Bill Bradley, the retired National Basketball Association star and former New Jersey senator, undoubtedly summarized the sentiments of many people when he said, “Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous.”1 Unfortunately, few leaders, particularly leaders of large organizations, seem to have many or even any of those qualities, particularly modesty.
Consider Donald Trump, listed by Forbes as the 417th richest man in the world, with a net worth approaching $4 billion. Trump ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2012 (at least for a while), tweets constantly, is all over the media, had his own television show, and, most famously, names all of his buildings after, of course, himself. Most recently, Trump got into a spat with Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, when Trump put up giant stainless steel letters, more than two hundred feet high, on the ninety-six-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, Chicago’s second-tallest building. The letters spell “Trump”—what else? Emanuel thought that “this was an architecturally tasteful building scarred by an architecturally tasteless sign.”2
Trump provides fodder for many late-night comedians, and, among others, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor, questions Trump’s leadership style. Sonnenfeld, commenting on the now-defunct Trump-centric television program The Apprentice, noted that it was “not the model for great leadership” and penned an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that described the show as a combination of “puffery, pushiness and deception.”3 Many observers have questioned Trump’s business acumen and financial performance, in part because his casinos have gone into bankruptcy.4 But one thing Trump has done for sure is build a brand that is worth a fortune. Everyone knows his name, more important, his projects receive enormous media coverage. All of this is extremely valuable in real estate; Trump’s ultimate job is to sell hotel rooms, casino experiences, and living quarters in very competitive markets. Maybe Trump knows something about leadership not widely appreciated but nonetheless useful.
Notwithstanding Trump and legions of CEOs and ex-CEOs now writing books about themselves and their many wonderful qualities and accomplishments, research on high-performing organizations and leaders frequently emphasizes the personal quality of modesty. For instance, in his bestselling management book Good to Great and in articles based on the research done for that book,5 Jim Collins writes about Level 5 leaders. Level 5 leaders represent the highest performing executives, those rare individuals who create extraordinary results over long periods of time as they transform average-performing companies into those earning exceptional returns. Collins argues that although leaders are not the only factor required to transform a company’s performance, good-to-great transformations are pretty much impossible without Level 5 leaders.
One of the most important qualities Collins identifies that distinguishes these highly successful leaders from others with executive capability is their extreme personal humility—their modesty. This quality of personal humbleness entails giving others sincere credit for the collective accomplishments of the company. Collins notes that Level 5 leaders do not like to talk about themselves, preferring instead to speak about the company and the contributions of other executives. The Level 5 leaders Collins describes are, for the most part, not well known outside their companies and have little to no visibility in the general business press, a fact consistent with their tendency not to self-promote or claim the limelight. This quality of modesty also entails acknowledging one’s limitations and fallibility, understanding that no one, regardless of how extraordinary his performance, knows everything, and that thus collective wisdom is often superior to the insights of a single individual. Acting on that insight involves including far more people in decision-making, and listening with humility to their advice and feedback.
It’s not just Collins who has emphasized humility as a desirable leadership trait. Modesty and concomitant respect for the abilities of others appear regularly as a prescription for becoming an effective leader.6 One treatment of ethical leadership from both Eastern- and Western-based philosophical perspectives listed moderation orientation as one of four important qualities.7 Because modesty, or at least appearing to be modest, is so desirable for people in power, some research has examined various strategies for reducing perceived power differences and conveying modesty to others, such as the use of self-deprecating humor.8
The emphasis on modesty seems sensible, and the logic behind the prescription to be humble appears to be sound. After all, if you are sunlike in your domination of every aspect of organizational life, everything and everyone else gets blotted out. One reason people leave companies is because they do not feel acknowledged or recognized for their contributions, and one behavior that provokes irritation is when others take credit for another’s work. Modest leaders are less likely to claim credit for the accomplishments of others and also are more prone to acknowledge what others have done—so modesty should reduce voluntary turnover.
