Leaders are individuals who have qualities to influence, lead and motivate people towards achieving a common purpose of goal. The leaders are needed to have certain qualities, as if they are emphatic, just and caring towards the needs of the others. Leaders are people who with their good behavior, qualities make people follow them. Leaders are needed to be ethically sound so that they can become the role models to whom people look. Good leaders are admired, they do not misuse their powers rather they use those powers to motivate others. They lead people for their good. This is the concept of good leaders (Northouse, 2015).
There are many types of leaders based on the leadership style followed by them, some leaders follow autocratic leadership style. In this type of leadership style the leaders do not involve the team members in the decision making process, this kind of leadership is used when instant decisions are needed to be taken and the participation of the team members is not an essential criteria. Another type of leadership style is democratic leadership style, in which the leaders allow the participation of the team members in the decision making process, this kind of leadership is needed to be used when the decisions affect the team members and their opinions, viewpoints are important for the decision to be taken. Lassez-faire is the type of leadership where the team members are allowed to take their own decisions without being interfered by the superior authorities. This kind of leadership is used when the team leaders trust their team members and their capabilities so much that they can easily practice such leadership style (McCleskey, 2014).
Distributive leadership was first used by Gibb to identify and study the impact of various processes within the formal and informal groups. It emphasizes on the collaboration, shared purpose, responsibility and recognition of leadership no matter what the role and the positions individuals have within the organization, it focuses on collective sharing of knowledge, utilization and reflection. Distributive leadership in a complex organization is the analytical approach of how leadership takes place among the people. It is primarily used in the education research but it can be applied in business as well. It does not focus on the individual leaders, their characteristics, their features or situations, rather it focuses on how the leaders indulge in the various tasks that are distributed among the organization. According to the concept of distributive leadership decisions and actions within an organization is a result of many formal leaders and not just one leader. It hails the theory of participatory leadership. Distributive leadership has been also been used in health care sector.
Agentic leadership has been derived from the word agency, this type of business style is mostly found in business sector, where person is in charge of his employees or subordinates. The agentic leaders exert assertiveness, competitiveness, independence and masterfulness in gaining their business objectives. In this type of leadership the leaders, generally the head of the organization or the business, allocates tasks to their employees, or subordinates, they are supposed to perform tasks that are meant to achieve the organizational goals and objectives. The leaders who practice Agentic leadership are not necessary to be empathetic, they are mostly aggressive, because they have too many liabilities that make them competitive. They are dedicated towards their duties and responsibilities. The lack of empathy is not because the leader is ruthless but organizational goals have more importance than individuals problems or needs, for the good of whole team or organization sometimes individual needs are overlooked, for greater good. In this leadership motivation plays a very important role because, if employees are not motivated they will not give their best towards achieving the common purpose of the organization. Proper direction is also needed for this kind of leadership. Agentic leadership comes with many responsibilities, the leaders have lot of pressure on them, and they have so many stakeholders. They have to meet the goals of the organization, whilst they have to fulfill the demands of their customers without dissatisfying their employees. They are responsible to the society, they have many obligations to be ethical while attaining the objectives of their organization, failing which they will lose the reputation they have in the society and the market. Ethical leadership is considered very important in this kind of leadership, because it is often seen that in contemporary agentic leadership unethical means has become very common, leaders motivated by greed for power, success and money tend to take shortcuts and unethical measures, like fraud, cheating, misrepresentation of organization, it financial statements. This is the result of the competition businesses are facing, some leaders still cling to their ethical values and set example for the society and other businesses. On the contrary, there are leaders that fail to cope with the pressure and the competition they face. It is very difficult to say what inspires the leaders to be ethical or unethical, merely saying that they are motivated by the individual desires or motives would be a vague justification (Zehir et al., 2014).
