Do Narcissists Make Better Leaders?
Do Narcissists Make Better Leaders? © 2026 by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. The world of business and leadership would seem to be dominated by narcissists, because of their ability to draw attention to themselves and to get people to follow them. After all, isn’t that the goal of marketing and business in our fast-paced world? Can the drive, showmanship and grand thinking of a narcissist actually be good for a business leader or any kind of leader? Realistically speaking, the answer is No and here’s why: Narcissistic traits are dysfunctional. To truly be a narcissist means to have a problem; a persistent pattern of dysfunctional behaviors. A narcissist is more than self-centered, which is what people often think of. (Isn’t that charming, how he has to be the center of attention? No, that’s not a good sign as you’ll see below.) The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5) published by the American Psychiatric Association lists several specific traits of a narcissistic personality disorder. They include a lack of empathy, a pattern of exaggeration and grandiosity, interpersonal exploitation, fantasies of unlimited power over others and excessive demands for admiration. They are driven to be seen as superior, so they put other people down with insults and demeaning behavior to put themselves up. Their first impressions are great, but misleading. Narcissists are good at promoting themselves to those who don’t know them very well and hiding the negative side of their personality for a while. They can tell the most grand and exciting stories of their past success, but they turn out to be great exaggerations. Their charm is almost irresistible and their grandiose plans often sound like what everyone has been looking for: a leader who can turn things around and shoot for the stars. But over time they turn out to be impulsive, lazy and take credit for other people’s work. People soon learn to resent them. They are preoccupied with themselves, not the business. Studies show that narcissists are not focused on the business, but rather focused on themselves. They talk about themselves all the time but often forget to talk about (or even think about) the organization and its goals. One common characteristic is their tendency to exploit others, so that they are often thinking about how to move up in the organization and possibly out to a higher status position with another organization. While moving up and sometimes out isn’t bad in itself, the problem is that they are always thinking like this rather than investing energy into really building the organization. They may be good at getting publicity, but do they use it to promote themselves or the business? They kick down and kiss up. They actually make terrible bosses for the people below them. This is because they use the employee to pick on and blame when things don’t go well; but then they steal the ideas and credit for what the employee has actually done. Employees may complain about this to others higher up in the organization. But that’s when the kissing up part comes in. Narcissists are good at making their own superiors think they are doing great, so when a complaint comes in it may be quickly disregarded. Since many employees are intimidated by the verbal insults and arrogance of a narcissist, they don’t speak up to higher-ups in the business. This reinforces the idea that the narcissist is doing fine, when he (or she) is not doing fine at all. We see this dynamic in many cases of bullying and sexual harassment, where the organization usually protects the narcissist. They are showmen (and women) and not leaders. People often confuse a media presence with leadership skills. An image does not make a leader. In today’s world of sound bites and fleeting images, we start to lose our healthy skepticism. Narcissists are skilled at sounding like a leader using strong, dramatic statements, and looking like a leader with smart hand gestures. They may surround themselves with attractive people to enhance their image, but these don’t fit with the reality of their empty relationships. Instead of inspiring department heads and line employees with their leadership skills, they seek people who will listen to them go on and on about their own wonderful (but questionable) personal accomplishments. True leaders put the company and employees first in their thoughts and their public presentations, and work to build great teams instead of being preoccupied with individual superstars. They create instability and don’t last. Narcissistic leaders can be overconfident, so they don’t last as long in their leadership positions as those who are less self-confident and therefore work harder. As researchers Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell explain in their book The Narcissism Epidemic: “Narcissists love to win, but in most settings they aren’t that great at actually winning. In other words, overconfidence backfires. They also like to blame everyone and everything except themselves for their shortcomings. In more than 100 technology companies, they found that the more narcissistic the CEO of a company was, the more volatile the company’s performance.” Narcissistic CEO’s are not team players and do not last as long in their positions. Instead, the most successful CEOs were “less narcissistic,” more humble, and “produced a more steady performance.” Studies have found that narcissists make their companies have more dramatic ups and downs, with more publicly dramatic schemes, which overall is worse for the bottom line and public reputation. They don’t learn. This is often the most surprising quality of narcissists. While they talk a good talk, they don’t follow through and don’t seem to learn. This is a quality of all people with personality disorders: they have an enduring pattern of behavior that rarely changes in adulthood. They can look and act very well, but if they have a personality disorder it will show over time and especially under stress. Steve Jobs may be an example of a leader who many thought of as a
