What to Do When Narcissism Takes over the Workplace

Narcissism Is an Ecosystem

However, the conversation about narcissistic leadership can miss a larger theme about how this personality style shows up in the workplace – it’s not just the fearsome boss throwing her coat at her assistant and demanding private jets during a hurricane. This personality style is not limited to top-level leadership and may be observed at all levels of the workplace.

When we focus on just senior leadership, we miss seeing the impact of the entire workplace ecosystem. Narcissistic and antagonistic managers, colleagues, employees (who may report to you), and clients/consumers/users of the system (many of whom may be enabled and emboldened by the presence of narcissistic leadership). Listen, if it’s a big company, and the president of that company is narcissistic—it will have downstream eIects—inequitable policies, self-serving decision making, greater concern for shareholders than employee safety, misappropriation of resources, all things that may leave employees unseen, unsafe, unvalued. But when the company is big, there is little likelihood that folks will have that much direct interaction with the head honcho.

When Managers Play Both Sides

The leadership further down the chain, antagonistic/narcissistic management, division heads, VPs, deans, whomever they may be in a system—can do their damage by playing both sides—being supplicants to the top of the hierarchy and punching down. Forwarding their self-interest and sacrificing the interest of those who report to them (and those that are served by the business or institution. These narcissistic middle-people can foster confusion by selling a message of all’s well to the top-tier leadership and making unreasonable demands of those who report to them. These middle-managers may also not want to be the bearer of bad news and may hold back from sharing it up the chain. Then when problems arise, blame it on the folks lower on the chain. This process undercuts trust and undermines psychological safety.

When Colleagues Undermine the Team

Narcissistic and antagonistic colleagues may not hold “power” over us but may still engage in all kinds of workplace subterfuge – stealing credit for work, not being transparent, sidling up to leadership to gain access and power, spreading gossip. These are colleagues that can undermine collegiality, collaboration, and contribute to fragmentation of collegial relationships, burnout, and secrecy. It can feel like high school again, except the mean girls and bullies this time are fully grown adults.

When the Difficult Employee Holds the Power

Because narcissism and power are so interlinked, we may underestimate the impact of antagonistic behavior by direct reports, employees, the folks in the workplace that we supervise and lead. You may actually be a leader or manager who is attempting to foster a healthy, safe, collaborative workplace, but it may be that one diIicult, entitled, antagonistic employee can upset the entire workplace apple cart. You may find yourself walking on eggshells, you may even attempt to appease this employee – the hint of litigious menace may be hanging in the air. (and risk management may result in this employee being even further enabled). This can contribute to a sense of inequity you didn’t want to foster, to avoid greater fallout. A disproportionate amount of your time may be devoted to managing this one or small handful of employees (missing out on the opportunity to continue to lead and manage the other colleagues who are likely also having to take on more work because of these antagonistic colleagues). If you are managing or leading even one employee with these characteristics, let alone multiple, you may find yourself ruminating more on how to play psychological dodgeball, than on excellence in the workplace.

When the Customer Isn’t Always Right

And of course, there are the people who your workplace “serves”—these may be clients, consumers, passengers, patients, students—they have personalities too. Research suggests that front line staff who have to face up to a difficult public and must continually “mask” under those circumstances become disinvested in their work, less concerned with outcomes. The customer is not always right and may even be harmful, and front-line staI often have to endure abuse, with little authority or training to manage these situations (think flight attendants managing combative passengers). There is often little awareness by management of the cumulative impact on front line employees of these dysregulated interactions (which in some cases are downright dangerous).

The Cost of a Narcissistic Workplace

So, it’s not just a tyrannical boss making life miserable for everyone. This is interactive, narcissistic leader, management, employees and difficult clients sort of co-emboldening each other, and can foster an occupational maelstrom which harms everyone in its wake. This is about safety—not just physical safety (keeping in mind that shortsighted funding cuts that prop up a narcissistic leader’s agenda can undermine physical safety in some workplaces) but also psychological safety. This is also about the subsequent loss of innovation, creativity, investment in the larger mission, vision, and purpose of a given workplace or institution. This is about attrition and the slow bleed of talent and the hollowing out of an organization. This is about talent not getting cultivated in the first place, and often self-silencing before they get the opportunity to develop. This is about liability, risk, and litigation. This is about mission creep, and the death by a thousand cuts that can happen to an organization when self-interest and catering to the whims of the highest demand antagonistic people takes precedence; and when people are too frightened to tell narcissistic leadership the truth. This is about burnout of people and institutions.

So, What Can We Do About It?

There is no easy answer. Hiring and recruitment policies delimit our capacity to hire on the basis of personality. Lack of training on these issues means everyone from HR professionals to legal counsel to well-intentioned leaders and management have no idea what they are up against. For people who are having to navigate these workplaces, yes, leaving the workplace is often the most straightforward path, but not always accessible, and in the interim, we need some workable solutions. These include everything from meaningful consequences for antagonistic behavior, paying closer attention to patterns and not excusing antagonistic behavior, a more meaningful investment in psychological safety in the workplace, and perhaps simply understanding how these personality styles operate—while breaking out of the magical thinking that the tyrannical leader is also a well- intentioned teddy bear. Corporate decision-making models, private equity, the steady march of AI, income inequality, and geopolitical shifts all suggest that none of these solutions are likely to happen any time soon. We still need to figure this out.

There are no easy answers, but it will make for a fascinating weekend at Kripalu as we talk about how narcissism shows up in workplaces, undermines safety, how to lead in a trauma informed manner, how to navigate these workplaces, and not continue to grow as a professional, even when the flickering gaslights make it difficult to see the path forward.

Practice with Dr. Ramani Durvasula at Kripalu