Narcissistic Leadership

Transformational leaders challenge the status quo, provide a vision of a promising future, and motivate and inspire their followers to join in the pursuit of a better world. But many of these leaders also fit the American Psychiatric Association classification for narcissistic personality disorder. They are grandiose, entitled, self-confident, risk seeking, manipulative, and hostile. This article reviews the literature on narcissism and shows how what we think of as transformational leadership overlaps substantially with grandiose narcissism. As grandiose narcissists can appear as transformational leaders, it is important to distinguish between what leadership scholars have characterized as “transformational” and these “pseudo-transformational” candidates.

Based on the article by Charles O'Reilly and Jennifer A. Chatman

Read the full article:

California Management Review
Volume 62, Issue 3 (Spring 2020)

Video production: David Salisbury

[jessicah]

I have definitely worked for narcissists, and those behaviors are rewarded in the corporate world.