Four Personality Types in the Workplace

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In demonstrating the absence of a solid association between these variables, Ickes et al. concluded that although high Mach’s and high self-monitors use impression management strategies, they use these strategies in different ways and for different reasons They predicted and discovered that Machiavellianism was correlated with a focus on one’s self during social interactions and self-monitoring was associated with a focus on the person you were interacting with (Fehr, Samsom & Paulhus, 1992).

Effects on Individuals in the Workplace

A Machiavellian leader makes his or her employees terrified of them, making the employee adjust and comply with whatever the leader says and acts in whatever ways the leader wants them to. However, in most of today’s workplaces, employees’ confidence levels and leadership skills seems to be higher. These are probably caused by more education and training and more variety and skills being used in their workplace.

It is going to be very hard to find employees within an organization who are willing to concede to a Machiavellian leader’s terror tactics. If a leader chooses to use an excessive authoritative style, employees are more likely to be unproductive. Employees may even become defiant and rebellious. The everyday stress they put on their employees will in some way affect the workplace negatively and it may be hard to overcome or change that in the end.

Narcissism

The term narcissism comes from Greek mythology where a young beautiful boy named Narcissus fell in love with his own picture reflected in a pool of water (Schnure, 2010). The study of narcissism started in the early 1900s by Sigmund Freud who described it as the relationship between the sexual desire and the sense of your own value and importance. The American Psychiatric Association defines narcissism as “a pattern of need for admiration and lack of empathy for others. A person with narcissistic personality disorder may have a grandiose sense of self-importance, a sense of entitlement, take advantage of others or lack empathy.” Narcissists have many different signs and traits, and it comes in different levels, so it is somewhat impossible to come up with one definition that can be applied to all narcissistic individuals.

Narcissistic problems often develop from some conflicts with emotions of early life. Arrogance is one of the traits of narcissists which means they see themselves more important than others and think that people should admire them (Schnure, 2010); they also pay little attention to others, and they often talk more than they listen. Harvard Mental Health Letter (2004) believes that some of the narcissistic characters have unlimited success which means that no matter what they accomplish, they will never be satisfied. It also adds that selfishness and rudeness could also be traits of narcissism especially in the workplace; for instance, imagine that an employee helped his boss figure out a way to increase the sales of a particular product, and then the boss announced that he is the one who made that happen in front of the whole office ignoring the fact that the employee is the one who helped him to accomplish this. Extreme anger is a characteristic of some narcissistic individuals even in unimportant situations because they believe that others try to fail them; for example, if a boss asks his secretary to remind him of a meeting, and for some reason she forgets, his reaction could be extreme, not because he misses the meeting, but because he believes she intentionally made the mistake. Narcissistic individuals have poor interpersonal boundaries (Seltzer, 2013). For example, sharing how they forced an employee to leave his job and expect the other people to be impressed. Narcissistic leaders like to control others and make them think the way they do about a certain issue at work (Maccoby, 2004). These kinds of leaders do not even try to explore the negative side of the way they treat their employees, and they do not want others to criticize them.

Despite the fact that this personality is considered as an unwanted one, others believe that it could lead to success; in other words, narcissists are sometimes the ones who can make a difference even though they are hated by a lot of people. Maccoby (2004) discusses some of the positive sides of narcissists; he thinks that some of them are gifted, productive, and creative. Moreover, he cites with Jack Welch (a former CEO of General Electric) and George Soros (a business magnate) as models of successful narcissists, which can somewhat prove his point of view.

Getting to know someone well takes sometime especially in the workplace; however, when an employee listens to his new supervisor talking about the achievements he has made at a certain job using “I” language, then the employee is probably coping with a narcissistic supervisor (Schnure, 2010). Narcissists are often good at managing up and ensuring that their bosses maintain positive images of them for as long as possible even if it costs them taking credit for their colleagues work. Employees should keep all the e-mails their narcissistic supervisor sends them when assigning them to do a certain task as well as the e-mails among them during the process until the task is completely finished; by doing this, the employees leave the supervisor no space for taking credit for their job in front of the department manager. Workers should also note carefully any contribution to any group project, and try to make sure at least one team member reports to upper management about the progress of the project. Sometimes the nature of the job does not allow workers to communicate with those above them and their supervisor; avoidances might be one of the methods that can alleviate the situation (Schnure, 2010). An employee should not volunteer when they know a narcissistic manager is going to lead the team on a particular project. Dividing work in such a way that the narcissistic individual is given free rein on part of the project without having to work with others or give much inputs on other parts of the project (Schnure, 2010).

The writer also suggests that workers may request to be reassigned or even leave their job in the event that they have only one supervisor (narcissistic) with whom they interact more often; it may depends on how important the job is to the employees and how much they are willing to tolerate the consequences of working with that leader. Employees are more likely to receive poor feedback even if their performance is outstanding because narcissists are often selfish, so they do not want the employees around them to improve and have the skills they have; that being said, the hard work employees put in to making good