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Thread: "If humble people make the best leaders, why do we fall for charismatic narcissists?"

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    "If humble people make the best leaders, why do we fall for charismatic narcissists?"




    Source: Harvard Business Review


    By Margarita Mayo


    The research is clear: when we choose humble, unassuming people as our leaders, the world around us becomes a better place.

    Humble leaders improve the performance of a company in the long run because they create more collaborative environments. They have a balanced view of themselves – both their virtues and shortcomings – and a strong appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions, while being open to new ideas and feedback. These “unsung heroes” help their believers to build their self-esteem, go beyond their expectations, and create a community that channels individual efforts into an organized group that works for the good of the collective.

    For example, one study examined 105 small-to-medium-sized companies in the computer software and hardware industry in the United Studies. The findings revealed that when a humble CEO is at the helm of a firm, its top management team is more likely to collaborate and share information, making the most of the firm’s talent.

    Another study showed that a leader’s humility can be contagious: when leaders behave humbly, followers emulate their modest attitude and behavior. A study of 161 teams found that employees following humble leaders were themselves more likely to admit their mistakes and limitations, share the spotlight by deflecting praise to others, and be open to new ideas, advice, and feedback.

    Yet instead of following the lead of these unsung heroes, we appear hardwired to search for superheroes: over-glorifying leaders who exude charisma.

    The Greek word Kharisma means “divine gift,” and charisma is the quality of extraordinary charm, magnetism, and presence that makes a person capable of inspiring others with enthusiasm and devotion. German sociologist Max Weber defined charisma as “of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of it, the individual concerned is treated as a leader.” Research evidence on charismatic leadership reveals that charismatic people are more likely to become endorsed as leaders because of their high energy, unconventional behavior, and heroic deeds.

    While charisma is conductive to orchestrating positive large-scale transformations, there can be a “dark side” to charismatic leadership. Jay Conger and Rabindra Kanungo describe it this way in their seminal book: “Charismatic leaders can be prone to extreme narcissism that leads them to promote highly self-serving and grandiose aims.” A clinical study illustrates that when charisma overlaps with narcissism, leaders tend to abuse their power and take advantage of their followers. Another study indicates that narcissistic leaders tend to present a bold vision of the future, and this makes them more charismatic in the eyes of others.

    Why are such leaders more likely to rise to the top? One study suggests that despite being perceived as arrogant, narcissistic individuals radiate “an image of a prototypically effective leader.” Narcissistic leaders know how to draw attention toward themselves. They enjoy the visibility. It takes time for people to see that these early signals of competence are not later realized, and that a leader’s narcissism reduces the exchange of information among team members and often negatively affects group performance.

    It’s not that charismatic and narcissistic people can’t ever make good leaders. In some circumstances, they can. For example, one study found that narcissistic CEOs “favor bold actions that attract attention, resulting in big wins or big losses.” A narcissistic leader thus can represent a high-risk, high-reward proposition.

    And it’s not that humble leaders can’t ever be charismatic. Researchers agree that we could classify charismatic leaders as “negative” or “positive” by their orientation toward pursuing their self-interested goals versus those of their groups. These two sides of charismatic leadership have also been called personalized and socialized charisma. Although the socialized charismatic leader has the aura of a hero, it is counteracted with low authoritarianism and a genuine interest in the collective welfare. In contrast, the personalized charismatic leader’s perceived heroism is coupled with high authoritarianism and high narcissism. It is when followers are confused and disoriented that they are more likely to form personalized relationships with a charismatic leader. Socialized relationships, on the other hand, are established by followers with a clear set of values who view the charismatic leader as a means to achieve collective action.

    The problem is that we select negative charismatic leaders much more frequently than in the limited situations where the risk they represent might pay off. Despite their grandiose view of themselves, low empathy, dominant orientation toward others, and strong sense of entitlement, their charisma proves irresistible. Followers of superheroes are enthralled by their showmanship: through their sheer magnetism, narcissistic leaders transform their environments into a competitive game in which their followers also become more self-centered, giving rise to organizational narcissism, as one study shows.

    If humble leaders are more effective than narcissistic leaders, why do we so often choose narcissistic individuals to lead us?

    The “romance of leadership” hypothesis suggests that we generally have a biased tendency to understand social events in terms of leadership and people tend to romanticize the figure of the leader.

    My own research shows that our psychological states can also bias our perceptions of charismatic leaders. High levels of anxiety make us hungry for charisma. As a result, crises increase not only the search for charismatic leaders, but also our tendency to perceive charisma in the leaders we already follow.

