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Jennifer Chatman — Transformational Leader or Narcissist? · The Innovation Show

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what we found is that the impact of narcissistic leaders is delayed.
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So we actually looked at the early days for narcissists, and in fact, people
0:12
were all together with them and in fact, the top team was very connected
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to the CEO, who was a narcissist.
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But over time, what we found is that a lot of things separated, and
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one of the most sort of distinct representations of that was we tracked
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CEO and top team compensation over time.
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what we found with narcissists was that the CEO's compensation separated
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from the top team's compensation over time to get much higher.
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The CEOs took more credit for success, whereas for non-narcissistic CEOs, it
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went actually in the opposite direction.
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The CEO and the top team's compensation actually came
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together and was more similar.
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So CEOs think of themselves as being one that should be attributed
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with the success and the one who has sort of made things happen.
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Transformational leaders challenge the status quo, provide a vision
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of a promising future, and motivate and inspire their followers to join
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in the pursuit of a better world.
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But many of these leaders also fit the American Psychiatric
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Association classification for narcissist personality disorder.
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They are grandiose, entitled, self-confident, risk-seeking,
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manipulative, and hostile.
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Today's episode is based on a highly cited article that reviews the literature on
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narcissism and shows how what we think of as transformational leadership overlaps
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substantially with grandiose narcissism.
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This episode is specifically positioned after that two-part episode we just had
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with Geoffrey Cain on Steve Jobs in exile.
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Because, as you know, Jobs was a narcissist.
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It is a pleasure to welcome the author of Transformational Leader or Narcissist:
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How Grandiose Narcissists Can Create and Destroy Organizations and Institutions.
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Jennifer Chatman, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much.
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A pleasure to be here
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It's so great to have you.
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First things first, your team were straight onto me.
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They're like, "You know she's just written a book?" And I was like, "No,
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not another book on the list." So let's share that because your work on
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narcissists is actually interwoven into this new book on organizational cultures
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That's right.
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The book is called "Making Culture Great," and what we try to do in the
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book is address a set of popular beliefs about organizational culture, does
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culture matter on the bottom line?
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The answer is yes, according to all of the research.
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Does culture always start from the top?
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No, not always, but often.
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executives have a larger impact on an organization's culture than any other
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single individual in an organization.
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And so we really go through the research, my co-author and I, Glenn Carroll, who's
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a professor at Stanford, we go through the research and really address these
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various popular beliefs, sometimes I call them myths, about organizational
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culture and try to help leaders leverage culture for strategic success
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It's so important.
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I said to you before we came on air that I'm just after coming from a workshop
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over in London, and I said to the team, and the team was full of people.
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There were CEOs there from different countries, Ghana,
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Nigeria, Jordan, and Netherlands.
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And I said to them, "You know, most CEOs, particularly in the US, are narcissists."
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And they all started laughing.
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They're gonna go, "Our CEO is here." But there's a reason I share that, because
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on, on the opening of this article, I'll just give the, our audience a few quotes
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here, and then tell them who said them.
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"Imagine if we could create the most just workplace in the world.
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We would naturally be a magnet for all the great minds out there."
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That's Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.
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We know what happened to him.
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This is one of the best ones.
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"I don't want to make an incremental change in some technology in my life.
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I want to create a whole new technology and one that is aimed at helping
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humanity at all levels, regardless of geography or ethnicity or age or gender."
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Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos.
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There's many more.
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Adam Neumann, WeWork, is in there.
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Steve Jobs in there, and of course, DT, Donald Trump, is in there, one
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of the best narcissists of all time.
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So let's share this concept of why a lot of leaders and
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presidents seem to be narcissists.
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Well, what we know is that the kind of base rate for narcissism in the
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population as a whole is about 2%.
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But if you look at CEO positions, climbs to about 16%.
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So it's not that all CEOs are narcissists, but a disproportionate
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number of CEOs are narcissists.
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And the question is why?
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And so one of the reasons is that narcissists seek out positions of power
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with high visibility and high exposure.
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Another reason which we can get into more, which I think is the more interesting and
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sort of manageable side of the house, is that we as observers of narcissists often
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confuse the behaviors that narcissists exhibit with visionary leadership.
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I'm so interested in this because you sometimes get sucked in by a narcissist.
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I've worked for a couple, well, at least two, maybe more, and they, at the
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start, seem so compelling, so different.