Moreover, people are unlikely to work as hard for “your” project or “the boss’s project” as they are for “our” project or, even better, for their “own” project. This fact derives from at least two psychological processes. One process is sometimes referred to as implicit egotism. This idea refers to the principle that we like things that remind us of or are identified with ourselves. Implicit egotism is premised on the idea that because we like ourselves, we like things that remind us of or are associated with the self.9 In turn, projects will induce greater effort to the extent that they become identified with the individuals working on them.
The second principle that suggests that people will prefer that which they feel ownership of is the endowment effect. This phenomenon describes how and why we more highly value what we have simply because it is ours.10 For instance, in one classic study conducted at the University of Victoria, some people were given a choice between a coffee mug and a 400-gram Swiss chocolate bar. Of the total, 56 percent chose the mug and 44 percent chose the candy. But, when people were first given the mug—it was now theirs—and then asked whether they would be interested in trading it for the candy, only 11 percent were interested in making the switch. And when people had the candy, just 10 percent wanted to trade for the mug.11 These and other studies demonstrate that people prefer and are willing to pay more to keep something once they are given an object so it is theirs and has become associated with them. The relevance for modest and self-effacing leadership is clear: sharing credit and giving people a sense of ownership would be expected to increase their commitment and identification with a workplace or specific projects or tasks.
Furthermore, if people see that they never get sufficient recognition for their good work because the leader hogs all the credit, they may reduce their efforts. They will reasonably conclude that they should not bother expending effort if nothing they do will matter in terms of obtaining rewards and recognition for their work. All of these dynamics make it unsurprising that reviews of leader effectiveness often show that the opposite of modesty, narcissism, correlates negatively with numerous aspects of leader performance as assessed both by the affective reactions of subordinates and also actual group performance.12
The prescription for leaders to be modest is also consistent with the principle that people do not like others who self-promote and are self-aggrandizing. Research shows that people who self-promote are perceived negatively by others,13 and those who are modest about their abilities and performance are better-liked than individuals who boast about their accomplishments.14 Other research demonstrates that boastful presenters are the least effective, while people who display an intermediate level of modesty receive the most positive evaluations from others.15 Because likeability is an important basis of interpersonal influence, humble people, who are more likeable as a consequence of their humility, will be more influential, other things being equal.
And there is yet another mechanism that argues in favor of the advantages of modest, humble leaders. Jim Collins noted that time is a finite and, particularly for leaders, very scarce resource. Leaders who spend lots of time promoting themselves and their accomplishments steal valuable time and attention from working to maintain their companies’ competitive success. This is sort of like the old Fortune magazine cover curse, in which the folk wisdom said that if a CEO appeared on the cover of a major business magazine, poor results for that person’s company were likely to follow, because the person was spending more time with journalists than with customers, employees, and suppliers. Jim Collins used Lee Iacocca, the former CEO of Chrysler, as an example of this issue:
Lee Iacocca saved Chrysler from the brink of catastrophe. . . . The automaker’s stock rose 2.9 times higher than the general market about halfway through his tenure. But then Iacocca diverted his attention to transforming himself. He appeared regularly on talk shows . . . starred in more than 80 commercials, entertained the idea of running for president of the United States, and promoted his autobiography. . . . Iacocca’s personal stock soared, but Chrysler’s stock fell 31% below the market in the second half of his tenure.
Notwithstanding all this evidence and logic, there are some significant problems with the recommendation for leaders to be modest. First of all, modesty is a rare, and possibly extremely rare, quality among leaders. Indeed, if one takes the data in Good to Great seriously, the odds of making the transition required to significantly increase performance are obviously overwhelmingly long, to put it simply. Of the 1,435 companies that appeared on the Fortune 500 list between 1965 and when Collins did his study, only 11 made the transition from good to great—fewer than 1 percent. Collins apparently found only 11 modest and humble leaders (who also had fierce resolve) in the almost 1,500 companies he studied. Of course, Collins was not primarily studying leaders; his research began with a goal of downplaying the role of leaders. But even if the proportion of modest leaders is many times that uncovered by Jim Collins, it would still compose a tiny fraction of the CEOs running major companies.
