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How narcissistic leaders infect their organizations’ cultures

97 points by hhs 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
- webscalist 6y ago
  Biden's
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
lowiqengineer 6y ago
Cool subtext here. 29 days y’all.
lacrimacida 6y ago
Someone pointed Biden, the comment was flagged and deleted. I don’t see Biden as raising a red flag on narcissism but I see Trump as a disturbing flashy bundle of red flags. How can people not see that? Regardless what they stand for, they could at least accept the country’s leader is an overt narcissist
Chris2048 6y ago
On this: > profoundly grandiose, overconfident, and dishonest, credit-stealing, and blame-throwing, according to Chatman. They are abusive to their subordinates, think they are superior, don’t listen to experts, create conflict, and believe the rules simply don’t apply to them How do you objectively study such a thing? How do you tell when credit is stolen or blame underserved as an outside researcher? How do you determine who is abusive, but for those that do it out in the open (such that Bill Gates is a counterexample); how can you talk about what people believe?
- austincheney 6y ago
  You measure the credit of what people claim against who does what work. It’s not the same but a very similar phenomenon is measuring for examples of Dunning-Kruger.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    But how do you know "what people claim against who does what work" unless in the most shameless examples: anyone trying to steal credit may be in a better position to do so without counter evidence.
- jolks 6y ago
  Initially, I learned by experiencing working with such leaders first-hand. After some time, I noticed repeating patterns in their behavior and I started to ask if there is any scientific explanation behind these patterns. After much search for answers, I stumbled upon the timely publication of "The Laws of Human Nature" by Robert Green in 2018. It opened my eyes to the toxic narcissism around us. I started to read articles, quora discussions, books, selected research papers on the topic. Working with those leaders and coworkers in my day job helped me to digest the content and reinforce my understanding of how they think and act. At first it was difficult not to be emotionally affected in the "Devaluation" phase (Lookup "narcissistic abuse cycle" on Google Images) but as time passes, I approached the problem as rationally as I can, I learned not to take it personally aka Grey Rock Method. To help you folks to quickly get started, assuming you can only read one book, I highly recommend "Don't You Know Who I Am?: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility" by Dr. Ramani Durvasula. It was published in the late 2019 and in my opinion, the best book by a licensed clinical psychologist. The "The Laws of Human Nature" book is more of a heavy-read as it covers not just toxic narcissism. For those who prefer more practical book and especially if you do not have the means to leave toxic relationships and workplaces, I recommend "How to Handle a Narcissist: Understanding and Dealing with a Range of Narcissistic Personalities" book by Theresa Jackson. To add to the article, the overconfidence mentioned is actually just a fake display of what the narcissistic leaders want the world to perceive them. Behind the fake display is pathological insecurity or low self-esteem. The fake display is a form of defense mechanism. Those leaders are addicted to having "audiences" for their reality show or drama in which they are the center of everything.
ashtonkem 6y ago
The obvious corollary to this is that if a clear narcissist is hired near the top of your organization, it’s time to polish your resume and head towards the door if you can. Chances are you’ll want to leave sooner or later if all the things described in this article happen, and it’s better to spend more of your time in a more pleasant organization not led by a narcissist.
- Athrowaway12345 6y ago
  Yeah, it's a lot easier to jump ship than to try and convice the board that the leader isn't right, I feel. I wouldn't be willing to do that.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I 100% would be. If you’re a high skill laborer, jobs are replaceable, but your time and emotional well being are not. All of the “we’re a family all in this together, rah rah” stuff is absolute nonsense designed to convince you to ignore your own self interest for the sake of the company’s self interest. You should look out for your well being ahead of the company’s, because they will not look out for yours. Also, you’ll never convince the board that the executive is bad. Not only do they have an immense incentive to justify their own choice, chances are that the narcissist is going to be much better at manipulating the board than you will be at persuading the board. By the time you can persuade the board that an executive is toxic, chances are the damage to the company is already done, and you’ve had to spend years of your life dealing with the fallout.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      Your parent comment contained just the same thing, I think you misread it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
recursivedoubts 6y ago
