Narcissist CEOs Hire People Like Them

Narcissism is disproportionately present among CEOs, but their decisions can be detrimental to company structure.

Narcissistic managers can do more harm for a company than simply being difficult to work with. In fact, according to new research from a German university, narcissists are more likely to hire more narcissists to work in leadership positions on their team, potentially leading to “conflicts” and faster staff turnover.

People with narcissistic personality disorder have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance, according to the Mayo Clinic. They tend to seek attention and want people to admire them while often lacking an ability to understand the feelings of others.

Previous research has demonstrated the disproportionate number of narcissists in CEO positions compared to the general population. This trait is not always destructive, with many CEOs benefiting from the self-confidence and charisma that often accompany it.

“While narcissistic CEOs and executives can create all kinds of problems and conflict in an organization, they can sometimes also be very helpful,” Lorenz Graf-Vlachy, a professor in strategic management and leadership at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany and leader of the latest study, told Newsweek. “Their tendencies towards making big and bold decisions may, for instance, be helpful in fostering innovation in firms.”

However, the impact of narcissistic CEOs on a company’s structure has been less well studied.

In a new study, published in the Journal of Management, Graf-Vlachy and his team combed through thousands of LinkedIn profiles to determine whether narcissistic CEOs tend to hire managers who are just like them.

“We have demonstrated that we can reliably measure the narcissism of managers on the basis of their LinkedIn profiles by analyzing the number of pictures of the manager, the length of the text in the ‘About’ section, and the skills, certificates, and career steps listed,” Graf-Vlachy said. “Narcissists want to show a broader audience that they are superior.”

In total, the team analyzed more than 11,000 LinkedIn profiles of managers from top U.S. companies and found that CEOs with a higher degree of narcissism—as indicated by their LinkedIn profile—tended to appoint members to their senior management teams with similar narcissistic tendencies.

“There are at least two reasons [for this],” Graf-Vlachy said. “First, there is what psychologists call the “similarity-attraction paradigm”. Simply put, it means that we like people that are similar to us. A narcissistic CEO might thus see a narcissistic executive and recognize him- or herself in the executive.

“Second, narcissistic people tend to make great first impressions. They are often perceived as strong leaders, they are often great speakers, and they are superficially charming. Maybe surprisingly, these characteristics may be particularly effective in a job interview with a highly narcissistic CEO—if a narcissistic executive is charming and sings the CEO’s praises, then this is exactly what a narcissistic CEO wants to hear because the narcissistic CEO is looking for precisely such kind of validation or ‘narcissistic supply.'”

So why is this a problem?

“Narcissists want to dominate each other, which leads to conflicts on the board, and these in turn lead to more fluctuation in the executive team,” Graf-Vlachy said.

As a result, narcissist-led senior management teams can expect a significantly higher turnover and potentially higher costs for the company.

Of course, a LinkedIn profile is not a foolproof method for determining personality disorders. “Our social-media-based measure captures narcissism very well in the average,” Graf-Vlachy said. “But I would be hesitant to make strong judgments about individual executives. This is because there might be some outliers where executives have a LinkedIn profile that looks very narcissistic, but they actually listed, for instance, a lot of their skills or included a lot of pictures of themselves for other reasons than to satisfy their own narcissistic needs.”

Even so, these results highlight the importance of unbiased interview selection and hiring of candidates based on their suitability for the job rather than just their personality.

“Our research is important because it shows that more narcissistic CEOs hire more narcissistic executives into their top management teams, but that narcissists clash with each other,” Graf-Vlachy said. “This shows how short-lived the initial attraction of narcissistic executives is […] So whether voluntarily or not, executives leave the top management team. Such turnover is, of course, almost always disruptive for the firm’s business operations.”

He added: “From a practitioner perspective, we need to consider that narcissistic CEOs might not be aware of what they are doing. Our work thus cautions CEOs to be aware of their own tendencies in hiring decisions. Perhaps more importantly, we also caution boards to pay attention to the narcissistic tendencies of their CEOs and potential new executives.”

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