    Economic and social crises thus become a unique testing ground for charismatic leaders. They create conditions of distress and uncertainty that appear to be ideal for the ascent of charismatic figures. Yet at the same time, they also make us more vulnerable to choosing the wrong leader. Crises and other emotionally laden events increase our propensity to romanticize the grandiose view of narcissistic leaders. The paradox is that we may then choose to support the very leaders who are less likely to bring us success. In a time of crisis, it’s easy to be seduced by superheroes who could come and “rescue” us, but who possibly then plunge us into greater peril.

    While this may sound hopeless, there is another way of looking at it. Essentially, we have the leaders we deserve. As we collectively select and construct our leaders to satisfy our own needs and desires, we can choose humility or socialized charisma over narcissism



    Margarita Mayo (margaritamayo.com) is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IE Business School in Madrid. She was recently featured on the Thinkers50 Radar as one of 30 thought leaders to watch in 2017. Her new book, "Yours Truly: How to Stay True to Your Authentic Self in Leadership and Life" will be published by Bloomsbury in 2018.


    Source: Harvard Business Review
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    Interesting research and all desperately true...fear projects to a need for a narcissistic 'charismatic' leader. Narcissism projects itself. (e.g. If I choose that one and it is considered 'cool' then I'm cool, too) Personal values are drivers of our modes of projection, we all do it, but the superficial personality type has superficial, even blind, modes of projection.

    And, of course, as unbelievable as it is, the rest is American history.

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    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    Interesting research and all desperately true...fear projects to a need for a narcissistic 'charismatic' leader. Narcissism projects itself. (e.g. If I choose that one and it is considered 'cool' then I'm cool, too) Personal values are drivers of our modes of projection, we all do it, but the superficial personality type has superficial, even blind, modes of projection.

    And, of course, as unbelievable as it is, the rest is American history.
    Not just American history. Look at Europe: Angela Merkel in Germany, and in the still recent past, Nicolas Sarkozy in France (with Marine Le Pen now gaining more momentum every day), or Berlusconi in Italy. Or if you will, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. I can even name a few Belgian politicians who fit that bill. The list is endless.

    For that matter, you can also draw a parallel with the so-called alternative community: Bill Ryan, Kerry Cassidy, David Wilcock, Joseph P. Farrell, Richard Dolan, and perhaps even David Icke.

    It's a human phenomenon. We've all been bred into this kind of nonsense, and we're hard-wired into thinking along those lines. <shaking my head>
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    What's the old adage about when a job position becomes available? When the people from whom to choose is less than inspiring - someone has to get the job so it is given to the one who stands out from a group who are all substandard ....

    Timing is everything - my music and dance experience taught me that and it applies to life as well. While people keep entering the awakened state - more and more intelligent and empathetic people will find their strengths and rise into positions of authority. It is happening all the time.

    Psychopaths and narcissists do a lot of damage and it will slow down and eventually stop, when they are replaced by people with proper intellectual skills. Our era is one of many changes and that includes how we live .... Just thinking out aloud.

    Much Peace - Amanda

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    Donald Trump is Making Europe Liberal Again

    From an article by Nate Silver

    On Dec. 4 last year, less than a month after Donald Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton, Austria held a revote in its presidential election, which pitted Alexander Van der Bellen, a liberal who had the backing of the Green Party, against Norbert Hofer of the right-wing Freedom Party.

    In May 2016, Van der Bellen had defeated Hofer by just more than 30,000 votes — receiving 50.3 percent of the vote to Hofer’s 49.7 percent — but the results had been annulled and a new election had been declared.

    Hofer had to like his chances: Polls showed a close race, but with him ever so slightly ahead in the polling average. Hofer cited Trump as an inspiration and said that he, like Trump, could overcome headwinds from the political establishment.

    So what happened? Van der Bellen won by nearly 8 percentage points. Not only did Hofer receive a smaller share of the vote than in May, but he also had fewer votes despite a higher turnout. Something had caused Austrians to change their minds and decide that Hofer’s brand of populism wasn’t such a good idea after all.
    The result didn’t get that much attention in the news outlets I follow, perhaps because it went against the emerging narrative that right-wing populism was on the upswing.
    If the populist tide were rising, Hofer should have been able to overcome his tiny deficit with Van der Bellen and win. Instead, he backslid. It struck me as a potential sign that Trump’s election could represent the crest of the populist movement, rather than the beginning of a nationalist wave...
    Nate's tweet about this is shown in the article.

