Once upon a time, a young handsome boy named Narcissus scorned love and rejected all the nymphs that were attracted to him, including Echo. As a form of punishment for his apathy and rejection towards the goddess’ (Artemis) favorite maiden, she cast a spell on him: to only love himself due to his incapability to love others. Thus, one day when Narcissus was drinking from a river, he fell in love with his reflection and drowned due to his vanity and arrogance which lead to his self-destruction. (cite the mythology book).
This myth isn’t so unreal, is it? In today’s world, we might encounter a large number of individuals similar to Narcissus. Individuals that are arrogant, dominant, self-centered, apathetic …show more content…
In this article, the author (insert name) introduces a self-esteem disorder known as narcissism. He begins by defining the term, its origin and portraying the two sides of this personality disorder which can influence the organization as a whole or individuals due to their interaction with a narcissist employee or leader. However, as done previously, we will only focus on the destructive side of narcissism.
Narcissism can be viewed as a negative trait and destructive for workplaces, mainly in relation to leadership as narcissists harm more than they benefit. As it was discussed in the article “narcissism at work”, narcissists are unable to adapt to change which makes them believe that their knowledge and methods are the absolute truths. By having this erratic notion, they aren’t accepting to new experiences as they don’t allow others to criticize them nor provide them with feedback which could actually be beneficial. Thus, by overestimating their capabilities, they are more likely to participate in risky situations without evaluating all the available information or by selectively choosing the information that suits them to achieve their goals. This tendency of relying on previous successes and being overconfident could harm the organization and cause large …show more content…
They are unable to accept mistakes or failures which is why they are characterized by blaming others when things don’t go the way they want or to react aggressively and attempt to “get even” by intoxicating the work environment. Moreover, due to their selfish nature, narcissists can’t mentor nor direct others since they are self-oriented, they tend to deteriorate others and are more likely to cause problems as they are paranoid with people around them which threaten their “success and elevated place in society”. All these characteristics make narcissists poor leaders despite of having many followers as these followers are merely for their need for constant admiration and recognition (high need for affiliation) to cover their fragile self-esteem and insecurities.
They translate into a mentality of “wining at any cost”, unpredictable mods at the organization in which employees fear approaching the leader due to his possible reaction and management by intimidation. Followers sense the cognitive dissonance in the leaders’ irrationality, they lose trust, commitment and question the validity and logic of his vision. (cite article 1). They have negative theories on people which is why they are paranoid and constantly look for the chance to make problems with