Narcissistic Leadership

Narcissistic Leadership
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Narcissistic Leadership
Leadership plays an important role in organizational success, especially because it provides guidance and clarity about what needs to be done to achieve organizational goals. However, different types and styles of leadership take on different approaches to provide guidance and clarity. Also, different leadership styles/types are characterized by different traits, and these traits impact organizations differently. According to Mauri (2017), leadership styles matter because it is through adopting the right leadership style that organizations can make necessary changes to achieve organizational goals and success. This paper is going to look at two specific leadership styles, namely, narcissistic and covenant leadership. Specifically, the paper will explore the traits and organizational impact of each leadership style and develop a plan that can be used to transition from narcissistic leadership principles to covenant leadership principles, with a special focus on a police organization.
Narcissistic Leadership: Definition and Traits
Narcissistic leadership is understood from the perspective of narcissism as a personality trait. According to Nevocka et al. (2018), narcissism is characterized by a sense of self-imposed importance and superiority. Individuals with this personality trait are also self-absorbed and like to dominate others. Narcissistic leaders are not new; there were narcissistic leaders even in Biblical times. King Nebuchadnezzar is a great example of a narcissistic leader in the Bible. He ruled Babylon and expected his followers to do as he wanted, including worshipping the gold statue he had created instead of worshipping God. However, some people refused to worship this statue, and they were thrown into the furnace of fire for challenging his authority (Daniel 3: 13-22). In another instance, his self-absorbing nature can be seen in Daniel 5:30, where he talked about his greatness in building great Babylon. Unfortunately, he displayed narcissistic traits and ended up destroying himself because he was condemned to eat grass away from humanity for seven years. As Nevocka et al. (2018) reveal, the self-interest and self-absorbing nature of narcissistic leaders make them abusive and end up engaging in behaviors that destroy others.
The key traits of narcissistic leaders are:
* Self-interest and self-absorption
* Disregard for other people’s ideas/opinions (Yu et al., 2018)
* Hostility when challenged by followers
* Aggression towards negative opinions from others (Yu et al., 2018)
* Abusive towards juniors
* Blame externalization- They never take the blame for anything (Nevocka et al., 2018)
* Credit-driven –Likes taking credit even when it is for the positive performance of others.
Surprisingly, a gender bias or stereotype has made narcissistic traits desirable in men but undesirable in women, especially in organizational leadership. Leary and Ashman (2018) reveal that narcissistic female leaders are more disliked than narcissistic male leaders even though they share the same damaging traits. Their traits are also interpreted differently. For ...