Their exploitative, self-absorbed behavior sets them apart from the charismatic, “transformational” leaders they are often confused with. OK. So, was Steve Jobs a transformational leader or a narcissistic leader? We all hate narcissists when we have to deal with them, and perhaps we hate our own narcissism. But look at the incentives: CEOs are often terrible people because, to become CEO, you have to battle your way to the top in an increasingly machiavellian up-or-out pyramid and make awful decisions in the interest of the business (I've had to fire someone, it is horrible.) So we shouldn't be surprised to find many sociopaths there. The offered solutions don't address incentives, and rely on the board, which is filled with the same type of people who are in the C-Suite. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We are all aware that sociopaths are bad. Tell us something we don't know, Berkeley.
- austincheney 6y ago
  Check out the book Good To Great by Jim Collins. The entire book is about this exactly.
- CerealFounder 6y ago
  No no no, you ID'd a very important issue but dont go far enough. You are not only right (as a CEO who def has some narcissism), but charisma \ narcissism is like crazy \ eccentric. The term changes historically post success. It becomes revisionism. Going from 0 to 1 requires a ton of luck, but really the it's the belief that outsiders are wrong about the statistical odds from going from 0 to 1 and sticking with it till it works or you break. It takes an unreasonable personality to get there and then that unreasonable personality has to adapt to a more measured one to protect the turf. Its ironic but the sword that gets most startups early success kills it eventually. Innovation in general is hard to do without outlier personalties in this realm. I dont have a great solution, but I can confidently say that unreasonable people both change the world and torture loved ones.
- jennasys 6y ago
  There are CEOs that are narcissistic, and there are CEOs that have NPD. The first will be awful to work with, and the latter will destroy your life if you hang around long enough. This is from first hand experience. I placed myself in-between a NPD CEO and the rest of the company I was at in an effort to fix the company culture which was toxic when I started. It took a year but it worked. I put in a lot of effort to make it a nice place to work at. I left after 2 years, and within 6 months the entire management staff had quit or was fired after I left. People with NPD don't know they are monsters. They take credit and place blame without exception. They view everyone as beneath them and treat everyone as disposable. This guy said out loud that he doesn't like win-win deals - it must be win-lose. Taking something away from another person made him feel better about himself. I'm not sure I'll ever heal from that experience.
w_t_payne 6y ago
My personal experience backs up this thesis. I've observed that (for better and for worse), the culture of an organization is profoundly shaped by the dominant personality in the leadership team. I have also in the past found myself being led by a deeply unethical individual, resulting (along with everyone else in the organization) in the difficult situation where we have had to collectively somehow drag the organization back out from under the lies (and perhaps fraud) committed by that single unethical leader. This is a serious issue, and not something that we should take lightly. Not only have I experienced serious health repercussions from this episode in my life, but I have also seen other victims within the organization suffer emotional and psychological problems over the following years. Creating a functioning, productive and healthy organization is such a critical activity - for all of us. It is something which by now we should know how to approach systematically and reliably, and yet I don't yet see (or perhaps am simply not aware) of a state-of-the art approach to this, or even a useful set of metrics by which we can judge success.
motohagiography 6y ago
What's narcissism really? Is it NPD or another cluster of personality disorders, or is it a much more pervasive set of examples of poor character and undeveloped virtue? From the article: "Narcissistic leaders have personalities that are profoundly grandiose, overconfident, and dishonest, credit-stealing, and blame-throwing, according to Chatman. They are abusive to their subordinates, think they are superior, don’t listen to experts, create conflict, and believe the rules simply don’t apply to them. They can explode in rage at any sign of disagreement or disloyalty. There’s always an “I” in their conception of the team." It reads more like a complaint and not an observation. I think the basic mistake these and other people make when they interpret the myth of Narcissus is thinking that he is in love with "himself," instead of the more incisive insight that he is preoccupied with his reflection, that is, how he imagines himself to be perceived by others. That is the crippling pathology, which manifests in bizarre behavior that is over-indexed on shaping the perfectness of that reflection. Whenever I see "narcissism," mentioned anywhere these days, it's always the same kind of complaint made by someone who identifies as feeling inferior to an imagined charismatic, glad handling, type-A personality. Narcissism really is a pervasive problem, but mainly because it's not what most people think it is, and the roots of it are not something most people are prepared to face.