The leaders are supposed to always put common good above the individual needs, this also is the essence of effective agentic leadership. The leaders who fail to understand this, ends up prioritizing their needs and objectives takes unethical decisions and steps that helps them to gain short term benefits but in long run, when they are exposed they have to fight legal battles and they attract lot of negative publicity (Klenke, 2016).
Understanding human beings is a very complex process, many psychologists have put forward many theories that suggest human behavior, their personality traits. Individuals based on their personality traits exercise power and authority when they go to a particular position, though in agentic leadership most of the traits are taught to the leaders through training and development, there are certain traits that are not taught but are innate. The innate traits of individuals become so strong that leaders behave according to it, irrespective of what their training was. Narcissism and hubristic tendencies are some traits that affect the leadership (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013).
Narcissism has been originated from the Greek mythology, which refers to a person who is self centered and focused on only oneself. These kind of people mostly focus on their needs, problems and do not care much about the people around them, Narcissism often turns evil because Narcissists often are so much indulged in their own self that they forget to look at the people around them, which often creates trouble for others. Narcissism can also be defined as excessive love for oneself, which results in ignorance of others, the higher degrees of Narcissism can be where the narcissists harm other people, for their self interests (Takala & Auvinen, 2016). These kind of people give importance to their own viewpoints and ignore the opinions of those around them. They are arrogant, think about themselves all the time and they can be called self-obsessed (Giannouli, 2017). It is considered as personality disorder. The characteristics of a narcissist are, thinking about oneself most of the times, seek attention and like to be admired, narcissists boast and exaggerate their talents and achievements, they have the feeling that they are special and hence they want to be treated special. Narcissists have unrealistic goals that are not feasible. They have mood swings and it is very difficult to calculate the extent of adverse reactions they might show for a particular situation (Yeung, 2017). It is very difficult for the narcissists to understand the feelings of others and they lack empathy. They are very ambitious in nature, they like winning and would do anything for things they want to achieve and things they want in life. It is very difficult for a narcissist to accept their defeat. They have fantasy for more money and power. Since they like to be the centre of attraction, they often want to be leaders. Narcissists have high self-esteem (Johnson, 2017).
In the year 1914 Sigmund Freud developed his theories on Narcissism, this theory was followed by the previous theories of Sigmund Freud on dreams and unconscious mind. After the theory, Sigmund Freud started exploring various aspects of unconscious mind like ‘id’. The theory of ‘id’ though has not been mentioned in this theory. In this theory, he suggests about the existence of the various parts of human mind. He also suggests in the theory about self-control mechanisms, which he termed as ‘ego-ideal’. In this work, Freud introduces the concept of Narcissism, according to him, narcissism is a type of neurosis, he also suggests that all human beings have narcissist tendencies in themselves, which develops within them with the passage of time (Sadler-Smith et al., 2016). He classifies narcissism in to primary and secondary narcissism. Primary narcissism exists in the individuals from their birth, this typed of tendencies causes individuals to be affectionate towards another object, for an instance the love of a mother towards her child can be described as primary narcissism. He also believes that this kind of narcissism is also present in the young kids who think they are capable of doing anything. Primary narcissism causes conflict within the individuals because it is directed outwards to an object (Freud, 2014).
Secondary Narcissism is when the individuals turn the object affections back on themselves, it happens after the affection has been projected outwards to an object rather than themselves. It results in cutting off individuals from the society. This kind of people cannot express love to others because they have expressed that love to themselves. This kind of people is full of shame, guilt and is often very defensive. This is the reason narcissism make people to seek self-preservation (Morrison, 2014).
