Dealing With Narcissists In The Workplace
Sooner or later in your career, you will run into someone whose personality is so difficult, you will despair about ever finding a way to work with that person in any productive way. One of these types of difficult people is the narcissistic personality. Narcissistic personality is characterized by an unrealistic or inflated sense of self-importance, an inability to see the viewpoint of others, and hypersensitivity to criticism.
The mental health community has made strides recently in learning how to effectively treat narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic features. In less severe cases, executive coaches with training in working with narcissistic personality structure can minimize the workplace damage done by people exhibiting destructive narcissism. Consulting psychologists can help organizational leaders to make better hiring decisions or to contain situations where one person’s bad behavior is putting the entire organization or team at risk.
But this blog post is about situations where the narcissistic person is not interested in change or the organization is not actively working on damage control. In an entrepreneurial environment, the narcissist may be your boss, your co-worker, your venture capitalist/investor, or someone on your board of advisors. In these situations, you need some skill in dealing with a narcissistic personality.
In the short-term and when everything is going their way, narcissists are often charming, charismatic, compelling, and persuasive. In fact, a little narcissism may provide surface advantages to succeeding as an entrepreneur. The problems arise when the narcissist feels challenged or threatened. If the flow of admiration from others starts to slow down or stop, if funding fails to materialize, if the marketplace doesn’t behave as the narcissist hopes, narcissists are prone to angry outbursts and attempts to retaliate. Narcissists specialize in making everyone else’s life miserable, so how can you avoid having your career trashed by one?
Here is expert career advice for dealing with narcissists at work:
- Be genuinely helpful. Because narcissists are preoccupied with looking good and with getting what they want, aligning yourself with their goals will buy you some time before conflict heats up. If you can make the narcissist’s life easier, work can proceed smoothly, at least for awhile.
- Appeal to the narcissistic person’s self interest. Dr. Vicki Vandaveer of The Vandaveer Group, advises, “A leader – even a narcissistic one – is keenly interested in his/her ability to get results or have an impact. We can help polish the image…help them find more effective ways to achieve goals.”
- Accept that you will probably not receive credit for your accomplishments. Dr. Rob Kaiser of Kaplan DeVries Inc. observes, “You can get anything done, if you don’t mind who gets the credit. (It’s always the narcissist’s idea, no matter where he picked it up).”
- Don’t take anything personally. The narcissist doesn’t view you as a human with wants and needs but as a source of self-esteem for herself. “It is never about you,” says Dr. Kaiser.
- Lower your expections. For example, you aren’t going to get consistent care and support from a narcissistic boss. Dr. Ben Dattner of Dattner Consulting comments, “Gordon Gecko articulated the narcissistic boss’s worldview when he advised Bud Fox in Wall Street: ‘If you want a friend, get a dog.’”
- Avoid making yourself a target. Criticizing a narcissist can result in “narcissistic rage,” where a narcissist wards off shame by retaliating against the person who caused the narcissistic injury. These reactions are extreme and out of proportion to the trigger event. Dr. John Deleray of Deleray & Associates advises, “Don’t talk about their one big flaw unless they bring it up first.” Dr. Carl Robinson of Advanced Leadership Consulting adds, “The best way to deliver advice is with a neutral voice stating the facts as your perception and interpretation of things, not as a truth. This gives the individual wiggle room, room for face saving.”
- Line up emotional support. It is draining to clash with narcissists and interacting with a narcissistic person can leave you feeling like you did something wrong or make you question your own competence or judgment. Often this is because of an unconscious process where a narcissistic person manages to transfer their own bad feelings onto you. To stay psychologically centered, you’ll need help to reality test and to process negative emotion.
- Prepare for the worst. You may lose a power struggle with a narcissist, so you should be prepared to find another job if a situation escalates and you find yourself fired. While still employed at a workplace made toxic by a narcissist with power, quietly network and build your professional community so that you will have job-related connections if you need them.
- Try to muster some empathy. Even though narcissists are terrific at appearing as if they are on top of the world and as happy as they can be, it feels awful to be a narcissist because they need constant affirmation of how good they are. “You get to go home at the end of each day, but they have to live with themselves all the time,” notes Dr. Lynn Friedman.
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Charisma and narcissism can look alike on the surface. Both patterns are marked by confidence, vision and positive self-concept. But narcissists are self-absorbed; often exploitative, arrogant, grandiose and driven by a sense of entitlement. Truly charismatic leaders are empathetic; balancing self-interests with the interests of others. Narcissistic leaders often derail themselves by losing the trust and respect of followers who eventually see how self-serving the narcissist really is. Genuinely charismatic leaders often gain stature by their sustained service of the common good. – Leadership Consulting Group of San Francisco
Depending on the dynamic between the narcissistic person and the person dealing with him or her, a cautious “playing into the narcissism” can often be quite effective. When trying to motivate or otherwise influence a narcissistic person you can leverage your understanding of the narcissist’s personality to your advantage by providing strokes to the narcissist’s ego; this can be done through public accolades, attributing successes to him or her and even just offering more genuine compliments than you otherwise might.
