Narcissistic Leaders

When a company is in an unstable circumstance, many people choose narcissists as leaders because of their narcissistic traits. When a company is in difficulty, there are a lot of matters to deal with. Thus, people need someone who can be brave to make big decisions, and tough enough to undertake any bad results. Narcissists are overconfident, and they act decisively so they are being chosen as leaders in an unstable company. In the article, “Uncertainty enhances the preference for narcissistic leaders”, Barbora Nevicka performs a study that she provides the participants a written description of a company, such as: “The company is currently finding itself in difficulty [a period of relative stability],” “Its share price has plummeted [been stable],”

Narcissists might become leaders after they help to remove the company’s uncertainty, but their qualities would totally become useless once the uncertainty is gone. Moreover, their interest of taking high risk would hurt the company in the long term. Risking is like a gamble that could be win or lose. Therefore, if the narcissists lose the gamble, the company would in a big trouble, and even bankrupt. In the article “Narcissistic Leaders”, Michael Maccoby wrote an example about narcissistic leader. “Joe Nacchio, formerly leader of both the business and consumer divisions of AT&T. He left AT&T to become CEO of Qwest. He had the credibility to sell Qwest’s initial public offering to financial markets and gain a high reputation, but he wanted more. He wanted to compete with AT&T, so he chose to make a bid himself for the local telephone operator U.S. West, using Qwest’s highly valued stock to finance the deal. The market voted on this display of expansiveness with its Feet-Qwest’s stock price fell 40% when he made the deal (9).” Same as other narcissists, Nacchio likes risk, but he forgets about the cost of losing. When Nacchio makes the deal, he is so confident that he is right so he doesn’t even concern about the risk would not pay off. In a way, he seems unrealistic. Therefore, no matter how big the risk, he is willing to take it. Eventually, he hurts the company’s interest badly. Therefore, it would be disastrous if a narcissist leads a company, especially because today’s companies are more concentrated on stability rather than risking. Leader should be always concerned about the benefit of the whole company instead of their own wills. When a narcissist pursues what they want, but the company’s, they already lost the qualifications of being