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They make you feel special.
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They make you feel like they're gonna change the world, and
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you wanna be part of that.
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And then the wheels come off pretty soon when you're blamed
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for stuff you didn't do.
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You're gaslit oftentimes, and actually you kind of start to question
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yourself and they know how to do this.
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And one of the reasons I feel your work is so important is many people who
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have experienced that think it's them.
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They think they're the problem, and that's what the narcissist wants because
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they want them to bend to their will.
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I thought we'd share a little bit of the, about that because it's
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kind of like the Force in Star Wars.
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You can use it for good or not so good.
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So you can be Yoda or you can be Darth Vader
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Well, narcissists do have ability to draw people in because they have this kind
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of grandiosity and they're overconfident about their ability to accomplish things.
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often they start with really appealing kinds of visions.
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I mean, when you think about Elon Musk and his ambitions for the human race, right?
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I mean, that's fantastic.
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So we're, we're kind of drawn in.
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What we found and, my partner in this work, my co-author, Charles O'Reilly,
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another professor at Stanford, I'm a professor at UC Berkeley, and the dean
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there at the Haas School of Berkeley what we found is that the impact
7:05
of narcissistic leaders is delayed.
7:08
So we actually looked at the early days for narcissists, and in fact, people
7:14
were all together with them and in fact, the top team was very connected
7:19
to the CEO, who was a narcissist.
7:22
But over time, what we found is that a lot of things separated, and
7:29
one of the most sort of distinct representations of that was we tracked
7:34
CEO and top team compensation over time.
7:39
what we found with narcissists was that the CEO's compensation separated
7:44
from the top team's compensation over time to get much higher.
7:48
The CEOs took more credit for success, whereas for non-narcissistic CEOs, it
7:55
went actually in the opposite direction.
7:57
The CEO and the top team's compensation actually came
8:00
together and was more similar.
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So CEOs think of themselves as being the being one that should be
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attributed with the success and the one who has sort of made things happen.
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There was a really funny part that you mentioned in the article
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where you talk about Donald Trump.
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So a book by 27 psychiatrists and mental health professionals analyzed Dr- Donald
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Trump's behaviors, concluded that his grandiosity, sense of entitlement,
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impulsiveness, willingness to exploit others, lack of empathy, hostility,
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and willingness to ignore embarrassing facts were so extreme that they could be
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characterized as malignant narcissism.
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So this is, there's a scale to narcissism, and I think it's important
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for our audience to know that.
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But also, when you wrote this, this was about his first term not the second
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term, which has just gone off the scale.
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But what was so funny in that paper that you wrote, that w- at one point on one
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of the interviews, he says, "I'm probably the most humble person you've ever met."
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So even his humility is out of scale.
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Right.
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He simultaneously, I can't remember the exact quote, "I'm probably
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the most humble person you've ever met. You have no idea," or, right?
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Simultaneously himself in some positive way, humility, and
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putting others down, right?
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So, so increasing , the difference between, you know,
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my goodness and your mediocrity.
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That, that's right.
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I have to say that I've tried to… I'm not a clinical psychologist,
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I'm not a psychiatrist.
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I have tried to stay away from identifying someone as narcissistic or not.
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I am not, able to make that diagnosis with any deep expertise.
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But there is a distinction between what the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical
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Manual, which is what the field of psychiatry and psychology use to identify
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what they call malignant narcissists, who are so that it actually interferes
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with their ability to function in life.
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So Donald Trump is the president, and there is some functionality at some level.
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But there is a distinction between those two types.
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We're really talking about, in our article the kind of garden variety of
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narcissism that exists on the continuum in the kind of normal population.
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You mention a book, The Narcissist Next Door, and this guy, Jeffrey Kluger,
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the author, he observed that a little narcissism can be a good thing in
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many jobs, but a lot of narcissism is a bad thing in almost all jobs.
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And it's an important distinction because you talk about, for example,
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in times of crisis, you don't want a peaceful military leader.
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You want somebody who has that risk profile that's gonna take on huge risks.
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But there's also threats in there.
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Maybe we'll talk a bit about that because a lot of the audience from the Innovation
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Show work in innovation, and we see that many organizations are run by kind of
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more stable stable type leaders that are good when things are going well,
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but when things aren't going so well, you need a different type of leader.
