Business Exposed70
role of a business leader, I provide the example of Stevie Spring, a
CEO who jokingly calls herself a CST – a Chief Story-Teller.
Narcissus versus Humble Bloke – and the winner
is . . . ?
Have you heard of Narcissus, the character in Greek mythology?
Narcissus was an exceptionally beautiful young man. He was so
beautiful (and full of himself) that he fell in love with his own
reection. He could not bring himself to stray from the well
and did not even drink the water, fearing he’d disturb the water
reecting his image and would not see himself again. Our word
“narcissistic” – to describe someone full of himself – is derived
from him.
How would you recognize a narcissistic CEO (as certainly not all
of them are exceptionally beautiful)? Seriously, think about it,
what would you say are the signs of a CEO who is narcissistically
full of himself?
Someone who always has his photograph displayed promi-
nently in his rm’s annual report? The CEO’s prominence in the
company’s press releases? How often he uses rst-person singular
pronouns (such as I, me, mine, my, myself) giving interviews to
the business press? Or his nancial compensation relative to the
second-highest paid executive in his rm?
Arijit Chatterjee and Donal Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State
University, measured all of these things, among 111 CEOs,
and used them to construct a measure of their narcissism.
They selected their 111 CEOs from the computer hardware
and software industries because prior
writers on leadership had suggested
that narcissism in a CEO might actually
be a good thing in very dynamic, fast-
changing industries, which these two are.
They then examined a bunch of charac-
teristics of a rm’s strategy, to gure
out what narcissistic CEOs do differently
‘‘
narcissistic CEOs
favor bold actions
that attract attention,
resulting in big wins or
big losses
’’
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