On the Contrary they posses qualities that bring them to authoritative positions, they do have followers because some people find these attributes attractive and follow narcissists and hubris in spite of their evil tendencies. They can influence people, leaders like Adolf Hitler who can be categorized as a Narcissist and Hubristic leader is also considered as a charismatic leader because he had some qualities, as if he was good orator and could influence people. This kind of leaders are very talented by they use their talents, qualities, attributes in a negative manner that often brings hostile and unfavorable situations for other people. Adolf Hitler who used kill the Jews because he hated them, because he had a perception that Jews are snatching the opportunities of employment and other resources of the local people (De Vries, 2016)
Corporate narcissism happens when a narcissist becomes the CEO of an organization, or a narcissist gets any position in the upper management and has certain codependents that help him in his narcissist behavior. Narcissists always show that they are loyal towards the organization but they have their hidden agendas, in such case the decisions taken for the organization are related to the needs and interests of their own rather than the needs and interests of the stakeholders. They run a financially successful business by practice of unethical principles, using their charisma they even influence their subordinates to do so (Chemers, 2014).
Hubris is referred as excessive pride and arrogant in on self, which often results in downfall. According to Aristotle, Hubris includes saying and doing things that embarrasses the victim, simply for the pleasure of it. Hubris is not retaliation but it is revenge, young people those who think are better than others are hubristic. According to Aristotle, People with Hubristic tendencies commit crime and maltreat others to fulfill their own needs and sometimes they even do things simply for pleasure. As per the Greek mythology, Hubris is depicted as a crime and it is believed it should be punished. According to the Greek philosophy Hubris is a person in an authoritative position who is very proud of his position and often misuses his power, he believes he possess exceptional qualities, people in high position with hubristic tendencies think themselves equal to God and want themselves to be celebrated and treated as special (Braun, 2016).
The combination of the narcissism and power has always harmed the society, narcissist leaders in agentic leadership is not good for either the business or the stakeholders. It is obvious that a narcissist and an individual with hubris tendencies will never focus on common good rather they will focus on their own needs and objectives. They will take decisions without anyone to participate in the decision process, they will always impose their superiority on the employees, and undoubtedly, narcissists are ruthless leaders as well as managers in reference to the Agentic leadership style. The stakeholders will always be displeased by the ruthless behavior of this kind of leaders (Lussier & Achua, 2015). If the business fails to prioritize the demands of the customers and they simply make profit then the customers will be dissatisfied. Customers want the value for the price they pay but if the managers in order to fulfill their own needs ignore the needs of their customers, they will no longer prefer to take the services of that particular business. A narcissist will always be rude to their customers, suppliers because he fails to realize that the success of a business can only be achieved by keeping the stakeholders happy (Bolman & Deal, 2017). An arrogant manager might think it is his efforts that have brought success to the organization, rather it is the collective effort of the employees and the leaders that lead to success of the business. In the contemporary business environment all the cases of unethical behaviors and practices of the leaders mostly happen because the leaders are self centered, common good is not their concern rather they are motivated by their own needs, to become successful, to gain more power and more money. However, they fail to realize the fact that this kind of success does not last, someday they will lose all the goodwill and the organization will be at loss (Bolman & Deal, 2017).
Another most important trait that leaders should have but narcissist does not have is that, they lack empathy and human approach. Lack of empathy will never let the leaders understand the problems of the employees, in an organization though individual needs are often not prioritized for the good of all the organization, but if there is a genuine problem that affects all the other employees as well, a good manager considers the problem. A narcissistic manager will ignore the problems of the employees and tell them to focus more on productivity (Barling, 2014). The employees will lose morale because their problems are not addressed, the productivity will decrease because there will be less job satisfaction and job engagement (Fleming & Delves, 2017). Narcissists do not believe in motivating their employees, rather they create pressure and unrealistic goals that are difficult to be achieved. Hubristic leadership is considered as a personality disorder where the leaders uses the power for glorifying oneself, they are very much focused on their image, they have excessive self-confidence. Both the characteristics are not good for the leaders to have it often leads to destruction, unsatisfying all the stake holders and even putting the business in legal battles. Both the Narcissists and Hubristic people are similar in their behavior they both have evil tendencies, which lead to adverse situations and harm others. People who possess both the characteristics are considered as dangerous leaders (Bono et al., 2014).
References
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