    ...the pattern has been repeated so far in every major European election since Trump’s victory. In the Netherlands, France and the U.K., right-wing parties faded down the stretch run of their campaigns and then further underperformed their polls on election day. (The latest example came on Sunday in the French legislative elections, when Marine Le Pen’s National Front received only 13 percent of the vote and one to five seats in the French National Assembly.) The right-wing Alternative for Germany has also faded in polls of the German federal election, which will be contested in September.
    The beneficiaries of the right-wing decline have variously been politicians on the left (such as Austria’s Van der Bellen), the center-left (such as France’s Emmanuel Macron) and the center-right (such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, whose Christian Democratic Union has rebounded in polls). But there’s been another pattern in who gains or loses support: The warmer a candidate’s relationship with Trump, the worse he or she has tended to do.
    Merkel, for instance, has often been criticized by Trump and has often criticized him back. Her popularity has increased, and her advisers have half-jokingly credited the “Trump factor” for the sharp rebound in her approval ratings over the past year.
    By contrast, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May has a warmer relationship with Trump....Her Conservatives suffered a humiliating result, blowing a 17 percentage point polling lead and losing their majority in Parliament; it’s now not clear how much longer she’ll continue as prime minister. Trump was not May’s only problem, but he certainly didn’t help.
    There follow a series of graphs as Nate analyzes different European countries showing PVV fading in the Netherlands, Le Pen fading in France, UKIP fading in the UK, and AfD fading in Germany. Nate says,

    I haven’t cherry-picked these outcomes; these are the the major elections in Western Europe this year. If you want to get more obscure, the nationalist Finns Party underperformed its polls and lost a significant number of seats in the Finnish municipal elections in April, while the United Patriots, a coalition of nationalist parties, lost three seats in the Bulgarian parliamentary elections in March.
    There's a table showing consistent underperformance of the right wing parties.

    While there’s no smoking gun to attribute this shift to Trump, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence....He’s explicitly become a subject of debate among the candidates in Germany and the U.K. To the extent the populist wave was partly an anti-establishment wave, Trump — the president of the most powerful country on earth — has now become a symbol of the establishment, at least to Europeans.
    Sometimes, what seems like the surest sign of an emerging trend can turn out to be its peak instead. It’s usually hard to tell when you’re in the midst of it. Trump probably hasn’t set the nationalist cause back by decades, and the rise of authoritarianism continues to represent an existential threat to liberal democracy. But Trump may have set his cause back by years, especially in Western Europe. At the very least, it’s become harder to make the case that the nationalist tide is still on the rise.

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    Senior Member Lord Sidious's Avatar
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    In the same way that we have ''as above, so below'' we also have ''as within, so without'' and people seem to choose a projection of themselves
    Ní siocháin go saoirse

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    Damn projection. It's causing all kinds of trouble.

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    Senior Member Lord Sidious's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    Damn projection. It's causing all kinds of trouble.
    Except in my home cinema.
    Although the neighbours don't appreciate me sharing the sound with them.
    Miserable ba st ar ds
    Ní siocháin go saoirse

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    My friend Jaime has a man cave where we watched Lord of the Rings and it was so loud my ears were nearly ringing the next day. But his neighbors are too far away to hear.

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    Senior Member Lord Sidious's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    My friend Jaime has a man cave where we watched Lord of the Rings and it was so loud my ears were nearly ringing the next day. But his neighbors are too far away to hear.
    When I watch Star Wars, the first scene with the Tantive 4 and the Devestator makes the house vibrate/shake
    Ní siocháin go saoirse

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    Aragorn!

    Someone chopped off Batman's ears in the picture you posted!

    Shame!

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    Heretics!:batman


    It looks like Trump has gone from erratic to mad. As in crazy.

    I can't jump through hoops to rationalize 4D chess. Occam's razor must be applied.

    He's playing 52 pick-up. And our country is the deck of cards.

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    Dreamy, if the multiple alt-world pundits are to be believed, the Trumpster fire has over 4000 sealed indictments soon to be delivered.

    ...and yesterday we got as many as 3 new pedos/murderers/sexual misconductees “outed”, Matt Laurer, Garrison Keillor, and Morning Joe Scarborough (by Trump himself).

    If he nails the pedos I’ll change my logo to the Dark Trump...maybe.
    Last edited by Dumpster Diver, 30th November 2017 at 12:46.

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    A wolf catching the wolf pack is not something to admire, imo. He's just as guilty as the pedos, imo.

    He's outright saying he believes Moore and Putin simply because they speak words that he agrees with.

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    what putin has over Trump are Trump's 'lady entertainers' while in Russia. That's been obvious to me since the campaign.

    Garrison Keillor is a pedo. I love that guy. He is as innocent as a 'harasser' can possibly be. All I can say at this point is I damn glad I'm a nobody.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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