior.

5. Narcissistic leaders are very unlikely to offer a compelling vision for the organization and inspire others to higher levels of morale and motivation.

Narcissistic leadership in this study eventually lead to more manager turnover, while positive leadership lead to higher attendance, a better winning percentage, and greater external influence in the industry (Major League Baseball).

Just like the advice to avoid hiring narcissistic employees, you should likewise avoid hiring and promoting narcissistic individuals into positions of management and leadership. It’s impossible for narcissists to see the best in others when they are so laser-focused on spotlighting the best they see in themselves. They won’t treat people fairly because it simply is not a concern for them, and their vision of individual greatness is unlikely to inspire others and may even expose the organization to competitive peril.

There is no guarantee that simply hiring and promoting positive people is a recipe for organizational success. But I think the research is pretty clear that narcissistic individuals, especially in positions of power and influence, are more likely to do harm than to do lasting good.

Bret Simmons is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. He has a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Oklahoma State University. Bret blogs about leadership and followership at his website Positive Organizational Behavior . You can also find Bret on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Related Posts on Positive Organizational Behavior:

Service-Profit Chain: Managers Matter

ACT Change: Inspire Others To Enact Their Best Selves

• September 5, 2010 -- Is A Narcissistic CEO Good For Your Organization? (0)
• August 22, 2010 -- Seven Things to Expect From Your Narcissistic Employee (47)
• August 18, 2010 -- Want Your Employees To Display Positive Emotions? (0)
• July 14, 2010 -- EBM: Transformational Leadership (0)
• August 4, 2010 -- LeaderLab Episode 0108 – Multipliers (2)

1. Exploitivenss/Entitlement: The belief that one is adept at manipulating people and is entitled to do so

2. Leadership/Authority: The belief that one possesses an extraordinary ability to influence others and thus prefers positions of leadership and authority

3. Superiority/Arrogance: The belief that one is just better than others and is a born leader

4. Self-absorption/Self-admiration: An elevated sense of vanity and the belief that one is special.

Surprisingly, there is very little research on narcissism published in the top management and industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology journals (e.g. Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior). One of the field’s best researchers, Timothy Judge, along with Jeffery LePine and Bruce Rich, published a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2006 entitled “Loving Yourself Abundantly: Relationship of the Narcissistic Personality to Self- and Other Perceptions of Workplace Deviance, Leadership, and Task and Contextual Performance.”

Based on their findings, here are seven things you should expect to see from a narcissistic employee:

1. Narcissists are likely to also be extraverted and agreeable, but unlikely to be open to experience, conscientious, and emotionally stable.

2. Narcissists may be detrimental in team contexts that require cooperation and a positive climate. Because they are interpersonally abrasive and dismissive, narcissists don’t make good team players.

3. Narcissists may breed competitiveness and distrust among other employees because of their grandiose sense of self-importance and belief that they are an extraordinary performer.

4. Narcissists may be very problematic in any rating system where they are required to provide a self-rating. You can expect the narcissist’s self-rating to be even more inflated than the self-ratings of other employees.

5. A narcissist that is forced to admit he or she has not performed well may disparage those who outperform him or her.

6. A narcissist that receives an unfavorable evaluation can be expected to disparage the unfavorable evaluator and possible even become aggressive.

7. A narcissist may be detrimental in jobs where a realistic conception of one’s talents and abilities are critical. For example, expect the narcissist to be an overconfident negotiator, which can be a huge liability.

Avoid hiring a narcissist if possible. Ironically, as Robert Hogan points out, “narcissists and psychopaths excel during interviews.” And unfortunately, there is very little evidence-based advice on how to manage the narcissistic employee you find yourself stuck with.

If you think you work with a strong narcissist, remember these seven points and anticipate their behavior in certain situations. Be prepared. The narcissists strong personality will dominate weak situations, so even more so than your other employees, make sure the narcissist is working in a strong system with clearly defined and consistently reinforced behavioral expectations.

Bret Simmons is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. He has a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Oklahoma State University. Bret blogs about leadership and followership at his website Positive Organizational Behavior . You can also find Bret on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)
• September 5, 2010 -- Is A Narcissistic CEO Good For Your Organization? (0)
• August 18, 2010 -- Want Your Employees To Display Positive Emotions? (0)
• July 14, 2010 -- EBM: Transformational Leadership (0)
• April 25, 2010 -- Book Review: Systems Thinking for Curious Managers (0)

A new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology provides additional support for the efficacy of creating a positive service climate for your employees if you want to enable them to display the service delivery enhancing positive emotions. A service climate is positive to the extent that employees share the perception that supportive resources and conditions (e.g. training, managerial practices, supportive colleagues, HR policies and practices) are available to help them deliver quality customer service.

