Narcissists are people who dream big. They generally think of themselves as being
more intelligent and exceptional than they are.
Because of their high levels of self-confidence, they are also tapped to
be leaders in many situations.
Not only are narcissists asked to be leaders, but their
confidence makes them feel like good leaders to others. People in a group want to feel like the group
is doing a good job. Narcissists project
a confident image, and that confidence is infectious. The rest of the group comes to believe that
their leader is doing well.
So, should we just let the narcissists take over?
A paper by Barbora Nevicka, Femke Ten Velden, Annebel De
Hoogh, and Annelies Van Vianen in the October, 2011 issue of Psychological Science suggests that
there might also be a downside to narcissistic leaders.
Because narcissists are so confident in their abilities and
opinions, they may keep group members from sharing information. In addition, narcissists pick up their
self-confidence in large part through the reactions of other people. As a result, narcissists need to feel like
the success of a group is due to their efforts.
In situations where shared information is crucial to good performance, a
narcissistic leader may cause a group to be very confident that their leader is
a good one and yet they may perform poorly.
To test this possibility, groups of three people were asked
to evaluate candidate for job. Before
getting together as a group, a leader was selected at random. The group leader was the one who had to make
the final decision in the task. The
participants in this study also filled out an inventory that measured their
level of narcissism.
Each group member was given a list of 9 characteristics for
each of three job candidates. Some of
those characteristics were given to each group member, but some were given only
to individuals. The descriptions were
cleverly set up so that one job candidate would look best if only the
information that all group members shared was considered, but that if the group
pooled all of its information, then a second job candidate would actually be
the best one.
Two results emerged from this study.
First, group leaders who had a high score on the narcissism
scale, were generally seen as more effective leaders than group leaders who had
a low score on the narcissism scale.
That is the typical result from studies of narcissism and leadership.
Second, groups with more narcissistic leaders tended to
share less information than those with less narcissistic leaders, and as a
result, they made worse decisions. So,
even though the groups with narcissistic leaders felt better about their group
leader, they actually performed more poorly than those with less narcissistic
leaders.
What does this mean?
There are often two distinct issues in group
performance. First, groups do need to
have some confidence that they are going to succeed. That confidence can increase motivation to
continue with a difficult task. In that
way, a narcissistic leader can be good.
However, if the group needs to share information in order to
succeed, then narcissistic leaders need to curb their tendency to dominate the
discussion and decision making and let others share information. Otherwise, the group runs the risk of rushing
to judgment without key information that might lead to better performance.