Second, Collins talks about the important leadership qualities of people who had already attained the role of CEO as they improved their companies’ economic performance. This raises the question of which qualities might be useful to get to the top in the first place. The evidence suggests that modesty may not be such a good thing for getting to the top or staying there.
And third, as Michael Maccoby notes in his book The Productive Narcissist, the pioneering innovation that, almost by definition, breaks with convention and reinvents products, industries, and business models requires the kind of disdain for the constraining views of others and persistence in the face of adversity and naysaying that characterize narcissists.16 Indeed, Maccoby almost equates visionary leadership with leaders who have at least some reasonable degree of narcissism.
While there is not much research evidence about modesty and its effectiveness as a leadership quality, there is an extensive literature on a very closely related, albeit opposite, concept: narcissism. Studies of narcissism can help us evaluate the usefulness of prescriptions for leaders to be modest and also see the extent to which leaders are narcissistic on the one hand or modest on the other.
Although sometimes considered a form of personality disorder, narcissism and narcissistic behaviors are quite common, particularly among leaders. Michael Maccoby has noted that many of the most well-known and well-regarded CEOs, including Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Jack Welch of General Electric, exhibited narcissistic traits and behaviors. Maccoby also includes John D. Rockefeller; Robert Johnson, the founder and leader of Black Entertainment Television; J. Craig Venter, the CEO of Celera Genomics; and Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics and the onetime CEO of Netscape among a long list of narcissistic business leaders. Other narcissistic leaders include David Geffen (cofounder of the Dreamworks movie studio), Michael Eisner (Disney), Kenneth Lay (Enron), and many politicians, including Joseph Stalin and President George W. Bush. For all these individuals, attention-seeking and a sense of entitlement nearly define their personalities.17
Narcissism has been defined in the psychology research literature as a grandiose sense of self-importance; arrogant behavior or attitudes; a lack of empathy for others; a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success or power; belief in one’s special or unique status, including a fixation on associating with high-status people or organizations; an unreasonable sense of expectations or entitlement; and a desire for excessive admiration from others, among other characteristics.18 Narcissism can be measured by a validated paper-and-pencil measure, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI).19 It can also be assessed indirectly and unobtrusively. For instance, one study of the effect of CEO narcissism on companies examined the prominence of the CEO’s picture in the annual reports, the CEO’s use of the first-person singular pronoun (“I”) in interviews, the CEO’s prominence in the company’s press releases, and the CEO’s compensation compared with the number-two ranking executive’s to assess narcissism.20 The use of first-person pronouns can be particularly revealing of narcissism, such as CEOs talking about themselves when they should be referring to their companies or executive teams.
You can use these and other similar indicators of immodesty and hubris to help structure your observations of the leaders you encounter, and to help answer the question for yourself: How does hubristic self-absorption affect the careers of people in work organizations? I believe that your own observations can be at least as convincing as any evidence I present. If you become attuned to assessing narcissism as exhibited in natural settings, you can learn a great deal about when, how, and why self-aggrandizement is or is not effective.
We know a lot about narcissism. One thing we know is that narcissism levels have increased significantly among college students over the past several decades.21 Narcissism levels are higher for Americans than for citizens of many other countries and regions,22 in part because narcissism is related to an individualistic orientation that is more characteristic of American culture. Men tend to be more narcissistic than women, possibly because men are somewhat more competitive and women are more communal, and also because narcissistic behavior would be much more gender-role discrepant for women than for men.