-Heitt Clinical & Corporate Consulting, LLC
We have a narcissist in our office, luckily not a supervisor but one who definitely feels she should be. It has caused years of grief as the co-directors in our dept. don’t know how to deal with her and won’t deal with her and pretty much have left me to do it. One aco-director deal by avoidance and a hope she would find another job and the other by slamming her in her reviews only to produce her rage and ire that he is “out to get her” which in turn has her trying to discredit him every chance she can to anyone who would listen. It makes for an interesting workplace as people who have worked there and left shake their heads and come to the conclusion that she is “a wacko” as has been described to me. I finally found a definition of her disorder from a friend who is a psychological counselor and has meet her. After reading your definition, which fits her to a “T”, I find your suggestions on how to deal with her immensely helpful. Since I don’t have the power to get rid of her, I now at least have the power to control my workday and my interaction with her and can work on containing her behavior so my day can finally be pleasant.
I am a recent college graduate and landed my first “career” oriented job only later to find out what a bad decision upon accepting this position would be and how it would put a toll on my emotional state. I have recently been researching this disorder and finally stumbled upon “narcissism”. Everything mentioned up there was exactly to the “T”. I have yet to implement this strategy as I am scheduled to approach the issue tomorrow promptly at 9 A.M. I am hoping to solve the problem but have a backup plan in case the advise doesn’t work with this particular one. I have never questioned my own judgement nor have I ever felt like a worthless person until this experience. He has even made me question my own major as he is dissatisfied with it himself.So wish me luck on my journey to a new happy ongoing workplace!
I stumbled into a workplace made toxic by a narcissist, but I just thought he was a negative nelly. He had a cadre of pals who would gather around his desk and listen to him pontificate on why our upper management was wrong. He frequently pointed to other organizations that were doing things “right” while doing very little “right” in his own sphere. I consider that kind of talk a waste of time and I refused to participate. I was partnered with him and could not get him to cooperate with me on any idea of mine or even to divide up the workload… as long as it was my idea. Then I found out he was telling people that I wasn’t a “team player.” This evolved into the cold-shoulder style of mobbing, as his crew cut me out of communication and wouldn’t work with me on projects.
I had no idea what I was dealing with, but I knew that I didn’t want to align myself with someone who I perceived to be a low-performing loser. Unfortunately, our coworkers were snowed by his talk and being in his circle made them feel smart so I couldn’t get through to them. Sharing my opinion that he wasted a lot of their time and wasn’t contributing anything to the organization was a big mistake.
My salvation was that I loved my job and I just buried myself in it, which led to me out-performing the narcissist by a wide margin, which didn’t win me any popularity points. Eventually I found that a few others were onto him, but they kept quiet about it. It was some comfort to have a few people I could talk to but they weren’t interested in changing things. They sat back while he took over meetings and pretty much just checked out. Our boss thought he was brilliant and wouldn’t let anyone have a side conversation while he was talking, but when someone else was talking he’d pick up a newspaper and hold it high up, conspicuously reading the paper when he wasn’t the center of attention.
Eventually our boss got fired for incompetence (big surprise), and we got a new boss. I thought “finally!” but the new boss was also snowed. When the new boss was ordered to cut her staff by half, I got the heave-ho and the narcissist got my old job added to his.
Of course, he never actually wanted to do anything resembling work, so he soon quit. Coincidentally, his pals who wasted their time listening to his sermons and followed his insubordinate advice also got the axe. I realize now that without his supply his whole purpose in going to work was gone.
I console myself with the thought that a workplace that couldn’t see through this poser’s act didn’t deserve me, but it still hurts. I loved that job and I wound up finding a job that paid 2/3 as much and I had to move hundreds of miles away for it. At least my new coworkers are nice and the worst “toxic” trend is micromanagement. After what I’ve been through I’ll take it.
This article has to be some of the worst advice I’ve seen. It should read “How to let a narcissist walk all over you in the workplace”. None of this “advice” actually deals with how to handle the situation. All it says here in nearly every point is to buy-in to it and hope it goes away.
This is complete and utter crap from a business/employee standpoint.
If you’re the boss and you see a narcissist on your staff, the best solution is – fire them. They give plenty of reasons and fuel to back up any disciplinary action a boss might take against them. Anyone watching their work will probably see dozens of examples come up that are all grounds for termination. It’s not difficult to get rid of a narcissist.
In fact, this article is damaging to the non-bosses and co-workers dealing with a person like this. Playing in to a narcissist and getting “chummy” with one is easy; it’s also the coward’s way out. If a person is in a position of authority of a narcissist, they need to take action, not sit on the side-lines and pretend there’s nothing wrong.
A narcissist at work can also be tied in to workplace bullying. Some states are already starting to see that as a valid issue and are taking legal action against it.
If you read the intro, this blog post is about entrepreneurial situations where the narcissist is “your boss, your co-worker, your venture capitalist/investor, or someone on your board of advisors.” Your comment is about situations where you are the boss and you have the power to fire the narcissist. Two different situations.