- hhs 6y ago
  If interested, the piece has a link that goes in depth on what narcissism is. Specifically, this is in the fourth paragraph, which links to the words ‘dark side’, with a 23 page article.
  - jl2718 6y ago
    This also reads like a complaint. I don’t see anything in that definition that distinguishes it from other dark triad personalities. But I have been looking into this a lot, and I think the way to understand it is as an intense insecurity. Maybe about something that was their key to receiving acceptance and affection as children. These are people in pain; they don’t see yours. It is the most benign of the dark triad in that the others begin deliberate manipulation and harm.
- 6y ago
Raphmedia 6y ago
> When they see leaders take credit for every success and blame others for every failure, employees’ morale sinks and their self-confidence wilts. I've seen this first-hand. It was very sad to see someone spend so much energy yet reap so much damage. They don't do it out of malice, they simply don't notice it and are resistant to criticism which they perceive as personal attacks. Developers stalled in their skills, communication between departments ceased and people started leaving. Within a few month the entire development team was gone.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
steve76 6y ago
It's cut throat at the top. Don't like it, don't take the job. I don't like getting my feelings hurt either. I also don't like: - The communist Chinese poisoning me with a bioweapon - Burning alive in a nationwide wave of arson across a hundred cities - Rioters beating me to death because I took a wrong turn - Corrupt federal police hitting me with military intelligence weapons made in the aftermath of the twin towers blowing up - Dying in prison just because I'm not part of the club, whether or not if what I do is moral or lawful, makes everyone wealthy, or is just fun. I fault no one for fighting back. Why take damage just to stay still? I fault no one for ambition and personal gain. Blue jays squawk and throw stones because they know what cats do to them. And it's really rich for Berkeley to say this. Burn down the city and beat people to death in the street. The next morning, write about what a good person they are. Completely forget about the people they've killed. It's an old racket and doesn't work. You die bitter. Pulitzer did the same exact thing.
cbanek 6y ago
> Still, wily narcissists can sometimes evade detection until they’ve been in place for a while. Using 360-degree evaluations from a wide range of employees can help surface self-absorbed leaders, Chatman notes. I honestly doubt this. The whole credit-stealing blame-shifting will inevitably put the blame on those with less power and status and set them up for retaliation. In all the years I've been working, I've honestly never solved a problem writing a peer review, ever. Many times, those don't even end up on a review or are shown to the person being reviewed, unless the person's manager wants it to be. I'd also like to reference the 'fish rots from the head down' - while the meaning is true, I find this to be such a strange saying. I heard a better one that I've started to use from now on. "The house leaks from the roof on down" What side is down on a fish anyway? And do they actually rot that way? Seems suspect to me. Perhaps an experiment is in order.
- bhouston 6y ago
  I heard someone one say "shit roll down hill" https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shit%20rolls%20down%20hill https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shit%20rolls...
  - closeparen 6y ago
    “Shit rolls downhill” implies that sympathetic underlings are dealing with the higher-ups mess, while “fish rots from the head” implies that underlings are bad people because the leaders are bad people.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > What side is down on a fish anyway? And do they actually rot that way? Seems suspect to me. Perhaps an experiment is in order. From experience, chopping off the head can keep the rest fresh a bit longer (gutting the fish helps more, as the fish is really rotting from the inside out). As for the direction, in a couple of other languages I'm familiar with the saying is more literally "the fish rots from the head" (Russian) or "the fish stinks from the head" (Hebrew), with directionality implied rather than explicit. Sort of like "burning the candle from both ends" versus "burning the candle from both ends inward", I guess.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vlagman 6y ago
"Narcissists infect the culture through the policies and practices that they directly influence, or—more often—that they fail to institute. They often choose not to put in place strong policies governing ethical behavior, conflicts of interest, and pay equity between men and women, as well as practices that promote teamwork and encourage people to treat others with civility and respect. On the flip side, they also frequently fail to sanction employees when they violate these shared norms. In effect, people get rewarded for less ethical, less collaborative behaviors, Chatman says." That is true for some narcissists. Now there is a new breed of narcissists that use all of the above to strengthen their positions in companies without doing real work. And they are more ruthless than their predecessors, who often at least had a sense of humor.

