Are Narcissistic Leaders More Effective? Essay Example

Narcissism is defined as an unwarranted fascination with oneself. It is an individual’s excessive self-love. Leadership requires an individual to possess certain qualities that makes him or her have a good interpersonal relationship with other people. Normally, people associate good leadership to attributes like honesty, excitement, passion, strong people skills, and high level of creativity. However, psychology reveals that narcissism, an attribute many consider negative and unnecessary, also plays a big role in defining a good leader. The article by Cherry Kendra, “Are Narcissistic leaders more effective?” is a report of the research done by psychologists on the claim that good leaders should also possess narcissistic attributes (Cherry, 2014). Kendra begins the article by giving the similarities between good leaders and narcissistic leaders. She does this by stating some common attributes present in both parties. Several qualities that are associated with great leadership like extraversion, assertiveness, and confidence are also present in narcissistic individuals. However, she states that narcissism should be at a given level in order to qualify as an attribute necessary for good leadership. People who are too narcissistic are seen as self-obsessed dictators whereas those who are low in narcissism are normally viewed as weak people with low self-esteem.

In the practical view, the research is crucial in management systems of several organizations. First, there is a big difference between today’s business leaders and those of the past. Business nowadays plays a big role in our lives than before, and business leaders are always in the limelight. This can only be explained by the concept of increased management system that ensures efficient performance of workers. Efficiency is directly attributed to proper management system. This involves good relationship between workers, managers, and CEOs. Narcissism is a concept that is used by many management personnel to ensure that respect between different levels of employees is upheld (Cherry, 2014). Moderate narcissism in managers and CEOs is important in boosting their self-esteem. With self-esteem, managers and CEOs find it easy giving instructions to junior employees. Besides, self-esteem is good when doing the recruiting workers. The human resource managers must be equipped with qualities that make him or her courageous and daring enough to face applicants with relevant questions. Coming up with new ideas in an organization requires the innovator to have a certain level of self-confidence especially on the idea itself. Low self-esteem hinders innovations since individuals tend to undermine their creativity and may think that the information they have is not worth creating impact in the organization. Narcissism, in essence, is used in organizations to create good working relationship among workers as well as coming up with new ideas. Moderate level of narcissism among workers has seen many organizations rise and many others being created out of innovation. The research by Kendra informs workers that they should have a given level of inner confidence and personal love for themselves and their ideas (Cherry, 2014).

Historically, narcissists have always come out inspiring and shaping the future of individuals. For instance, when the religious, military and political scenarios dominated various societies, it was the role of figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon and Roosevelt that came up to determine the agenda of the societies. The mentioned individuals were all narcissists and their contributions to their respective societies were immense.

While narcissism can be viewed as an important attribute in defining a good leader, too much of it proves to be quite perilous to the success of many organizations. In the current world, interpersonal relationships have been considered the most important in describing one’s success in a particular field. However, too much of it makes a persona unsociable. It proves hard dealing with an individual with too much feeling of self-importance. Psychologists assert that too much narcissism makes a person a dictator. In this case, he or she has to make other people feel inadequate in order to elevate him/herself. In school, for instance, a student will too much ego tend to make others feel low to maintain his/her status. The overall performance in such an institution is inarguably poor. In organizations, too much ego by the management hinders communication between the management and workers, which obviously leads to an undesirable low or poor quality outcome in the production. The research is crucial since it alerts and educates individuals on the benefits of moderate level of narcissism and dangers when the level is extreme in both sides.

Since no research has ever been perfect, more scrutiny and analysis should be done to come up with new ideas regarding narcissism application in leadership. Researchers should base their studies in finding the effect of narcissism on employee-manager relationships, as well as how it affects employees at different levels of management. The other step would be determining how different workers or learners in schools react to narcissistic managers and CEOs. It is important to determine the kind of employees that would work well with leaders who are narcissistic since some employees tend to maintain their own levels of satisfaction even under the leadership of someone who is difficult to cooperate with.

References

Cherry, K. (2014). Are Narcissistic leaders more effective? From: http://psychology.about.com/od/leadership/fl/Are-Narcissistic-Leaders-More-Effective.htm