Business school students seem to be particularly narcissistic, an important fact because many leaders in both the for-profit and the nonprofit world come from business school backgrounds, particularly in the more recent past. One study comparing 560 undergraduate business and psychology students in the United States found that measured narcissism was (a) higher than historical averages, which is consistent with the idea that narcissism levels are increasing over time, and (b) significantly higher for business school students compared with psychology students.23
As we will soon see, immodesty in all of its manifestations—narcissism, self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, unwarranted self-confidence—helps people attain leadership positions in the first place and then, once in them, positively affects their ability to hold on to those positions, extract more resources (salary), and even helps in some, although not all, aspects of their performance on the job. At first this might seem counterintuitive. After all, people who self-promote are less likeable, and likeability is an important basis of interpersonal influence and a reason for others to prefer the likeable individual. Furthermore, immodesty and self-aggrandizement can harm the self-esteem and rewards received by peers and subordinates of the person engaging in such behavior. This is all true. But so is the following:
Many, possibly most, leadership roles are ambiguous—there is uncertainty about what the leader should do, uncertainty about who would be best in that position, and frequently even a lack of clarity about how people are performing in their leadership roles. All of that uncertainty means the so-called confirmation bias operates with a vengeance. Confirmation bias, an old and venerable idea in social psychology, refers to the tendency of people to both seek out and also interpret evidence and experience that are consistent with their preexisting beliefs and expectations.24 Confirmation bias helps explain why first impressions persist; once people form an impression, they ignore discrepant information and seek out and overvalue confirming evidence. In the case of leadership, if you project confidence and claim competence with enough conviction to be credible, observers will tend to assimilate any information about you in ways consistent with the idea that you know what you are doing and are deserving of a position of leadership.
And another process operates as well. In order for you to be selected for a leadership role, either by peers or by bosses, it is necessary, albeit insufficient, that those doing the selecting notice you. No one who is unmemorable is going to be chosen for an important job, because one cannot select what one cannot remember. That’s why in marketing, evidence shows the importance of the mere exposure effect,25 the idea that because people choose what feels familiar and therefore comfortable to them, being noticed, getting remembered—the sine qua non for assessing advertising effectiveness—is essential. The same is true for leaders and leadership. It helps to be known, to have a brand, to, simply put, stand out.
To engage in self-promotion requires eschewing modesty and engaging in behaviors that draw attention to an individual’s positive qualities, past accomplishments, future plans, and also deservingness of jobs, money, or promotions.26 Research consistently shows that self-promotion is positively correlated with interviewers’ evaluations of job candidates as well as with hiring recommendations.27 This is not surprising. Self-promotion is one manifestation of self-confidence, and self-confidence frequently leads others to share the confidence that someone exudes.
Cameron Anderson, a professor at the University of California, Berkley, business school, conducted research with some colleagues that showed that not just confident, but overconfident individuals achieved higher social status, respect, and influence in groups.28 Of course, one interpretation is that in possibly ambiguous situations, other group members conflated overconfidence with actual ability. If someone seems confident in his or her abilities, maybe this just reflects his or her actual competence. To examine this possibility, Anderson and some other researchers provided people with data that suggested that the overconfidence was unwarranted—observers of the overconfident individual received actual performance data that showed the claims of competence were exaggerated. Nonetheless “even after groups gained clear, objective information about individuals’ actual task performance, they did not penalize overconfident individuals with lower status.”29
Furthermore, even though people perceive self-promotion with a jaundiced eye, observers will also expect an individual to advocate on his or her own behalf. Consequently, self-deprecation and modest self-presentation work mostly for those who already have such well-established positive reputations that the modesty is seen as charming rather than indicative of some insecurity or incompetence. Consistent with this line of reasoning, studies of the selection of military officers show that “the confidence, charisma, and optimism associated with . . . narcissists are positive leadership traits” leading to “higher leadership ratings from peers and supervisors.”30
A meta-analysis summarizing the results of 187 studies of individual differences presumably related to effective leadership showed seven traits associated with leader effectiveness. Four of those traits were energy, dominance, self-confidence, and charisma. The research literature shows that narcissists exhibit more of these four traits than do others, which further supports the connection between narcissism and the selection of people for leadership roles.31 Because most researchers, like people in general, do not like immodest, self-aggrandizing, narcissistic behavior, these findings are all the more notable.
