sixteen
Narcissism Never Wins
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a young hunter renowned for his beauty—and for spurning any suitor who pursued him. One day while he was in the woods, the nymph Echo saw him and immediately fell in love. She caught his attention, but he rejected her. Heartbroken, Echo wandered the forest, pining over the unrequited love to the point that she faded away, leaving behind only the sound of her voice. When the goddess Nemesis heard about the incident, she decided to punish Narcissus. She led him to a spring, where he caught sight of his own reflection and promptly fell in love . . . with himself. He remained there, staring into the water—enthralled by his own beauty but unable to be loved back by his reflection—until he wasted away and died.
This two-thousand-year-old story is where we get the modern term narcissism, which is frequently used in popular culture as a synonym for selfishness and self-centeredness. A narcissistic person is self-absorbed and self-important. In a word, selfish.
Narcissism to the extreme is a clinical condition called narcissistic personality disorder. The American Psychiatric Association defines it as “a pattern of need for admiration and lack of empathy for others. A person with narcissistic personality disorder may have a grandiose sense of self-importance, a sense of entitlement, take advantage of others or lack empathy.”1 The Mayo Clinic calls it “a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.” Interestingly they add, “But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”2
In most people, of course, narcissism does not reach the level of a full-blown personality disorder. But tendencies toward selfishness, ego, self-absorption, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy are all too common in society and in leadership today; and in that sense, narcissism is alive and well. As leaders, we must be aware of these tendencies both in ourselves and in the cultures we build in our teams and organizations.
Beyond Selfishness
Humans are born with a selfish bent—any parent can tell you that. The first words of a child after Mama and Dada are usually no and mine, accompanied by screaming. A key task of parenting is helping children realize they are not a universe unto themselves, but members of a family and part of a larger world. Good manners, sharing with others, empathy, deference, conflict resolution—these things should be taught first in the home, with the goal of preparing children for the world that awaits. It’s a world where, contrary to popular opinion, selfishness actually doesn’t do well. We teach children social skills and character traits because we know they will need these things to have friends, to hold down jobs, to contribute to society, and to lead others.
Humans are meant to grow beyond selfishness, not to internalize and institutionalize it. Maturity is seeing beyond the immediate, beyond the bubble that is your world. It is realizing that your life is intricately connected with others. Their success is your success, and their pain is your pain, because no one lives alone. John Donne’s famous seventeenth-century essay “No Man Is an Island” says this:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.3
It is also to inspire others to serve and give—to step into relationship and teamwork. You can’t help others grow if you are stuck in selfishness, though, and until you can get over yourself, you’ll never serve others. Rejecting narcissism and embracing selflessness and generosity are constant challenges for any leader.
As a leader, your role is to serve and to give, which flies in the face of narcissism.
A greater title or a bigger sphere of influence simply gives you more power to serve. In other words, leadership greatness isn’t in the power you have over people but in the power with which you serve them.
If you serve people instead of using people, you’ll always have great people around you. People don’t want to be used. They don’t want to be leveraged or manipulated. They want to be believed in and built up. Narcissistic leadership might appear to work short-term; even a self-absorbed leader can threaten, bribe, and manipulate people into a certain amount of productivity. But this kind of shallow, self-serving leadership won’t win long-term. If you want to succeed, serve people. Make your life about others, not about ego.
Seven Signs of a Narcissistic Leader
How can you identify narcissism in yourself as a leader? It’s not easy. For one thing, selfishness is a matter of degrees, not an either-or distinction. It’s normal and healthy to care for yourself, to look out for your interests, and to be proud of yourself. But when those things take precedence, or when they trump empathy and compassion, you’ve begun to cross a line. Since human beings tend to give themselves the benefit of the doubt long after they should, you might think you have good motivations and a balanced perspective when really, you’re spending too much time admiring your own reflection in the water.
The American Psychiatric Association’s definition of narcissism, quoted above, gives us a picture of selfishness taken to an extreme. It highlights several characteristics of narcissism that are very applicable to leaders. To be clear, I’m not saying that if we have one of these characteristics, then we have a clinical personality disorder. But there is a possibility that we have allowed an internal bent toward selfishness and self-absorption to take root in our leadership, and it needs to be corrected before it grows further. That is healthy self-examination, and it is part of leading ourselves first. Here, then, are seven signs of a narcissistic leader.
1. Excessive Need for Admiration
Admiration feels good, but it’s a monster that is never satiated. A self-absorbed leader cannot receive enough praise, credit, or glory to be satisfied. If you are relying on your team or your spouse to fill that void by singing your praises, you’ll burn them out. Separate your value from your accomplishments and be secure even if no one is asking for your autograph. That way, when fame does come along, you’ll be prepared to handle it properly.
