Leadership Research Summary:
- Although narcissists often emerge as leaders, the relationship between leader narcissism and follower performance is ambiguous and often even found to be negative. For women, narcissism seems especially likely to lead to negative evaluations. Since narcissists have the tendency to be impulsive and change their minds on a whim, they may come across as inconsistent.
- The researchers propose “inconsistent leader behavior” as a new mechanism in the relationship between leader narcissism and follower performance and argue that leader gender plays an important role in whether narcissistic leaders are perceived as inconsistent.
- Thus, researchers examine leader gender as a personal factor moderating the relationship between narcissism and perceived inconsistent behavior.
- Leader narcissism was positively related to perceived inconsistent leader behavior, and this relationship was stronger for female leaders. Inconsistent leader behavior was negatively related to follower performance, but only when LMX was low.
- The research highlights that perceived behavioral inconsistency can be problematic and-for female leaders-provides an explanation of the negative relation of leader narcissism with follower performance and of the inconsistencies in evaluations of narcissistic leaders’ effectiveness.
Leaderships Research Findings:
- The results of the study demonstrate how crucial it is to consider gender implications. Researchers have previously concentrated on possible “buffers” for the impacts of non-stereotypical gender behavior since agentic skills are in some ways seen to be important to be able to succeed at the top (Eagly and Karau, 2002).
- Gender inequalities emerge even in leadership positions along the community dimension, with female leaders demonstrating empathy and forming connections more quickly than their male counterparts (Moskowitz et al., 1994). (Fletcher et al., 2000). Being very agentic seems to be OK for female leaders as long as it does not clash with the need for women to be compassionate and exhibit community conduct (Prentice and Carranza, 2002). This implies that modeling admirable social conduct could avert undesirable results. In the study, researchers discovered that female narcissistic leaders may, in fact, make up for their display of stereotypically counterproductive agentic conduct by developing strong interpersonal bonds with their subordinates.
- Organizations should consider strategies to assist leaders in strengthening the ties with their followers since a good relationship, regardless of the leader’s gender, mitigates the negative consequences of perceptions of inconsistent leader conduct. According to Graen and Scandura (1987; Uhl-Bien and Maslyn (2003), a high-quality LMX is characterized by the provision of support and the manifestation of loyalty and trust.
- As a result, paying explicit attention to the needs of followers could aid in enhancing the caliber of leader-follower relationships. Additionally, since justifications for behavior have a positive impact on how followers perceive and interpret a leader’s behavior, leaders may be more likely to do so (Simons, 2002). Thus, transparency may reduce issues caused by inconsistent leader behavior.
- The findings also provide light on how (toxic) workplace cultures may be related to the overrepresentation of male executives. While research on narcissism has established a positive link between narcissism and leader emergence as well as leadership ratings (e.g., Brunell et al., 2008; Nevicka et al., 2011a), the results suggest that particularly men might profit from this.
- Whereas female narcissistic leaders experience backlash, the findings suggest that narcissism is more readily accepted in male leaders allowing them to occupy leader positions, typically accompanied by power.
- Agentic and unpredictable conduct displayed by narcissistic male leaders may be perceived as normal and hence “rub off,” thus generating a harmful culture of inconsistency.