Because narcissists are more extraverted and have higher self-esteem, they are more likely to be chosen as leaders and to be seen as having leadership potential. For instance, an article on three experiments reported that people with higher narcissism scores were more likely to emerge as leaders during four-person initially leaderless group discussions. The third study in the set used expert raters who observed interactions among executive MBA students (working adults). As in the first two experiments, narcissism predicted leadership ratings, and did so even after gender and sociability were statistically controlled for.32 Another article studying fifty-six teams found that, regardless of the type of task, narcissists were more likely to be chosen as leaders than non-narcissists were.33 These results are not surprising. Narcissists are more likely to engage in behaviors that make them more noticeable and noteworthy. And because of their heightened sense of entitlement and positive expectations for themselves, they are more likely to push their own point of view and advocate in their own interests more aggressively—behaviors that help them come to dominate the social groups in which they are members.
Malcolm Gladwell’s article describing the talent preoccupation inside the Enron Corporation prior to its ignominious implosion noted that Enron was a narcissistic company, but that narcissism could be functional in attaining leadership positions. Gladwell cited material from an essay, “The Dark Side of Charisma,” which noted:
Narcissists typically make judgments with greater confidence than other people . . . and because their judgments are rendered with such conviction, other people tend to believe them and the narcissists become disproportionately more influential in group situations. Finally, because of their self-confidence and strong need for recognition, narcissists tend to “self-nominate”; consequently, when a leadership gap appears in a group or organization, the narcissists rush to fill it.34
Students with higher narcissism scores have greater salary expectations and also expect it to be easier for them to find a job after they graduate. Other research shows, not surprisingly, that salary expectations are related to someone’s salary, if for no other reason than the higher the salary expectations, the more likely it is for an individual to push for and negotiate for a higher salary.35 Thus, we would expect that narcissism is positively related to salary and rates of promotion.
Research finds that narcissism produces higher levels of short-term likeability, possibly because of the greater extraversion and flamboyance that narcissists exhibit. And narcissism also produces enhanced performance on public evaluation tasks and in competitive tasks.36 Because of the operation of confirmation bias—people see what they expect to see—and the self-fulfilling prophecy in which expectations produce responses on the part of others that help confirm those original expectations, there is little reason to believe that the short-term advantages of immodest, self-aggrandizing behavior would not be sustained over time.
Finally, the evidence demonstrates yet another mechanism that may explain the positive effects of narcissism on obtaining and holding on to leadership positions, namely, the correspondence and overlap “between narcissistic characteristics and the prototypical attributes associated with effective leaders, such as authority, confidence, dominance, and high self-esteem.”37 The extensive and ever-growing research evidence is overwhelmingly clear—narcissists are more likely to be selected for leadership roles and also to seek such positions in the first place.
The fact that women and other ethnic minorities, such as Asian Americans, are on average more modest and self-effacing and less narcissistic than typical white males, in part because of gender role and cultural expectations, may help explain their worse career outcomes. As summarized in an article on gender and self-promotion:
While negotiating, women focus on what is fair whilst men plan to win. . . . Several studies have shown that women tend to underrate their achievements, and have less confidence in their abilities than their line managers have for them.38
That article also reports that women are less likely to use impression-management strategies than are men—to their detriment, as impression management affects evaluations and hiring decisions. One reason women are less frequently chosen for leadership roles has to do with their unwillingness to display confidence. The idea that women, when offered a promotion, would question (even if privately) if they were ready for and deserving of it while men would generally think “Why did this take so long?” finds support in empirical research. Not thinking that one is deserving and therefore possibly being less willing to ask for promotions and salary increases hinder career progress for anyone, regardless of gender or ethnicity.
