by A grad student asked me to take a look at Michael Maccoby’s Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails. As I started to back away and cite the size of my reading “to do” list, I was cleverly enticed by his noting that Maccoby cites foresight, systems thinking, and visioning as three of his “five elements of strategic intelligence” deemed essential to building and sustaining a business. So our Houston Futures Studies program is all about teaching foresight, we have a class devoted to systems thinking, and we teach visioning as part of Strategic Thinking and part of a new topical course on Alternative Perspectives I’m putting together for the fall. The other two elements are partnering and motivating, which I wouldn’t say we directly cover in our curriculum, but three out of five ain’t bad!
That was enough to take a peek. First, a narcissist is “the kind of person who (1) doesn’t listen to anyone else when he believes in doing something and (2) has a precise vision of how things should be.” (p.9) Yikes, that’s not exactly the message we want to send to our students. He also notes that a narcissistic vision always starts with a rejection of the status quo. Again, not sure about this either. Our framework forecasting process starts with producing a “baseline future,” which is basically a view of the status quo, and then we challenge that with potential alternative futures. But I would not advise to automatically reject the baseline – sometimes things are going well and one hopes they will continue – although most often we tend to be advocates of change. To reinforce this point about not absolutely rejecting the status quo, when we talk about visioning, we suggest that a vision and visioning process is most appropriate when there is a need for transformational change. If things are okay, changing incrementally, there may be nothing fundamentally wrong with the current vision and the status quo.
Okay, enough on that. I take the point that it sometimes takes someone with a narcissistic personality to stand firm with their vision in the face of detractors holding on to the status quo. I might ask whether this is the only way to do so – can one stand firm and be a non-narcissist?
Another point of interest was the focus on personality type as the lens through which to view the leader. Having just finished a book on values, ConsumerShift, I would put greater emphasis on the values of the leader as a key driver of their goals and style, with personality a secondary influence. But as I noted in the book, I think it is valuable to look at issues from different “centers,” whether values, personality, generations – though I still come out with the view that values makes the most sense at the center.
So a values-based interpretation of the narcissist leader is that it sounds very much like a “modern” style that could work in a modern organization with its emphasis on hierarchical approaches. I suspect it would not do as well in a postmodern organization with a network approach. That said, however, it may not quite be over yet for narcisstic leaders. I’ve often associated Gen Y with narcissism and I’m not alone Gen Y’s Most Perilous Trait? Yep, a thought worth pondering…..and a style worth considering??? Andy Hines
Hi i like your perspective, I agree that other types can have vision and hold firm look at Warren Buffet whose organisation Berkshire hathaway has been phenomenally successful. His success did not harm anyone, and he looked after and valued his staff as did Hewlett Packard for example. The downside of narcissists are that they damage and abuse others because they rule and tyrannical rather than manage or lead. The golden child scapegoat child dynamic in narcissist families becomes their norm so they are serial bullies. The advice in police, family and healthcare is to leave and go.no contact with any cluster b as they can be vindictive and dangerous. Maccoby has some strange ideas as asking everyone else in the organisation to deal with the alternative reality and emperors new clothes brainwashing puts staff under chronic stress, can cause ptsd or complex ptsd which is well acknowledged to occur in narcissist families. It can cause epidemiological changes at the level of our dna shortening telemere resulting in earlier death so the real question is why we would want to employ narcissists at all? Far less put them in charge of anything.