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And in there is a little bit of nuance, and I'd love you to
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share your experience of that.
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so actually my co-author Charles O'Reilly and I debate about this, and I think
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he's more on the side of-- I d- I don't wanna speak for him, but I think he
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would say, yes, there are some instances where narcissism may be functional and
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helpful, and he actually has done some other research that shows that's true.
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maybe I'm more sort of naive about this or m- more of an optimist, I believe that you
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can have confidence without, narcissism.
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So you could be a leader who is good in emergency situations and who
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reads the room and takes control and makes good judgments without those
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other attributes of narcissism.
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And this is what I wish for in the world because the narcissism piece always comes
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with an exploitation component to it.
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And so it-- there's always going to be some element of
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being less well off so that the narcissist-cists can be more well off.
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And so, I think there are plenty of leaders who I would not code as
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narcissists who do very well in emergency situations and you could rely on for
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taking charge and making good decisions.
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And where I was going with that was Charles O'Reilly, of
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course, Tushman O'Reilly is known well , in the innovation show for.
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He's been on the show many times.
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We covered his work on corporate exploration.
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But that concept of exploit-explore, I, I thought about how that maps
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to this because the exploit kinda leader is the peaceful times leader.
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But actually can, if they're narcissistic, they can actually exploit
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people withinside the organization to look great, take all the rewards
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of the company, and actually, on the long term, it will suffer.
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But as you ta- as you shared there, you want them really for
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the explore phase, or oftentimes they're seen in entrepreneurship
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that you talk about in the paper
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That's right., I mean, the, The grandiosity is the part that
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I think we all resonate with.
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The big ideas, the big vision, the confidence that we can make it happen,
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the ability to really dream big and think that can make great things happen.
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That's amazing, and I think, other people who are more modest and have more humility
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may not even let themselves dream that big because it, it seems unimaginable
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and fantastical that they could ever make something like that happen.
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So this is a valuable attribute in general.
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But again, I would ask the question, could you as an innovation expert figure
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out ways to unleash big, grandiose ideas in non-narcissistic people?
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We would be a lot better off if that would happen.
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You referred to the two different streams of thought, I thought this was really
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interesting because I think now when you read this paper and you read a little
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bit into narcissism, you kinda start to judge people you've worked with.
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And you talked about one stream of thinking or research around narcissism
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e- emerges from the clinical tradition that you mentioned, but this is
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vulnerable or covert narcissism, and that comes from this sense of neuroticism
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or fragile self-concept that they're always trying to prove themselves.
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They've low self-esteem that reaches right back into the inner child of childhood.
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But then the other one is pathological or maladaptive and emphasizes
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defensive self-presenta- presentation stemming from low self-esteem
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and a more introverted nature.
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I'd love you to share th- those two differences because I'm sure lots
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of people listening are diagnosing
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Yeah
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their partner, their children, everybody they know, 'cause we
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tend to do this, but it's useful to understand these two distinctions.
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Yeah.
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Well, the first type, the more neurotic version of narcissism, we don't see
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as seeking out leadership roles.
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So it's less likely that people in that category would have positions
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of power and control over us.
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it may be the case that you're leading a person who's like that,
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and that's still difficult, and it's probably a higher drama situation
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that you have to work through.
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But those folks are less likely to be in leadership positions just based on their
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introversion and lack of self-confidence.
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It's, it's really the other version that we're talking about here the kind of
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extroverted grandiosity, exploitative and it often links with something called
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the dark triad, which is narcissism, sociopathy and Machiavellianism.
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And you can see how those all link together, right?
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If you're grandiose and you're actually believing that you can accomplish
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ridiculously enormous things, you're almost lying to yourself, but,
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you're much more prone to cross ethical boundaries and I can talk
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more about that in research terms.
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But you're also someone who seeks power and, exploits others.
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So the three often go together, and this is a recipe for who's
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going to go for those big jobs.
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And so, one thing that we think about is, well, who are the
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decision makers for the CEO role?
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That's boards of directors primarily in public firms.
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And the board, has to really think about how to distinguish between this
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visionary leader and a narcissistic leader, because if you think about those
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in terms of Venn diagrams, they overlap.
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so the trick is really to distinguish the two.
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And in my view, one of the most significant ways to distinguish
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between a visionary leader and a narcissist is to ask the question:
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Who have you brought along with you?
