The narcissistic leader

Chapter 4, Part 2 - Corporate Brand Personality           

With the example given in my last article (Chapter 4, Part 1), the CEO was unaware of the impact he was having on the employees and ultimately on the internal culture but was open to the feedback and able to embrace it and fix it. As a leader you need to have this level of self-awareness, the ability and willingness to listen to feedback and adjust behaviours where necessary, if you are to create and support a culture of trust, respect and transparency.

As we’ve seen earlier, the internal culture of an organization will spill out to the outside world at some point. This impacts employer brand and as a result the overall corporate brand. Narcissists have an exaggerated sense of their own self-importance, an increased need for others’ admiration and a general lack of empathy. This is a common trait amongst CEOs in varying degrees, and in fact according to a research study by Illinois professor of psychology Emily Grijalva, the most effective leaders have a moderate level of narcissism (Grijalva, 2015).

 ‘A moderate level of narcissism is needed for effective leadership.’

The consideration here is at what point the level of narcissism has a negative impact on the behaviours of employees, thereby creating an employer brand that is out of alignment with the desired corporate brand. The study that Emily Grijalva carried out showed that although narcissists are more likely to emerge as group leaders, after a certain point, too much narcissism is likely to undermine a person’s effectiveness as a leader.

The study’s co-author Peter Harms, a professor of management in the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska, said those with moderate levels of narcissism have achieved ‘a nice balance between having sufficient levels of self-confidence, but do not manifest the negative, antisocial aspects of narcissism that involve putting others down to feel good about themselves’ (Reed, 2014).

Of course, some employees will relate to narcissistic leaders differently and more positively than others. However the important point here is that those who emerge as leaders in an organization have a degree of narcissism – it is the management of this to appropriate levels that will ensure that it does not adversely affect relationships with employees and influence bad behaviours and employee brand.

Remember, self-confidence and optimism are healthy; arrogance and megalomania are not.  Make sure you get the balance right.

 NOTHING IS OFF THE RECORD

Much as when talking to a journalist when nothing is ever off the record, the small actions and supposedly casual comments of the CEO or senior leaders aren’t  either.  The eyes are always on you. When you’re feeling under pressure or down because of some business adversity, you simply cannot show this.  The ripple effect amongst your immediate leadership team, employees and even the media in the worst case, cannot be underestimated. So how do you balance this with remaining authentic?  One answer is to be confident in yourself. Whatever happens is beyond your control but you can control how you deal with it and react to it. If you look back on your past, there are sure to be major challenges you have encountered – at the time these appeared to be massive challenges, but the chances are looking back they weren’t so bad and you managed through them. This kind of mindset will help you to project an authentic confidence rather than a false one, keep your brand intact and avoid unnecessary turbulence in the company.   How you personally manage through adversity is critical to keeping the company brand on track.

 THE POWER OF LINE MANAGERS

Line managers can be your biggest area of concern (and opportunity) and create the most significant gap for leakage of brand messaging. This is often a middle management position that we regularly find does not receive the level of management training required in order to lead a team effectively. Quite often, line managers are promoted into their role organically without necessarily being totally ready for or qualified for the role. It is a role that is often filled by those who have been in the team the longest, understand the technical aspects, been moved from another department, but have little or no training on how to authentically lead a team.  I find from our work with organizations that often line managers do not reinforce the importance of adhering to a set of expected behaviours or ‘live the brand’ in a way that encourages and invites their team members to do the same. When delivering our programmes, we experience situations where we’re told that an individual cannot attend a pre-organised coaching session or a training module due to being called out by their line manager. It even occasionally happens during coaching sessions – imagine the impact of this in terms of valuing and respecting the individual’s personal development. Inexperienced line managers are more likely to migrate to and adopt a conscious or unconscious ‘command and control’ style of leadership rather than a coaching style of management that is more conducive to keeping the team on-board and feeling valued and respected.  This can be due to lack of training and mentoring in how to lead effectively and is therefore a natural result of not having the basics of good leadership and influencing style in place. As we saw in Chapter 3, creating a strong team brand can help bridge this gap and provide your middle managers with the tools they need.

In Chapter 3 we looked at the ASDA model for employee engagement. They recognise that challenges with employee engagement can be localized at line management level so they closely monitor and manage this with their employee engagement surveys.

Hayley Tatum MBE. , Chief People and Corporate Affairs Officer at ASDA says that line managers are measured not just on their last three stock results (as is usually the case in retail) or in other words how controlled and accountable their retail routine is, but they are also measured on how engaging their leadership is. A leadership index is created for them so they can clearly see how they perform overall against the four pledges they have for employee engagement, against their peer group and the average for their grade.  The line managers are keen to see these results from the surveys, and therefore they have a greater incentive to encourage their teams to complete the survey. They give them time in work hours to do this.

Hayley and her team can also clearly see from the surveys, although anonymous, if there is a general low performance in a particular area and work out which line manager needs to be focused on. Alternatively of course where celebration of achievement is deserved. It also enables her to focus their training and development efforts in the right areas and make investment where it is most needed, creating bespoke programmes, rather than making huge assumptions of what training is needed and in which areas.