A recent report on Asians in U.S. companies noted that only 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and corporate officers are Asians and that Asians earn less money than Caucasians, even after other factors affecting salary are statistically controlled for. One factor affecting these outcomes is the importance of executive presence, which, the report noted, often requires behaviors seemingly at odds with Asian (and female) behavioral norms:
Asians admit that their culture inculcates them with different communication and networking styles, as well as a pronounced emphasis on performance and technical competency. . . . Asian professionals are frequently held back from senior positions by the perception that they don’t have “executive presence,” a factor that similarly operates against other minority groups in the workplace, including women.39
And what constitutes executive presence? Certainly not modesty:
Corporate culture in the U.S. places a high premium on assertiveness and individualistic thinking, values that can be at odds with those prized in the Asian tradition . . . the self-effacement and modesty emphasized by many Asian cultures is at direct odds with the realities of the contemporary workplace where assertiveness and directness are central. . . . Cautionary proverbs such as “the loudest duck gets shot” (a Chinese saying), or “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down” (a Japanese saying), signal a deep suspicion of behaviors that make one stand out from the crowd. Clearly, these values are diametrically opposed to the self-advocacy and self-assurance that are essential leadership qualities in the American corporate environment.40
Although focused on explaining the career issues faced by Asians and women, these findings and insights apply to everyone: although modesty may be valued in the leadership literature, self-promotion and assertiveness seem to produce better career results in the real world.
Thus far we have seen that narcissism and immodesty, including self-promotion, help people be selected for leadership roles, both in naturally occurring groups and in more structured selection situations, including the military. Another important outcome worthy of our attention is the effect of narcissism on people’s survival and success in leadership roles once they attain such positions.
Many studies of leaders focus, naturally enough, on outcomes such as organizational performance and the attitudes and turnover intentions of subordinates. Possibly surprising to some, given the oft-stated preferences for modesty in the leadership industry, narcissists often lead organizations that do better than others. One study of 173 high-technology manufacturing companies in the Midwest found that CEOs who were more narcissistic tended to have more of an entrepreneurial orientation and to take bolder and more aggressive strategic actions, which resulted in higher levels of variability in performance. Another study of 203 corporate professionals found that while narcissism and guiltlessness created problems with subordinates because of the leader’s management style, this personality profile was positively related to having better communication skills, creativity, and strategic thinking.41
A study of 392 CEOs during the financial crisis beginning in 2007 found that, because narcissists tend to be self-absorbed and overconfident, firms led by more narcissistic CEOs did worse at the beginning of the crisis. However, because narcissists have a stronger bias for action and risk-taking—again a result of their higher levels of self-confidence—the study also found that more narcissistic CEOs led firms to bounce back more successfully during the post-crisis recovery.42
A study of U.S. presidents involved 121 expert raters evaluating the personality of 41 presidents. One investigation used the ratings of the presidents on their fearless dominance, a validated psychological measure incorporating glibness, narcissism, and guiltlessness. That study reported that fearless dominance and its associated boldness predicted “better rated presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations,” and objective levels of performance such as initiating new programs and being viewed by expert raters as a world figure.43
A second study of forty-two U.S. presidents employed data on expert ratings of presidential personality, historical surveys of presidential performance, and a set of objective indicators of presidential performance. Recognizing the dual effects of narcissism—on the one hand, narcissists do well in the evaluations made by others, are effective at becoming celebrities, and are skilled at persuading others that their ideas are innovative even when they are not; on the other hand, narcissists are overconfident in their decision-making and therefore often fail to learn and also alienate others who work with them—the study examined the dual effects of narcissism on presidential performance. The authors concluded that grandiose narcissism “is tied to independently rated and objective indicators of presidential success . . . [and] is associated with several indicators of negative presidential performance, especially in the ethical domain . . . [and] is more elevated in U.S. presidents than in the general population.” The authors also concluded that the level of narcissism has increased in presidents over time.44
In addition to organizational and group performance, leader survival and acquisition of resources also matter. Without for a moment denying the importance of group and organizational performance, leaders themselves undoubtedly evaluate their success at least partly by whether or not they hold on to their jobs as well as by the perquisites such jobs provide them. Social pressures may cause leaders not to admit to these personal objectives, but these goals are important, as evidenced by the amount of effort leaders spend pursuing them.
