Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: leaders and organizations in search of treatment
- 1 Hubris and narcissism: the dark underbelly of leadership
- 2 The enigma of an unintentionally toxic leader: an emotionally turbulent, destructive and impulsive workplace
- 3 The narcissistic leader: world-renowned and quite arrogant
- 4 Leader sabotage and the dysfunctional organization: the fish rots from the head down
- 5 The obsessive compulsive leader: a manager's mandate for perfection or destruction
- 6 The borderline leader: when brilliance and psychopathology coexist
- 7 Trouble at the top: high-toxicity implications of a leader with antisocial personality disorder
- 8 Histrionic leadership: the allure of the toxic leader in a volatile industry
- 9 The outer limits of toxic organizational behavior: corporate trauma in the form of disturbed leadership
- 10 Destructive leaders and dysfunctional organizations: tearing downs the walls of professional greed, hubris, toxic genius and psychopathology
- References
- Index
3 - The narcissistic leader: world-renowned and quite arrogant
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: leaders and organizations in search of treatment
- 1 Hubris and narcissism: the dark underbelly of leadership
- 2 The enigma of an unintentionally toxic leader: an emotionally turbulent, destructive and impulsive workplace
- 3 The narcissistic leader: world-renowned and quite arrogant
- 4 Leader sabotage and the dysfunctional organization: the fish rots from the head down
- 5 The obsessive compulsive leader: a manager's mandate for perfection or destruction
- 6 The borderline leader: when brilliance and psychopathology coexist
- 7 Trouble at the top: high-toxicity implications of a leader with antisocial personality disorder
- 8 Histrionic leadership: the allure of the toxic leader in a volatile industry
- 9 The outer limits of toxic organizational behavior: corporate trauma in the form of disturbed leadership
- 10 Destructive leaders and dysfunctional organizations: tearing downs the walls of professional greed, hubris, toxic genius and psychopathology
- References
- Index
Summary
In a position of leadership, people suffering from this kind of disorder become fixated on power, status, prestige, and superiority. They overvalue their personal worth, arguing that, as exceptional people they deserve special privileges and prerogatives. They act in a grandiose, haughty way, expect special favors, flout conventional rules, and feel entitled; they're unempathetic, inconsiderate to others, exploitative, and unconstrained by objective reality.
(Kets de Vries, 2006, p. 22)THE ALLURE OF THE TOXIC LEADER
Central to an understanding of toxic behavior in dysfunctional organizations is the prevalence and allure of the narcissistic leader. Beginning with the coining of the term “narcissism” by Havelock Ellis (1998), more than a century of ongoing research and speculation over the clinical condition of “self love” has ranged from Freud's description of a narcissistic personality type (1931/1950) to the view that narcissism in its extreme constitutes a personality disorder (Kernberg 1967, 1989a). In recent years organizational behavior researchers have increasingly assessed and described the high incidence of narcissism among noted and successful business leaders including Steve Jobs (Robins & Paulhus, 2001), Michael Eisner (Sandowsky, 1995), and David Geffen and Kenneth Lay (Kramer, 2003). Characterized by long-term agendas marked by extreme hubris, a preoccupation with personal egotistically driven needs for power and admiration (Kets de Vries & Miller, 1997) and grandiose visions and self-centered needs (Glad, 2002), the narcissistic leader can appear oblivious to constituents and display a troubling and dire lack of empathy for followers and organizations (Conger, 1997).
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- Information
- Destructive Leaders and Dysfunctional OrganizationsA Therapeutic Approach, pp. 40 - 54Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009