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Who have you developed?
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And what you would see is that the visionary leader would bring
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a whole team along with them.
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They would probably have some folks who stayed with them for a long time,
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and may be a little bit blasphemous because I know you just had the two
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episodes on Steve Jobs, but by the end of Steve Jobs' career, he had a stable
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team of 13 senior leaders on his team who had been with him for 13 years.
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There was a kind of stability and consistency there that really worked well,
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and I think it showed that to whatever extent Steve Jobs was a narcissist earlier
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in his career, he at least figured out how to behaviorally modify his behavior
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to bring success to Apple and growth.
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So this is very important to ask the question, whether you're interviewing
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a CEO or a potential manager, you wanna know, who did you bring along with you?
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Where are they now?
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Are you still in touch?
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Are you someone who mentors others?
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Let me see the evidence.
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And with a narcissist, you would probably see fewer, if any real allies for the
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long run and, much more variation in the relationships that they've had across time
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I'm glad you said that because actually what you said about Jobs is actually
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the real story in that book, which is his kind of hero to zero, back to hero
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again, and that middle period where he kinda had that belly of the whale
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moment, and he lost everyone, and actually went, "I gotta change my ways."
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That's the lovely story that's in there.
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And not blasphemous at all, I found a quote, by the way, by Trump and
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I, my notes say, "Grandiose even in his humility." Donald Trump once
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stated on 60 Minutes in 20 17 that, "I'm much more humble than you
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would ever understand, you cretin."
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Right.
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I'm throwing that in there, you moron.
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But th- this, one of the things that you talk about, which was, I was
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mapping this to the Jobs story that I just read, and how when a grandiose
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narcissist gets successful, they're, like, unbearable because they've had a
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success, and then their chips, they think they c- they become more risk-tolerant.
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They go crazy with the risk.
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People trust them, and it's kinda like in your head.
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I know I've done this myself where I worked for one, and he was a, a
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millionaire, so you're kinda going, "Oh, well, maybe he's right and I'm
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wrong. Maybe I need to bulk up a little bit here." And you start to
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question your own reality, but this is one of the gifts that they have.
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the gift of self-promotion and the denial of failure, right?
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And so they would even… evidence that, we might use to introspect and learn would
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not be the evidence that they would use.
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They would look at a situation that maybe had a mixed outcome
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and chalk it up as a 100% success.
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You know, we see many examples of that in politics and in executive life.
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What we also find, though, is a different risk profile for narcissists.
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They are much more risk-seeking because of their overconfidence.
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They simply believe that they're right.
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One of the ways that we tested this in an academic paper was that we looked at
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how litigious narcissistic CEOs were, and what we found was that more narcissistic
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leaders were much more likely to be embroiled in significantly more lawsuits.
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were no more likely to win those lawsuits, right?
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But they were much more willing to engage in them, and often as
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plaintiffs, meaning that they thought they had a case to bring when in
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fact there, there was nothing there.
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And so that kind of righteousness can be very detrimental for organizations
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because CEOs can lead organizations into situations that is, that are
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gonna make them, worse off as a result of the CEO's overconfidence.
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I think we all enjoy seeing a narcissist get their comeuppance, but one of the
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things that I, I, like, I, I believe the universe doesn't let you away with it and
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keeps receipts, but when you read about it, you're like, they don't feel guilt.
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So actually they're, they're going around thinking they're the ones hard
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done by most of the time, to your point about bringing lawsuits against people.
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So they have just this totally distorted reality, and therefore they use a lot of
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people, like, who work for them as just like they're a pen or as some type of
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tool, and they have no empathy for you.
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And I, I think it's important, Jennifer, to call that out because, again, I
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know a lot of people who have worked for narcissists, and they've ended
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up getting, like, therapy and stuff like that because they feel broken.
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And I think this is the antidote, is understanding that these people
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exist in the world, just like psychopaths, just like Machiavellianism.
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It exists out there, and it's not you, it's them
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Yeah, there's definitely a vic- victim orientation that narcissists have that
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they believe that they've been wronged.
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They have-- for as exploitative and insensitive as they are to others, they
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have incredibly thin skin themselves.
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And so, that is not a reciprocal-- it's not a symmetric relationship,
22:55
if you will, and it would be natural for a non-narcissist to be really
23:00
exhausted by working with a narcissist.