So what is the effect of narcissism on the leaders rather than the led? The business school professor Charles O’Reilly and three of his colleagues conducted an innovative study on the CEOs of thirty-two companies in the high-technology industry that each employed at least twenty alumni from one of three leading West Coast business schools. Of the firms, thirty-one were listed in the Fortune 1000, and collectively the thirty-two companies generated 67 percent of the revenues coming from all the high-technology companies in the Fortune 1000 in 2009. The researchers contacted the schools’ alumni and asked them if they would be willing to anonymously rate their CEOs using a checklist of characteristics, some of which came from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. On average, eight people with an average company tenure of more than seven years provided ratings of the personality of their CEO.
Here’s what O’Reilly and his research partners found: “Pairwise correlations show that CEO narcissism is significantly correlated with CEO total compensation, the gap in compensation between the CEO and the senior team, and the total value of the CEO’s share holdings. Narcissism is also positively related to CEO tenure.”45 Using more sophisticated statistical techniques and controlling for numerous other factors that might affect CEO compensation and tenure, the researchers discovered an interaction between narcissism and tenure in the job such that over time “more narcissistic CEOs who have longer tenure claim more compensation and have greater variance in pay within the senior management team than do CEOs who are less narcissistic, shorter in tenure, or both.”46 In short, narcissists earn more money and remain in their positions longer, even in high-technology companies.
The extensive research literature that includes both experimental and field data paints a consistent picture. Regardless of what one may believe about the virtues of modesty, several facts emerge from considering leaders in the real world. First, modesty is rare, while narcissism, in its productive or unproductive variants, is common among leaders, even among some of the most prominent, iconic, and celebrated of such leaders, including U.S. presidents and corporate CEOs. In fact, the most celebrated leaders are particularly likely to be narcissistic and immodest, which is one of the reasons they became so well known and celebrated in the first place!
Second, narcissism and self-aggrandizement and the behaviors associated with these constructs reliably and consistently predict the selection of leaders, the evaluations made after interviews, and the selection of emergent leadership. And third, narcissistic CEOs seem to earn more compared with others in the top management team, and last longer in their jobs—probably because they are more ready and willing to eliminate their rivals. Furthermore, narcissistic individuals are often superior performers in at least some dimensions; they are great at selling their ideas and vision, effective in attracting the support of others (particularly outside others), good at getting attention and its attendant benefits, and often effective at getting things done. The many benefits of immodesty help explain why modest CEOs are so rare, the leadership industry’s blandishments notwithstanding.
For all the reasons just discussed, it is far from clear that we actually ought to want modest leaders. In fact, in this as in many other leadership topics explored in this book such as authenticity and truthfulness, the evidence suggests that what people say are the qualities they value in leaders is frequently inconsistent with their actual decisions and behavior when confronted with leaders or potential leaders exhibiting various behaviors and traits.
Rather than chalk up this discrepancy to simple hypocrisy, I attribute it to a fundamental ambivalence. On the one hand, people understand the desirable and socially desirable and approved qualities in leaders, and they articulate those views and values when asked about them. On the other hand, people are attracted to the grandiose and the unusual. And individuals also come to understand, often firsthand, the many benefits that come from following leaders who don’t exhibit the traits and behaviors, including modesty, that are so often prescribed for leaders, but who instead do the opposite.
Nonetheless, if we or work organizations wanted to select modest leaders, it would be fairly easy to do so. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory is a validated scale, and it can be used not only by leadership candidates as part of a personality assessment, but also, as the studies of Silicon Valley CEOs and U.S. presidents demonstrate, by knowledgeable observers to rate people on narcissism with a high degree of reliability. Furthermore, the studies of CEO narcissism provide anyone who wants to use the results with even more unobtrusive indicators, such as the inappropriate use of the first-person pronoun, the size of pictures, and various ways in which people claim credit and seize the limelight in otherwise interdependent situations.
The fact that most companies not only don’t use such selection techniques but their selection decisions also seemingly reflect precisely the opposite preference—a preference for immodest, grandiose, and narcissistic leaders—stands as an important barrier to having leaders who might create workplaces quite different from most contemporary work environments.