This study of 211 frontline employees and 63 supervisors of a fashion retailer in China looked at how the emotional exhaustion – feelings of being overwhelmed and exhausted by work – of both employees and their supervisors affected the positive emotional display of employees. As expected, emotionally exhausted employees were less likely to display positive emotions. When the employee’s supervisor was also emotionally exhausted, the employees were even less likely to display positive emotions.

But the severity of this combined emotional exhaustion effect was itself affected by the service climate. When the service climate was less positive, the emotional exhaustion of the supervisor combined with the employee’s emotional exhaustion to have a big effect on the employee’s positive emotional display. But when the service climate was more positive, the relationship between an employee’s emotional exhaustion and positive emotional display was not affected by the supervisor’s emotional exhaustion.

…A positive service climate seems to make employees immune to the potentially adverse impacts of their own and supervisors’ emotional exhaustion. This finding suggests that a positive service climate facilitates employees to internalize service quality norms and to generate a strong motivational force to persist their efforts to deliver positive emotions. However, without such a positive climate, employees are more likely to rely on their supervisors’ state of emotional exhaustion in responding to their own feelings of emotional exhaustion and determining the appropriate level of effort to put into positive emotional display. (p. 373).

If your business is bleeding customers because of lousy service, it’s likely because your employees are so frazzled by your poor management practices and policies that they are simply unable to muster the energy to continuously remain positive at work. It’s a double whammy when your poor practices and policies also affect your supervisors.

Be smart. Consider providing your employees with a positive and supportive service climate one of your primary responsibilities. If you are really smart, you will let your employees help you improve your service climate. Partner with your employees to fix the lousy systems that disable them from impressing your customers.

• Bret Simmons is a business professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

• September 5, 2010 -- Is A Narcissistic CEO Good For Your Organization? (0)
• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)
• August 22, 2010 -- Seven Things to Expect From Your Narcissistic Employee (47)
• January 19, 2010 -- LeaderLab Episode 0101 – Scholar-Practitioner (3)
• July 14, 2010 -- EBM: Transformational Leadership (0)

A few weeks ago I got into a conversation about whether situational leadership was more appropriate for top-level or front-line leadership. I argued that situational leadership is most appropriate for front-line leadership. To be more specific, I believe that the front-line is about management and situational leadership is about how to manage, not necessarily lead, teams with diverse backgrounds (Hersey and Blanchard, 1972). This theory states that managers should respond in one of four styles, corresponding to the maturity levels of individuals on the team. In addition, managers should respond different to each individual, since maturity levels are different. Buckingham (2005) differentiated management and leadership by asserting that managers coordinate the strengths of individuals on a team (situational leadership) in order to bring about optimal performance and leaders rallied individuals to work toward a better future. Very little “people rallying” occurs with situational leadership, making it more appropriate to front-line supervisors acting as managers.

Theories such as Charismatic leadership and Transformational leadership appear to be more about rallying followers to better future using motivating factors (Northouse, 2006). These theories seem to be more appropriate for consideration when working with an organization’s top leaders, those concerned with motivating followers toward the future of the organization.

Buckingham, M. (2005) The one thing you need to know: about great managing, great leading and sustained individual success. New York, NY: Free Press

Hersey, P. and Blanchard, K. H. (1972). Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources (2nd ed.)New Jersey/Prentice Hall.

Northouse, P. (2006). Leadership: Theory and practice (4^th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

• February 25, 2010 -- Situational Leadership Theory (0)
• April 9, 2010 -- Strengths-Based Leadership Theory (0)
• January 12, 2010 -- Book Review: Leadership & The One Minute Manager (0)
• September 5, 2010 -- Is A Narcissistic CEO Good For Your Organization? (0)
• September 2, 2010 -- Drucker’s Err – The Purpose of Business (9)

• 0:00            Introduction
• 1: 04            How did you come to find this multiplier principle?
• 3:30            What’s the difference between multipliers and diminishers?
• 7:37            What are the five disciplines of multipliers?
• 11:10            Can you give me some examples of well-known multipliers?
• 15:07            How can leaders become multipliers?
• 19:50            What are you reading now?
• 24:01            What’s next for you?
• 27:02            How can people get a hold of you?

