Your coworker probably isn’t a narcissist.
They may be stubborn. They may be self-important. But “narcissist” is a big word—and Cindi and Geoff think we’re throwing it around way too easily.
In this episode of Management Muse, they challenge the way we talk about narcissism at work. Cindi and Geoff separate the clinical meaning of narcissism from the management research on narcissistic traits, where confidence, visibility, and bold action can sometimes help leaders rise.
But the upside has a shadow. The same self-belief that helps a leader make a hard call can also make them resistant to feedback, blind to risk, and exhausting to follow.
They explore the line between leadership confidence and dangerous certainty, why high-level leadership often requires tolerating loneliness, and why calling someone a narcissist can flatten a complicated workplace problem into a dead-end diagnosis.
This episode is a smarter way to think about ego, power, conflict.
Episode Highlights:
- Why your coworker probably is not a narcissist
- How narcissism differs in psychology and management research
- The link between CEOs and narcissistic traits
- When confidence becomes a feedback problem
- The question to ask before declaring someone impossible
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Want to Go Deeper? Check Out Our Recommended Reading:
- Chatterjee, Arijit, and Donald C. Hambrick. “It’s All about Me: Narcissistic Chief Executive Officers and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 52 (3), 2007, pp. 351–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20109929
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