2. Lack of Empathy
This may be the most dangerous consequence of narcissism. Selfish leaders tend to use people, ignore people, reject people, and step on people. It’s not that they do it on purpose, but there is simply little room for understanding or compassion in their thought processes because their entire existence is focused on themselves. And since they are not really thinking about other people’s feelings or needs, they end up hurting others. If you find yourself consistently treating people poorly, or if there is a growing trail of people behind you who have left your team in hurt or anger, evaluate your empathy level. Make sure you are thinking not just about yourself, but about others as well.
3. Exaggerated Sense of Self-mportance
You are important—you just shouldn’t think about that all the time, and you should also remember that other people are equally as important as you. If you can manage to hold on to the dual truth that both you and those around you are important, you’ll be able to have healthy self-confidence and self-esteem without falling into egotism. A healthy question to ask yourself is this: What informs my sense of self-importance? If the answer is something as transient as a job title, money, or fame, adjust the basis of your self-image before ego gets out of hand (or crashes and burns if things take a downturn later). Focus instead on things that are more permanent and more under your control: your relationships, moral strength, character growth, spirituality, and contribution to others.
4. Feelings of Entitlement
We’ve all been around people who thought the world owed them something, and it’s not an attractive trait. Leaders, even good ones, can adopt this same attitude, often subtly and over time. Remember, you will make sacrifices that no one else makes. You will carry weight that no one else understands. If you don’t process that reality correctly along the way, you can begin to resent the sacrifices—or worse, resent those you lead—and feel entitled to “extras.” Corruption easily follows entitlement, because you can begin to feel above the law, as if the rules that apply to lesser mortals somehow don’t apply to you.
Be wary if you find yourself consistently hosting pity parties in your head.
That can be an indication that you’re developing a victim mentality, which is often a precursor to feelings of entitlement and the temptations that follow.
5. Taking Advantage of Others
Narcissism blinds leaders to the needs, dreams, and rights of others, and it creates leaders who use people rather than serving people. If your thoughts are all about you, you will view others through a narcissistic lens: how they can serve you, how they can advance your goals, whether or not they are worth your time and investment. As a leader, you do have to maintain the integrity of your cause, but you can’t burn through people in service of your cause. Even if someone moves on from your group, you can still value and honor the relationship. Also, don’t make the mistake of limiting your attention and care just to the people who will help you reach your objectives. The way you treat people who aren’t useful to you is a good litmus test of your character as a leader.
6. Broken or Limited Relationships
In their book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, authors Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell state that narcissists tend to lack “emotionally warm, caring, and loving relationships with other people.” They add, “This is a main difference between a narcissist and someone merely high in self-esteem: the high self-esteem person who’s not narcissistic values relationships, but the narcissist does not.”4 In other words, self-centered, self-absorbed people tend to have poor relationships—but they don’t even care because they don’t value connection with others in the first place.
As leaders, our relationships serve as a barometer of our heart. They reveal how others-focused our thoughts and actions are. If we lack strong, vibrant connections with people, or if we routinely shut ourselves off from others, we may be drifting toward narcissistic patterns. On the other hand, strong, long-term relationships likely indicate that our ego is under control.
7. Overreaction to Criticism
Criticism is inevitable, especially when you are in leadership, and it can be hard to take it graciously. Temporary feelings of hurt, wounded pride, or defensiveness are probably normal. But if criticism triggers major negative reactions, you might have a problem with narcissism. These reactions could include lashing out in revenge at critics, making excuses or blaming other people for your mistakes, loudly and constantly proclaiming your innocence, falling into depression or experiencing prolonged moodiness, and so on.
Why does narcissism trigger an overreaction to criticism? In part, because an overinflated ego frequently hides deep insecurity. One of the more subtle truths about narcissism is that it often involves a sort of hidden self-rejection. You can become so consumed with fixing or hiding your faults that you can’t think about anything else. Humorist and writer Emily Levine said it this way: “I am a recovering narcissist. I thought narcissism was about self-love till someone told me there is a flip side to it. It is actually drearier than self-love; it is unrequited self-love.”5 This is why it is so important for leaders to both accept themselves and lead themselves: if you can’t move past your failures and shortcomings, you’ll tend to overreact defensively to anyone who threatens your fragile ego.
Young Narcissus, staring at his reflection, would have made a terrible leader. He couldn’t take his eyes off himself, so he couldn’t leave the edge of the water. The same thing can happen if we take our eyes off the vision, off the challenges ahead, and—most important—off the people around us, and turn our gaze inward in narcissistic self-adoration. When we do that, we stop leading others and end up simply serving ourselves. That’s the polar opposite of productive, visionary leadership.
Narcissism is inherently unsatisfactory, and in the long run, it never wins. What does win? Kindness wins. Altruism wins. Servant leadership wins. Celebrating other people wins. Success isn’t measured by how many people know your name. It isn’t even measured by what you accomplish in your lifetime. It’s measured by your coaching tree, your mentoring chain. It’s measured by the fruit you cultivate in other people’s lives. It’s measured by the investments you make in people that, twenty years later, are still earning compound interest. It’s measured by what you give, not by what you receive; and by who you serve, not by who serves you.