Ahead of clinical psychologist Dr Ramani Durvasula’s visit to AllBright next month, where she will be exploring ‘Empathy vs Narcissism in Leadership’, she defined what a narcissistic leader was and how leadership attracts this type of individual for The AllBright Post. Now, with Dr Durvasula’s expertise in the area, having spent her entire career devoted to studying these personality types and becoming a New York Times bestselling author on the topic, we asked her how individuals and businesses can protect themselves from narcissistic leadership.
Can we ever mitigate against a narcissistic leader?
In short, Dr Durvasula advises that in most cases, when coming up against a narcissistic leader there is not much to be done, especially if they are the founder or owner of the business. Yet, she says small steps may help. Firstly she advises avoiding gossip and backroom conversations about it. “Be clear on the behaviours that are problematic, document them, and figure out the safe stakeholders in your midst to discuss this issue with.” Dr Durvasula also advises against using social media as a place to document the harmful, invalidating or gaslighting behaviours happening at work. “In some cases, this is often considered a violation of the employee handbook or other workplace rules – so ultimately – the leaders’ gaslighting may be viewed as less of a problem than your social media post and you will take the fall.”
“Unfortunately, this next piece of guidance is essential when we are managing a narcissistic leader which is to document,” she shares. “The documentation is everything and there can be no change without it – this may mean emails, text messages, slack messages, voicemails. As much as possible, save screenshots or pdfs to your personal computer so you have them should you have to abruptly leave the job.”
Other ways to protect yourself include finding mentorship within the workplace at a senior level, to collaboratively work with someone who may have the power to address the issue and provide guidance. And of course, seek out legal counsel if necessary, using someone outside of the workplace to find out your rights. The final piece of advice from Dr Dr Durvasula is to stay away from the narcissistic leader. The degree to which you can do your job with as little contact with the narcissistic leader as possible may make the position tenable.
The companies role
If you are coming at the issue of a narcissistic leader from a company point of view there are steps you can take to deal with someone who is narcissistic within the team. According to Dr Durvasula the first thing to do is recognise that this is real and that it impacts your employees, your clients/customers/patients, and it can significantly harm your brand and reputation. She says “first companies cannot keep conflating success with “good” – success is good, but you have to pay attention to how the sausage is made – some narcissistic leaders may create great “deliverables” or “profits” or even innovation because they lead through fear – that can create short term wins, but in the long-term, it doesn’t work. Stay on top of patterns such as nepotism, or other unearned hiring or leadership practices. Ensure that you have multiple ways of monitoring leadership – both in-house and perhaps through independent assessment. Provide employees the opportunity to provide feedback in a way that protects them.”
HR teams also play an integral role. Dr Durvasula explains that they must understand how narcissism and the associated patterns show up in the workplace. Deborah Turkheimer makes the important point that you are not just witnessing the short-term immediate harm to employees when there are abusive, oppressive, bullying people in the workplace, but also the long-term loss of talent or people losing years in their careers.
Healing and moving on from a narcissistic leader
Dr Durvasula reiterated that it is not easy to heal from a narcissistic leader depending on how long you worked with the leader, how closely, and how vulnerable you were in your position. In most cases healing can only begin when either transferring to another division, leaving the company, or even leaving the industry.
This is when Dr Durvasula believes it becomes essential that a person be in therapy. She says we must “keep in mind the abuses of a narcissistic boss run the gamut from the stress of unrealistic demands, to being asked to do dangerous or unethical things, to being turned against co-workers, to being unsupported in your work, to being bullied, to facing sexual, racist, or discriminatory harassment, abuses, or harms. In the case of more severe and prolonged abuses, we could see reactions that range from depression to severe anxiety, to post-traumatic presentations – so mental health intervention is necessary.”
There can be significant grief if a person’s career or reputation is harmed, or time is lost. Healing may also entail talking with people in your industry to get some guidance on how best to proceed and some people may find entering into and retraining in a new industry or finding a new way to engage in the job skills from the abusive job is a part of their healing. Burnout is not unusual when a person has a narcissistically abusive leader – and that requires time, rest, therapy, and often time not working at all.
Dr Durvasula shares the importance of knowing what narcissism is so you don’t get caught in the vortex of trying to “do better” to win them over, or “be good enough” or even blame yourself for things going wrong in the workplace. There is no pleasing a narcissistic leader in the long term and if you are very good at your job, and make your narcissistic leader look better, sadly, they may keep you “stuck”- and instead of being advanced or getting better opportunities because you are doing your job so well, you may find that you are perpetually caught in the role of making the narcissistic leader “look good,” because that works for them. It is important to be aware of this behaviour so you can determine if it may be time to switch to a position where there is more opportunity for recognition and growth.
If you want to know more about how to identify and heal from narcissistic people you can pick up Dr Durvasula’s latest book and don’t forget to sign up to Bridging the Gap: Empathy vs Narcissism in Leadership breakfast at the townhouse.