97 points by hhs 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

webscalist 6y ago
Biden's
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

lowiqengineer 6y ago

Cool subtext here. 29 days y’all.

lacrimacida 6y ago

Someone pointed Biden, the comment was flagged and deleted. I don’t see Biden as raising a red flag on narcissism but I see Trump as a disturbing flashy bundle of red flags. How can people not see that? Regardless what they stand for, they could at least accept the country’s leader is an overt narcissist

Chris2048 6y ago

On this: > profoundly grandiose, overconfident, and dishonest, credit-stealing, and blame-throwing, according to Chatman. They are abusive to their subordinates, think they are superior, don’t listen to experts, create conflict, and believe the rules simply don’t apply to them How do you objectively study such a thing? How do you tell when credit is stolen or blame underserved as an outside researcher? How do you determine who is abusive, but for those that do it out in the open (such that Bill Gates is a counterexample); how can you talk about what people believe?

austincheney 6y ago
You measure the credit of what people claim against who does what work. It’s not the same but a very similar phenomenon is measuring for examples of Dunning-Kruger.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  But how do you know "what people claim against who does what work" unless in the most shameless examples: anyone trying to steal credit may be in a better position to do so without counter evidence.
jolks 6y ago
Initially, I learned by experiencing working with such leaders first-hand. After some time, I noticed repeating patterns in their behavior and I started to ask if there is any scientific explanation behind these patterns. After much search for answers, I stumbled upon the timely publication of "The Laws of Human Nature" by Robert Green in 2018. It opened my eyes to the toxic narcissism around us. I started to read articles, quora discussions, books, selected research papers on the topic. Working with those leaders and coworkers in my day job helped me to digest the content and reinforce my understanding of how they think and act. At first it was difficult not to be emotionally affected in the "Devaluation" phase (Lookup "narcissistic abuse cycle" on Google Images) but as time passes, I approached the problem as rationally as I can, I learned not to take it personally aka Grey Rock Method. To help you folks to quickly get started, assuming you can only read one book, I highly recommend "Don't You Know Who I Am?: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility" by Dr. Ramani Durvasula. It was published in the late 2019 and in my opinion, the best book by a licensed clinical psychologist. The "The Laws of Human Nature" book is more of a heavy-read as it covers not just toxic narcissism. For those who prefer more practical book and especially if you do not have the means to leave toxic relationships and workplaces, I recommend "How to Handle a Narcissist: Understanding and Dealing with a Range of Narcissistic Personalities" book by Theresa Jackson. To add to the article, the overconfidence mentioned is actually just a fake display of what the narcissistic leaders want the world to perceive them. Behind the fake display is pathological insecurity or low self-esteem. The fake display is a form of defense mechanism. Those leaders are addicted to having "audiences" for their reality show or drama in which they are the center of everything.

ashtonkem 6y ago

The obvious corollary to this is that if a clear narcissist is hired near the top of your organization, it’s time to polish your resume and head towards the door if you can. Chances are you’ll want to leave sooner or later if all the things described in this article happen, and it’s better to spend more of your time in a more pleasant organization not led by a narcissist.

Athrowaway12345 6y ago
Yeah, it's a lot easier to jump ship than to try and convice the board that the leader isn't right, I feel. I wouldn't be willing to do that.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I 100% would be. If you’re a high skill laborer, jobs are replaceable, but your time and emotional well being are not. All of the “we’re a family all in this together, rah rah” stuff is absolute nonsense designed to convince you to ignore your own self interest for the sake of the company’s self interest. You should look out for your well being ahead of the company’s, because they will not look out for yours. Also, you’ll never convince the board that the executive is bad. Not only do they have an immense incentive to justify their own choice, chances are that the narcissist is going to be much better at manipulating the board than you will be at persuading the board. By the time you can persuade the board that an executive is toxic, chances are the damage to the company is already done, and you’ve had to spend years of your life dealing with the fallout.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Your parent comment contained just the same thing, I think you misread it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

recursivedoubts 6y ago

Their exploitative, self-absorbed behavior sets them apart from the charismatic, “transformational” leaders they are often confused with. OK. So, was Steve Jobs a transformational leader or a narcissistic leader? We all hate narcissists when we have to deal with them, and perhaps we hate our own narcissism. But look at the incentives: CEOs are often terrible people because, to become CEO, you have to battle your way to the top in an increasingly machiavellian up-or-out pyramid and make awful decisions in the interest of the business (I've had to fire someone, it is horrible.) So we shouldn't be surprised to find many sociopaths there. The offered solutions don't address incentives, and rely on the board, which is filled with the same type of people who are in the C-Suite. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We are all aware that sociopaths are bad. Tell us something we don't know, Berkeley.

