Golden Oldies: Narcissism And Leadership
by Miki Saxon
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Narcissism has increased dramatically since I wrote this in 2009. In 1963, when adolescents were asked if they considered themselves important, only 12 percent answered affirmatively. 30 years later, that percentage had risen to 80. And those numbers predate the rise of social media, especially Instagram, by a decade or more. By now that 805 probably includes most of the adult population, too.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
“Leaders tend to be narcissistic, but you don’t have to be a narcissist to be a leader.” –Amy Brunell, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Newark campus.
“…narcissistic behavior is a “trait predicting charismatic leadership. People who are charismatic and charming… They think they’re entitled to it. They think they’re smarter than other people and they can get away with it.” –W. Keith Campbell, head of the psychology department at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Narcissism isn’t necessarily bad, but it is growing. When psychiatrists deemed it a bonafide personality disorder in the 1980’s it affected 1% of the population; in 2008 the number stood at around 6.2%.
Most politicians are narcissists, as are many media personalities (neither is surprising), but it seems that more and more business leaders fall in that category also.
There are 7 component traits that are measured.
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- Authority
- Self-sufficiency
- Superiority
- Exhibitionism
- Exploitativeness
- Vanity
- Entitlement
Although I have no proof, I bet that most, if not all, tech titans (in fact, a good number of tech at all levels) would score fairly high on these traits, along with most of Wall Street.
“A study published in December in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that people who score high in these traits are more likely to be leaders, but these individuals don’t necessarily perform any better and potentially may become destructive leaders.”
So much for the much-ballyhooed ‘charismatic leader’.
Now let’s have some fun.
Go to Take the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and take the test.
Then come back and share your score and whether you believe it fits you.
My score was 11, but if I had taken it 30 years ago I think it would have been at least 5 points higher. (Age is either mellowing me or I’m more realistic:)
There are no right or wrong answers and even if you score off the narcissism charts that doesn’t mean you’re ‘bad’ — as with any trait it is how you handle it in everyday life that matters.
Image credit: Wikipedia Commons
