Leadership, Narcissism, And Parental Income An Explanation of Zanu PF Leadership

Study which casts some light on the psychological issues associated with the very poor leadership qualities of most of the Zanu PF hierarchy. 

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D

An exceptional new study on the link between narcissism and leadership was recently published in one of our top academic journals. The study of 229 recent graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, all lieutenants and captains at the time of the study, showed a strong negative relationship between narcissism, leadership behaviors, and subsequent follower effectiveness.

If you click on the picture above, you will can view the enlarged figure 1 of findings from the study.

 The twist is the study also showed that increased narcissism was associated with higher parental income. If you click on the photo at the bottom of this article, you can view an enlarged citation for the study.

In other words, the study suggests that if you grew up rich, you are likely to be a less effective leader because you are also probably a bigger narcissist. 

I think the link between parental income and narcissism is interesting, but it has very little practical implications. We aren’t going to ask people how much money their parents made before we consider either hiring them or assigning them to positions of leadership.

We do need to be increasingly aware of the strong narcissists in our organizations, and the damage they can do if we give them authority and power over others. The authors remind us of the following tendencies of narcissistic leaders:

•    Derogate others in order to exploit their weaknesses and rate themselves more favourably
•    Arrogant and aggressive, they tend to show little concern for their followers
•    Favour behaviors that provide temporary gratification of their desires for recognition
•    Impulsivity may cause them to deviate from established plans and protocols, causing confusion among followers
•    Aggressive communication style encourages less innovative thinking and sharing of perspectives
•    Resistant to and defensive about feedback on need for improvement

The authors of the study offer the following conclusion about their study:

    “Increasing income disparity can influence organizational life by altering the traits and behaviors of those entering the workplace. As economic inequality rises, we may expect to see an increasing number of leaders who had wealthy parents, are more narcissistic, and do not rely on classic leadership behaviors to lead. We may also come to see less narcissistic leaders from lower-income backgrounds in a different light, recognizing that their leadership behaviors and style, if given the opportunity, may be well suited to some contexts” p. 2172

This study provides interesting food for thought. I think we are going to see a lot more high quality empirical research on narcissistic leadership in the next decade. There will be some mixed results, but I think we should expect to see a growing body of high quality evidence showing the negative effects of narcissistic leadership. Narcissism has been exposed, but what will we do with this knowledge?

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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