austincheney 6y ago
Check out the book Good To Great by Jim Collins. The entire book is about this exactly.
CerealFounder 6y ago
No no no, you ID'd a very important issue but dont go far enough. You are not only right (as a CEO who def has some narcissism), but charisma \ narcissism is like crazy \ eccentric. The term changes historically post success. It becomes revisionism. Going from 0 to 1 requires a ton of luck, but really the it's the belief that outsiders are wrong about the statistical odds from going from 0 to 1 and sticking with it till it works or you break. It takes an unreasonable personality to get there and then that unreasonable personality has to adapt to a more measured one to protect the turf. Its ironic but the sword that gets most startups early success kills it eventually. Innovation in general is hard to do without outlier personalties in this realm. I dont have a great solution, but I can confidently say that unreasonable people both change the world and torture loved ones.
jennasys 6y ago
There are CEOs that are narcissistic, and there are CEOs that have NPD. The first will be awful to work with, and the latter will destroy your life if you hang around long enough. This is from first hand experience. I placed myself in-between a NPD CEO and the rest of the company I was at in an effort to fix the company culture which was toxic when I started. It took a year but it worked. I put in a lot of effort to make it a nice place to work at. I left after 2 years, and within 6 months the entire management staff had quit or was fired after I left. People with NPD don't know they are monsters. They take credit and place blame without exception. They view everyone as beneath them and treat everyone as disposable. This guy said out loud that he doesn't like win-win deals - it must be win-lose. Taking something away from another person made him feel better about himself. I'm not sure I'll ever heal from that experience.

w_t_payne 6y ago

My personal experience backs up this thesis. I've observed that (for better and for worse), the culture of an organization is profoundly shaped by the dominant personality in the leadership team. I have also in the past found myself being led by a deeply unethical individual, resulting (along with everyone else in the organization) in the difficult situation where we have had to collectively somehow drag the organization back out from under the lies (and perhaps fraud) committed by that single unethical leader. This is a serious issue, and not something that we should take lightly. Not only have I experienced serious health repercussions from this episode in my life, but I have also seen other victims within the organization suffer emotional and psychological problems over the following years. Creating a functioning, productive and healthy organization is such a critical activity - for all of us. It is something which by now we should know how to approach systematically and reliably, and yet I don't yet see (or perhaps am simply not aware) of a state-of-the art approach to this, or even a useful set of metrics by which we can judge success.

motohagiography 6y ago

What's narcissism really? Is it NPD or another cluster of personality disorders, or is it a much more pervasive set of examples of poor character and undeveloped virtue? From the article: "Narcissistic leaders have personalities that are profoundly grandiose, overconfident, and dishonest, credit-stealing, and blame-throwing, according to Chatman. They are abusive to their subordinates, think they are superior, don’t listen to experts, create conflict, and believe the rules simply don’t apply to them. They can explode in rage at any sign of disagreement or disloyalty. There’s always an “I” in their conception of the team." It reads more like a complaint and not an observation. I think the basic mistake these and other people make when they interpret the myth of Narcissus is thinking that he is in love with "himself," instead of the more incisive insight that he is preoccupied with his reflection, that is, how he imagines himself to be perceived by others. That is the crippling pathology, which manifests in bizarre behavior that is over-indexed on shaping the perfectness of that reflection. Whenever I see "narcissism," mentioned anywhere these days, it's always the same kind of complaint made by someone who identifies as feeling inferior to an imagined charismatic, glad handling, type-A personality. Narcissism really is a pervasive problem, but mainly because it's not what most people think it is, and the roots of it are not something most people are prepared to face.