7 Ways Children’s Brains Absorb Their Parents’ Emotions in Divorce (And What You Can Do About It)
7 Ways Children’s Brains Absorb Their Parents’ Emotions in Divorce(And What You Can Do About It) © 2026 by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. Divorce is a stressful time regardless of how amicable it is. For the 20-25% of people going through a “high conflict” divorce, it can be an emotional roller coaster. While the focus is usually on making big decisions (where to live, dividing up property, determining how much income each parent will have, what schedule the children have with each parent), paying attention to each parent’s emotional health is extremely important as well. Whether you are a parent going through a divorce, a divorce professional assisting parents, or a friend or family member, the information in this article can be very helpful and isn’t generally known. In his new book, Love Wars: Clash of the Parents, A True Divorce Story, Matthew A. Tower describes many emotional scenes from his parents’ high-conflict divorce when he was 5 to 11 years old. (It’s a well-written story for teenagers and adults, which reads like a novel but it’s true!) His wrenching descriptions of being in the middle of their custody battle give us an inside opportunity to see how emotions get transferred from parent to child, which can eventually become refusal to spend time with a parent. Young Matthew experiences resisting contact with a parent because of their own abusive behaviors and also experiences pressure to turn against the other parent because of alienating behaviors. In high conflict divorces it is common for a child to reject one of their parents in order to cope with the conflict. In this article, I want to explain why this may be primarily because of how children absorb their parents’ emotions without their parents even realizing it, and what parents and professionals can do about this. I’ll use some of young Matthew’s examples to demonstrate this. 1. Emotions are Automatically Contagious, Unless… The idea that emotions are contagious has been around for years, but how they are contagious has not been generally understood until recently. Research says that we biologically receive other people’s emotions through two brain functions that automatically operate to protect us and help us work together with others in a crisis. One is our amygdala, especially the amygdala in the right hemisphere of our brain (we have an amygdala in each hemisphere). It automatically can be activated by simply observing another person’s facial expressions of fear and anger, or even just a photo of someone’s fearful or angry face. The amygdala spots signs of fear in someone’s face…as quick as 33 milliseconds…so fast that the conscious mind remains oblivious to that perception… (Goleman, 2006, 39) (Emphasis added) Another automatic receptor of emotions is our mirror neurons, which are located near our motor neurons that activate to move our bodies, including hands, arms, facial expressions and so forth. Mirror neurons are one of the most important discoveries in the last decade of neuroscience…. Essentially, mirror neurons respond to actions that we observe in others. The interesting part is that mirror neurons fire in the same way when we actually recreate that action ourselves.(Acharya & Shukla, 2012, 118) Both of these happen automatically from birth. However, we also have emotion regulation, which is the way we influence our own responses. This is learned as we grow up based on what emotional responses fit the circumstances. Emotion regulation becomes more automatic over time and is learned significantly from how our parents demonstrate regulating their own emotions. For example, even a small child learns that a truck or train coming right at them in a TV screen will not hurt them, so they don’t need to react. In adolescence, if a boyfriend or girlfriend does not call right back or text right back, the teenager slowly learns that it is not a life-or-death crisis. We also have the ability to develop cognitive reappraisal, which means that we can tell ourselves that we don’t need to “catch” another person’s emotions. “Just because she’s angry doesn’t mean that I have to be angry.” However, this also takes time to learn, including childhood and adolescence, as the brain is not fully developed until the mid-20s. The younger the child, the harder this is. Emotions are contagious unless you have well-developed emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal skills. 2. Emotional Intensity Matters The intensity of a parent’s emotions also matters. For example: Infants can only cope with a certain intensity of emotional arousal before they move beyond their window of tolerance into a state of stressful emotional dysregulation. (Schore, 2019, 231) (Emphasis added) The ability to cope with this emotional intensity can increase with age but does not go away in adulthood. Emotional intensity is a call to action at any age, but children don’t have the emotional resources to discriminate between a parent’s intensity that needs a response and intensity that they can ignore. Too much intensity and all children become dysregulated, not just infants. At the beginning of the divorce process when Matthew was five, he remembers his parents’ arguments as overwhelming to him: They kept screaming at each other, and I feared their anger would blow up the whole house. I had to make them stop. I tried telling them what they always ordered me to do when I misbehaved. “Go to your room.” My voice was choked as I looked at each of them in turn. They paid no attention and kept on yelling, their voices growing louder, their gazes focused like lasers on each, not seeing me at all…. [Finally] “GO TO YOUR ROOM! GO TO YOUR ROOM! GO TO YOUR ROOM!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, aiming my proton torpedoes at their fighting [he had seen the Star Wars movie], hoping against hope that I would get through to them. The guns . . . they stopped. Mom and Dad fell silent and looked at me. Then, as if they’d reached an unspoken agreement, they walked