 PERSONAL BRANDING SHOULD START IN THE BOARDROOM

The brand of your leadership team is now a significant element of your corporate brand messaging. Your employees look for a strong connection between your leadership brand and style, and the messaging of the company.  55 per cent of global executives who see their CEO as almost exclusively focused on the bottom line, see them also as having a weak reputation internally (Weber Shandwick, 2015). Employees need to see a strong personal brand from their leaders that is focused on ethics, visibility and authenticity as well as profit margins.

With Generation Y, and now Generation Z coming into your organizations in force, you will find this becomes more the case as the next few years unfold. A common trait and perhaps expectation of Generation Y and Z is to see people as equal. They dislike and won’t work well under any indication of old-style command and control leadership styles. They will not automatically respect authority or leadership, just because of hierarchy, because they feel respect is personally earned. Senior leadership will therefore in their eyes not be exempt from the behaviours expected of the rest of the employee base. They come from a place of fairness and equality and if this is not demonstrated they will ultimately decide your company is not for them.

Leaders who make a personal connection with employees and show interest in their personal and career aspirations, inspire the highest levels of achievement amongst their teams. If people are valued their productivity increases. If they are supported by a leader who they feel truly cares for them as an individual, then they have an ability to do more, achieve more and be more successful. These are all elements of your leadership brand that you need to take on-board to encourage a greater degree of employee engagement and ultimately influence a great employer brand and culture.

WE NEED LEADERS WITH STRONG PERSONAL BRANDS

We are starting to see a greater level of desire for recruiting leaders who have a strong Personal Brand already and who are known for their expertise in their specific field.  Some forward-thinking companies now encourage their leaders to be more visible externally, including on social media, as they see it as a benefit to not just the leader themselves but the company also. I interviewed Andrew Grill , global managing partner (former) at IBM Social Consulting, and he said his already strong personal brand in the marketplace in which he is known enabled him to put a price on what he was worth to IBM during the final interview stage. Andrew said that IBM sees a direct benefit to the business with him being ‘out there and visible’ and being considered a thought-leader in his own right.  Andrew now recruits leaders into his team that have strong personal brands as he’s seen first-hand the benefits this brings to the business.

The benefits that can be expected from recruiting leaders with strong personal brands, and helping others to develop theirs are:

·      more opportunities to get the corporate brand messaging out externally via a human interface;

·      enhancement of Employer Brand and in particular in attracting Generation Y and Generation Z talent;

·      increase in trust of the company (as the leader is willing to put himself/herself on a stage and personally talk about the company and its value set);

·      increase in authenticity and respect.

Here are some thoughts on how you might internally build your leadership brand and informally engage with your employees on a more personal level, along with the more formal elements of appraisals, performance reviews and rewards:

·      modelling desired behaviours;

·      meaningful connections and follow-through with actions and promises;

·      adopting a coaching culture;

·      creating forums and discussion groups for new ideas or to find solutions to challenges;

·      gaining their input to the physical office environment;

·      creating communities for topics and areas of interest, outside of the immediate scope of the business;

·      relevant and meaningful team-building events that go beyond go-karting and paint-balling, and meet the needs of all team members, rather than alienate some of them;

·      Share your own stories of career development, adversity or challenge.

You can also ask yourself these questions to ascertain the effectiveness of your leadership brand. Get feedback from others too wherever possible, as this may differ from your own perceptions and evaluations.

·      Am I open and flexible to the different personalities and opinions of my team?

·      Do I always provide honest, helpful and considered feedback to help develop my team members?

·      Do I effectively give time to coach my team members to help their career development?

·      When I look at myself in the mirror, do I feel a deep level of contentment with my leadership style and abilities?

·      Have I given a high visibility project to a team member?

·      Do I consistently recognize great performance?

·      Do I fully understand the strengths and talents of all my team members and manage them accordingly?

A change in culture will take a great deal of time and effort to realize of course. However, I hear a lot of talk about this in some of the companies I work with and those I’d like to, but in reality there are few companies and leadership teams that actually have the energy or capacity to make it happen.  The CEO and executive team will often make the statement or create the strategy for the change required and believe the middle managers are behind them. The true picture is often that they are very far behind them and they have not got the buy-in they thought they had. An extremely visionary leadership is required in order to make big change and this is based on transparency and inclusion. Don’t just assume that all your managers are in alignment with your thinking without putting in the effort to create this.

When I asked UK CEO of Handelsbanken (former), Anders Bouvin what he believes his role is at Handelsbanken, he replied, ‘My role is one of coach and supporter. I ensure that it is made as easy as possible within our branches for them to serve their customers in the way they believe is appropriate.’ This demonstrates leadership at its best – create the values and the vision, ensure that local managers are clear on it via coaching and an open door, and then give them the power at the local level to run with it in their teams. Simple really, but the difficult piece is putting in the energy to effect it.

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Copyright Lesley Everett 2024