Referenced Resources

Multipliers – Wiseman & McKeown

The Wiseman Group

MultipliersBook.com

Bury My Heart in Conference Room B – Slap

The Why of Work – Ulrich & Ulrich

Fired Up or Burnt Out – Stallard, Hommes & Pankua

• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)
• July 20, 2010 -- Book Review: Start With Why (0)
• July 14, 2010 -- EBM: Transformational Leadership (0)
• May 10, 2010 -- VideoMonday: Simon Sinek on How great leaders inspire action (0)
• March 29, 2010 -- Book Review: Greater Than Yourself (0)

When leading change in organizations, the primary role for leadership is to unbalance the force. Leaders need to influence followers to see the reasons to change, strengthen the helping forces in the process. If leaders fail to unbalance the force, the change effort simply will not occur.

Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in Social Science. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

• August 18, 2010 -- How to UnFreeze (0)
• September 5, 2010 -- Is A Narcissistic CEO Good For Your Organization? (0)
• September 2, 2010 -- Drucker’s Err – The Purpose of Business (9)
• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)
• August 22, 2010 -- Seven Things to Expect From Your Narcissistic Employee (47)

If you have bought the prevailing wisdom that managing the strengths of individual group members is the best way to manage your group, you could be making a big mistake. This study found that if you provide highly differentiated leadership to each member of your group, you will indeed increase the individual self-efficacy of those individual members. But the increased individual self-efficacy had a negative effect on the group’s collective efficacy, and a negative effect on the group’s effectiveness.

Group collective efficacy, on the other hand, had a significant positive effect on group effectiveness. The researchers measured collective efficacy with items that assessed the all kinds of tasks the group might perform, not specific tasks any single group member might perform.

Group collective efficacy resulted from group-focused rather than individual focused leadership. Group focused leadership produced group identification, which in turn produced a collective sense of efficacy among group members.  This is the type of leadership where group leaders specify the importance of group members having a strong sense of collective purpose and mission in working with the group as a whole.

Popular thinking on leadership asserts that effective leaders must not only inspire the group as a whole, but must also be attentive to the unique needs of each and every individual in the group. The results of this research suggest “that leaders who attempt to satisfy both individual and group needs may inadvertently compromise group processes and group outcomes” (p. 101).

If your individualized approach to leadership creates a group full of members where some have high self-efficacy and see themselves as “high potentials” while others do not, you are likely sub-optimizing the performance of your group as a whole. The differences in individual efficacy among group members affects how they feel about each other and their ability to accomplish things together. This is especially critical when group tasks require extensive interdependence among members.

When group performance matters, and people need to work closely together for the group to be effective, the belief that “we can do it” is more important than any individual’s belief that “I can do it.” If you lead a group like this, you probably want to keep that strength-based snake oil on the shelf.

• Bret Simmons is a business professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.
• This post is a repost from his website at http://www.bretlsimmons.com.

• July 16, 2010 -- What Makes a Great Leadership Team? (0)
• April 9, 2010 -- Strengths-Based Leadership Theory (0)
• September 5, 2010 -- Is A Narcissistic CEO Good For Your Organization? (0)
• September 2, 2010 -- Drucker’s Err – The Purpose of Business (9)
• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)

Why is the organization’s purpose – not the “create a customer” purpose that Drucker would tell us, but the real motivation behind what the organization wants to do to change the world. Once a why is established, Sinek advises to place is squarely instead the “Golden Circle,” a model he uses to describe how once a core purpose is established, only then are instructions of what actions to take and how to take them well received by followers.

While positioned at current and aspiring leaders, Start With Why, reads more like a marketing book. Indeed, the majority of Sinek’s examples are of market leading products or companies, not leaders within those companies or movements. Occasionally, he does add renown leaders to his case. Nonetheless, the book gives insight into the human mind and, with considerable reflection, Start With Why, can teach leaders how to more effectively inspire and motivate their followers.

• March 29, 2010 -- Book Review: Greater Than Yourself (0)
• August 29, 2010 -- Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality (8)
• August 4, 2010 -- LeaderLab Episode 0108 – Multipliers (2)
• July 14, 2010 -- EBM: Transformational Leadership (0)
• May 10, 2010 -- VideoMonday: Simon Sinek on How great leaders inspire action (0)