23:03
I have a very recent paper with one of my colleagues at Berkeley, Juliana Schroeder,
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where we found-- where it's just about to come out in a journal article form.
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We found that in groups, narcissists thrive in working
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with other narcissists, but they absolutely deflate non-narcissists.
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It's a very difficult situation.
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So if you're a leader and you're looking at your team and you notice you have
23:30
a few narcissists, group them together 'cause they'll work together fine.
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They have similar norms, they can go at each other and make things happen.
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But don't mix them in with the people who are, have more humility
23:42
and compassion and, are more at the normal level of narcissism.
23:47
So I don't have much time with you today, so I really would like to
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flip to the positive side, which is how do you deal with this?
23:53
So in the article and in your new book, you talk about
23:56
the consequence of grandiose narcissis- cism for organizations.
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But also then you talk about, well, what can you do about this?
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And I'd love you to share those.
24:05
And it, it goes to kind of the basics of like, well, you nip it in the bud.
24:09
First, you don't hire them in the first place, or to your
24:11
point, you can identify them.
24:13
I'd love you to share some of those kind of ways.
24:15
So for HR leaders listening to the show, or CEOs or entrepreneurs who
24:20
are starting their business, because often they get duped into bringing in
24:24
a narcissist and they break the company
24:27
Well, l- let me say first, I think one of our most important findings was kind
24:34
of enduring impact that narcissistic CEOs can have on an organization.
24:40
In one study that we did, we found that companies run by narcissists
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were significantly more likely to, , be lower on ethics in their
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culture and lower on collaboration.
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In other words, narcissists cause organizations to
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de-emphasize being ethical, right?
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To cross those ethical boundaries.
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And it's not just the narcissist doing that, it's the narcissist encouraging
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the entire organization to do that.
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And second, less collaborative, meaning that people to have allegiance to
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them, but not to each other, because that's a source , of power if people
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are connected to each other and not with the narcissistic leader.
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This is very problematic because if you think about ethics and collaboration,
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these are two sort of non-negotiables for organizational survival, right?
25:36
Being ethical, like following the law, is a base for organizational
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sur- survival and success.
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And collaboration is also a key reason why you organize in the first
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place, is because people can do things together that they can't do alone.
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So narcissists can threaten the very essence of organizational
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survival, and that's why it's really important to identify them.
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only do they affect the culture this way, but their impact is sticky.
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What we found is that companies led by narcissists not only experience those
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cultures while the in the role, but even after the there was a kind of residual
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cultural impact of their presence.
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So we have to think both about how to nip it in the bud, right?
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Which is being vigilant on search committees for leadership positions.
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You should expect that narcissists are gonna apply.
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If it's an important position, narcissists are gonna seek out that position.
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And then you should really try to be thoughtful about how much
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of the vision that the narcissist is painting is actually real.
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What's the evidence?
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Can you show me that you've actually done some of these things?
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Can you tell me the steps that you've taken?
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And of course, that very, very important question, which is: Who
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did you bring along with you, and who did you promote as a result of it?
27:10
Are some of your people running other companies now because they learned so much
27:14
from you and have become so successful?
27:17
So these are the kinds of discussions that search committees need to
27:20
have, and really be cognizant of differentiating between that visionary
27:24
piece and the narcissistic piece.
27:26
Then Once a few narcissists have gotten through, the question
27:32
is how, to deal with that.
27:34
If you recognize that your leader is a narcissist, you may wanna think hard
27:39
about whether that's the right place for you, the right time for you to be there,
27:43
and whether there are other options.
27:46
But if you don't have the flexibility to move quickly, then you wanna find ways
27:51
to shield yourself from the exploitation.
27:54
One, straightforward thing that you can do is you can try to
27:58
gain the narcissist's trust.
28:00
If you can gain the narcissist's trust, you can kind of manage upward
28:06
and do things that will cause the narcissist to be less observant of what
28:12
you're doing and less micromanaging.
28:14
This is true about leaders in general, right?
28:16
If you can manage your leader and fulfill the things that is making your
28:20
leader worried they can back off and not micromanage, you're better off.
28:26
That is absolutely true for a narcissist.
28:28
Figure out what it is they're concerned about, make sure they know you're the
28:32
go-to person to solve that issue, and they don't need to worry about it anymore.