Setting Limits in Divorce and Divorce Court
Setting Limits in Divorce and Divorce Court © 2026 by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. January each year appears to be divorce month. Unhappy couples who have stayed together to get through the holidays for their kids’ sake finally decide it is time to let go. On the other hand, sometimes it is behavior around the holidays which convince one or both parties that their spouse is an alcoholic or narcissist or otherwise no longer tolerable. As a therapist, divorce lawyer, and family mediator, it seems that January starts out with a bang and a flood of new clients. However, I am no longer practicing in those roles myself. Instead, I am exclusively focused on teaching, consulting and writing for High Conflict Institute—primarily to help others manage this time of family transition. With that in mind, I have found that learning to set limits in the new family structure is key. Much of this can be done by agreement, but some of it ends up in family courts (the name for most divorce courts). From what I have learned over the past 45 years in these three professions, here are a few tips for people going through divorce and their professionals, (with some book references for those who want further inexpensive information): Set limits on how you will communicate. Ideally, commit to respectful communication in person and in writing. Remember that everything you write, post on social media, and say (especially if a cell phone is recording you) could end up in family court someday to be used against you. In person, you are encouraged to use EAR Statements, which show empathy, attention and respect (see our book Calming Upset People with EAR). In writing, use the BIFF Communication method by being brief, informative, friendly, and firm (see our book BIFF for CoParent Communication). Protect yourself. The time of separation can be the most dangerous time in a relationship that involves domestic violence or other forms of coercive control (controlling money, friendships, where you go, sex, what you eat, your healthcare, etc.). In such situations, its best to have a safety plan figured out before you separate, so that you have somewhere safe to go, have some funds for a few weeks, have a lawyer to handle legal surprises such as emergency court hearings, and a plan for your children. Getting a Temporary Restraining Order (or “Protective Order”) can help, but that alone does not make one safe if you don’t also have a safety plan. (See my book with Randi Kreger SPLITTING: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder). Protect your children from divorce conflicts. Even though the other parent may no longer be in the home, this does not mean it’s okay to make disparaging remarks, facial expressions, or other venting behavior about them around the children—or allow others to do so, like friends and other relatives. It is a hard enough time for children without hearing all the negative things possible that could be said about their other parent. Research tells us that children (and adults) amplify the most extreme negative comments and emotions that others say and show when they are upset. When this occurs enough, children can develop a purely negative view of the other parent (become alienated) and resist contact with that parent. This can create great difficulty for both parents, who often fight over whose fault this is—including in family courts, sometime for years. (See our book Don’t Alienate the Kids). Try mediation or collaborative divorce to stay out of court. Even if your soon-to-be ex has a high conflict personality (preoccupied with blaming others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, extreme behavior), you can often settle your whole divorce (parenting plan, monthly support, property division, etc.) out of court by agreement. However, while it may be tempting to do it all yourself, you are better off in the long run if you use professionals to help do this accurately and safely, so you don’t have major disputes over mistakes you might make on your own. Legal divorce agreements can be a mine field of problems if you don’t do it right. In mediation, the two parties usually meet with a single mediator for one long day or several shorter meetings. Lawyers may participate in mediation, or may be consulted outside of the sessions, or some mediators work with no lawyers involved. In collaborative divorce, each spouse has their own lawyer who agrees to work hard to help settle the case and agrees never take the case to court. There is often a joint neutral financial advisor involved (best to use a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst) and sometimes a joint collaborative divorce coach (who is often a licensed mental health professional). (For professionals providing these out-of-court services for potentially high conflict divorces, we recommend our book Mediating High Conflict Disputes.) Be prepared to go to family court if necessary. The majority of divorce decisions are made out-of-court, with the paperwork filed with the court and routinely approved to become the final divorce court orders. However, nationwide about twenty percent of divorcing couples go to court to have their decisions made by a judge. Since most states have standard laws for property division and child support guidelines, these are often resolved out of court or quickly in court. This means a significant percentage of court disputes are about parenting plans, often with major fights over how much time each parent will have with their children or who has “custody.” If you believe you may be facing a high conflict divorce, I recommend a “two-track” approach: Try to settle out of court as described above, but be prepared to go to court at any time. Courts can set limits in many areas, including restraining orders, supervised parenting plans, requirements to pay child support and spousal support (depending on the state laws), and other areas. But keep in mind that while family courts often set limits but they often do not impose consequences