7 things we must change if we want fewer narcissistic leaders

They lie. Repeatedly. Shamelessly. They lie even when the truth would be easier. They lie when the lie can easily be debunked. They lie to dominate, confuse, and assert control. They treat contradiction as an attack and disagreement as betrayal. These are defining traits of narcissistic leadership.

Strangely enough, in politics and in organizations alike, we keep rewarding narcissistic leaders by giving them more power. We promote them, fund them, vote for them, excuse them, and normalize their behavior, even when there are unmistakable warning signs that should stop us from doing so.

It is obvious that narcissists seek power. The big (and more burning) question is: Why do we keep giving it to them?

We choose narcissists when we’re anxious

Narcissism is often confused with confidence, ambition, or charisma. In reality, pathological narcissism is defined by grandiosity, a constant need for admiration, low empathy, intolerance of criticism, and a tendency to instrumentalize others.

At high doses, narcissism is deeply corrosive. Highly narcissistic leaders take greater risks, manipulate more freely, break rules more readily, and do not learn from failure. They externalize blame, rewrite history, and prefer loyal sycophants over competent professionals. 

As organizational psychologist Adam Grant has argued, we are rarely naive about narcissistic leaders. Most of the time, we recognize them quickly. They boast. They monopolize attention. They perform outrage. They lie openly and repeatedly. We see it—and we still choose them.

One of the main reasons is that chaos makes us crave certainty. In moments of crisis—economic instability, war, technological disruption, climate anxiety—we mistake loud confidence for competence. Nuance feels weak. Complexity feels unbearable. Fear narrows our tolerance for ambiguity. It makes us vulnerable to leaders who promise control, simplicity, and absolute answers—no matter how fictional those answers may be.

Seen through this lens, Donald Trump is not really an anomaly. He is a symptom. His constant lying, grandiosity, and contempt for institutions are extreme, but the underlying dynamic is familiar. The same behaviors—on a smaller scale—are rewarded every day in companies, startups, media organizations, and public institutions around the world.

7 Things We Must Change If We Want Fewer Narcissistic Leaders

If narcissistic leaders keep rising, it is because our systems keep selecting and protecting them. Changing outcomes requires changing the rules of the game. Here are seven shifts that matter.

1. Stop confusing visibility with value

Narcissistic leaders thrive on attention. They dominate meetings, interrupt others, and flood the space with what appears to be certainty. In too many environments, visibility is mistaken for contribution. To counter this, organizations must actively redesign how influence is expressed—by limiting airtime and prioritizing written input, for example. Value should be measured by clarity created, not noise produced. Treating visibility as value creates a moral hazard: Those least constrained by doubt gain disproportionate influence.

2. Make lying costly 

Narcissists lie because it works. Lies are tolerated, minimized, or reframed as “communication style.” This tolerance is fatal. False statements must be corrected publicly and promptly. Repeated dishonesty should carry clear reputational and career consequences. Treating truth as optional corrodes institutions fast. The longer a lie goes unchallenged, the more it signals that reality is negotiable—and that power, not truth, sets the terms.

3. Evaluate leaders on collective outcomes

Narcissistic leaders often look impressive on individual metrics while quietly hollowing out their teams. Measuring leadership without accounting for turnover, burnout, disengagement, and loss of trust is profoundly wrong. Collective intelligence, psychological safety, and learning capacity must be treated as core performance indicators—not soft, secondary concerns. If results are achieved at the expense of trust, retention, and learning, they represent short-term extraction rather than sustainable performance.

4. Stop rewarding the will to power

Aggressively wanting power is not proof of leadership potential. In fact, narcissistic personalities are statistically more likely to self-nominate, campaign for authority, and pursue promotion relentlessly. Systems that equate ambition with suitability all but guarantee poor outcomes. Leadership selection should deliberately include capable individuals who do not seek power for its own sake—and should treat excessive self-promotion as a risk signal.

5. Institutionalize dissent

Narcissistic leaders fear contradiction and punish it, directly or indirectly. That is why dissent cannot rely on individual bravery alone. Organizations must structurally protect disagreement through formal devil’s advocate roles, strong whistleblower protections, and explicit rewards for surfacing bad news early. A leader who cannot tolerate dissent is fundamentally dangerous. Disagreement should be seen as a contribution to intelligence.

6. Redefine charisma

Charisma is too often equated with dominance, theatrical confidence, and verbal force. But sustainable leadership can look different: calm authority, restraint, curiosity, and the ability to change one’s mind in light of new evidence. As long as we glamorize the worst kind of “strong personalities,” narcissistic leaders will continue to thrive. Our dominant definition of charisma is also deeply gendered. Traits coded as charismatic—assertiveness, verbal dominance, emotional detachment, physical presence—map closely onto traditionally masculine norms, while behaviors more often associated with women (like listening) are systematically undervalued. 

7. Address the root cause: Fear

Narcissistic leaders rise fastest in anxious systems. When people feel unsafe—economically, socially, psychologically—they outsource certainty to those who project it most loudly. Reducing precarity, increasing fairness, and building real psychological safety are not just moral imperatives. They are structural defenses against narcissistic leadership.

Narcissistic leaders do not seize power alone. They are enabled—by our fears, our metrics, our myths about leadership, and our reluctance to confront uncomfortable truths. If we want different leaders, we must become different selectors. The problem is not that narcissists exist. It’s that we keep mistaking them for leaders.