28:38
I would also if, as I said, if you're a manager of narcissists, I would be
28:44
very cautious about how you engage them in collaborative work, because
28:50
you'll-- you should expect that they're gonna be difficult for others to work
28:53
with, and they're gonna take more credit for whatever success emerges,
28:58
and they're gonna be more likely to blame others for any problems.
29:02
And so as a leader of narcissists, you want to account for that different version
29:08
of attribution that narcissists are likely to bring forward and make sure that
29:13
you're giving your other people credit.
29:15
so those are just a few things.
29:17
I h- honestly, if you really see a full-blown narcissist who has
29:24
these, sociopathic and Machiavellian tendencies, would look for an exit.
29:30
It's a very, difficult situation to manage.
29:32
It's still only 16%, so there's a whole world out there of non-narcissistic,
29:38
fantastic leaders who have vision and have an appropriate amount of
29:43
confidence who can, do great things and bring you along with them.
29:48
Beautiful.
29:49
I think it's just such an important article.
29:51
I think it's gonna be interesting to read your book as well
29:53
when we get onto that book.
29:55
I just wanted to share one little quote from it.
29:56
So this was Neville Chamberlain who met Hitler, and after meeting Hitler,
30:01
he said, "This is a man who could be relied on when he had given his word."
30:07
So they are immensely great at interview processes, as you share.
30:12
But what, the last thing I wanted to share was w- was, it
30:14
was so important what you said.
30:16
They are very good when times are uncertain, and there's
30:20
a reason I'm sharing that.
30:21
We've seen the effect of that politically, geopolitically lately when things are
30:25
uncertain, and they want to create that uncertainty and make it last and make
30:30
themselves look like they're the leader.
30:32
And what happens then is you have more of the out crowd become more
30:35
and more of the out crowd, and we have this huge polarization.
30:39
I think that maybe as a last point, that that is something
30:42
we all need to be aware of
30:44
Yeah, that's an excellent point.
30:45
I mean, de Tocqueville said that, particularly in times of a change in
30:50
chaos, we look to a leader who shows great certainty and confidence because we
30:55
want to create certainty for ourselves.
30:58
One of the biggest psychological challenges that humans have
31:02
is to create certainty and predictability out of chaos, right?
31:08
That's job one for human beings in the world.
31:11
We like when things are predictable, right?
31:13
We like to know that, the behaviors that we engage in are
31:16
gonna be accepted in the world.
31:18
We like to be able to anticipate what people are likely to do so that we can
31:23
either protect ourselves or get engaged.
31:26
to the extent that certainty doesn't exist, can step in and offer a bold
31:33
vision with great confidence that sounds very appealing, and that certainty is
31:40
almost irresistible for us to follow.
31:43
So I think you raise a very timely concern that we're facing and the polarization
31:50
that we're seeing, could be in some sense attributed to the narcissists all over the
31:56
world who are trying to get people to show allegiance to them rather than to find
32:01
broad solutions for the world as a whole.
32:05
Beautiful message to end on as well.
32:07
Jennifer, for people who wanna find out more about your
32:10
book, where's the best place?
32:11
And maybe you'll give us a top line of why you wrote that book
32:15
Again, we wrote that book, I think, to bust myths about organizational culture.
32:21
You know, many leaders think that culture is fuzzy and not real, and it doesn't
32:28
have impact, and it can't be managed.
32:31
It's something that happens to organizations.
32:34
And it turns out that there's kind of deep science behind organizational
32:39
culture, how you can deliberately leverage it for strategic success.
32:43
And so that's really what the book is all about, is bringing the research
32:47
literature for the, from the last 20 years to managers so that they can
32:52
actually use it to develop a culture that is aligned with their strategy, that's
32:57
strong, and that's adaptive over time.
33:00
The book is called "Making Culture Great" by Jennifer Chatman and Glenn Carroll.
33:05
It's at Columbia Business Press, but you can come to my website,
33:09
which is just Jennifer Chatman at Berkeley and you can find it there
33:16
And I will share the links to that and the links to the local Amazons
33:20
as well for people to find it.
33:22
It was an absolute pleasure.
33:23
Author of Transformational Leader or Narcissist: How Grandiose
33:27
Narcissists Can Create and Destroy Organizations and Institutions, and
33:31
Making Organizational Cultures Great.
33:34
Jennifer Chatman, thank you for joining us
33:36
Thank you so much