hhs 6y ago
If interested, the piece has a link that goes in depth on what narcissism is. Specifically, this is in the fourth paragraph, which links to the words ‘dark side’, with a 23 page article.
- jl2718 6y ago
  This also reads like a complaint. I don’t see anything in that definition that distinguishes it from other dark triad personalities. But I have been looking into this a lot, and I think the way to understand it is as an intense insecurity. Maybe about something that was their key to receiving acceptance and affection as children. These are people in pain; they don’t see yours. It is the most benign of the dark triad in that the others begin deliberate manipulation and harm.
6y ago

Raphmedia 6y ago

> When they see leaders take credit for every success and blame others for every failure, employees’ morale sinks and their self-confidence wilts. I've seen this first-hand. It was very sad to see someone spend so much energy yet reap so much damage. They don't do it out of malice, they simply don't notice it and are resistant to criticism which they perceive as personal attacks. Developers stalled in their skills, communication between departments ceased and people started leaving. Within a few month the entire development team was gone.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

steve76 6y ago

It's cut throat at the top. Don't like it, don't take the job. I don't like getting my feelings hurt either. I also don't like: - The communist Chinese poisoning me with a bioweapon - Burning alive in a nationwide wave of arson across a hundred cities - Rioters beating me to death because I took a wrong turn - Corrupt federal police hitting me with military intelligence weapons made in the aftermath of the twin towers blowing up - Dying in prison just because I'm not part of the club, whether or not if what I do is moral or lawful, makes everyone wealthy, or is just fun. I fault no one for fighting back. Why take damage just to stay still? I fault no one for ambition and personal gain. Blue jays squawk and throw stones because they know what cats do to them. And it's really rich for Berkeley to say this. Burn down the city and beat people to death in the street. The next morning, write about what a good person they are. Completely forget about the people they've killed. It's an old racket and doesn't work. You die bitter. Pulitzer did the same exact thing.

cbanek 6y ago

> Still, wily narcissists can sometimes evade detection until they’ve been in place for a while. Using 360-degree evaluations from a wide range of employees can help surface self-absorbed leaders, Chatman notes. I honestly doubt this. The whole credit-stealing blame-shifting will inevitably put the blame on those with less power and status and set them up for retaliation. In all the years I've been working, I've honestly never solved a problem writing a peer review, ever. Many times, those don't even end up on a review or are shown to the person being reviewed, unless the person's manager wants it to be. I'd also like to reference the 'fish rots from the head down' - while the meaning is true, I find this to be such a strange saying. I heard a better one that I've started to use from now on. "The house leaks from the roof on down" What side is down on a fish anyway? And do they actually rot that way? Seems suspect to me. Perhaps an experiment is in order.

bhouston 6y ago
I heard someone one say "shit roll down hill" https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shit%20rolls%20down%20hill https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shit%20rolls...
- closeparen 6y ago
  “Shit rolls downhill” implies that sympathetic underlings are dealing with the higher-ups mess, while “fish rots from the head” implies that underlings are bad people because the leaders are bad people.
webmaven 6y ago
> What side is down on a fish anyway? And do they actually rot that way? Seems suspect to me. Perhaps an experiment is in order. From experience, chopping off the head can keep the rest fresh a bit longer (gutting the fish helps more, as the fish is really rotting from the inside out). As for the direction, in a couple of other languages I'm familiar with the saying is more literally "the fish rots from the head" (Russian) or "the fish stinks from the head" (Hebrew), with directionality implied rather than explicit. Sort of like "burning the candle from both ends" versus "burning the candle from both ends inward", I guess.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vlagman 6y ago

"Narcissists infect the culture through the policies and practices that they directly influence, or—more often—that they fail to institute. They often choose not to put in place strong policies governing ethical behavior, conflicts of interest, and pay equity between men and women, as well as practices that promote teamwork and encourage people to treat others with civility and respect. On the flip side, they also frequently fail to sanction employees when they violate these shared norms. In effect, people get rewarded for less ethical, less collaborative behaviors, Chatman says." That is true for some narcissists. Now there is a new breed of narcissists that use all of the above to strengthen their positions in companies without doing real work. And they are more ruthless than their predecessors, who often at least had a sense of humor.