The easiest approach to answer this age-old question is to give the management role to the best performer in the role below. This is known as the Peter Principle, describing the fact that the skills that make somebody the best performer in a job are directly at odds with the requirements of managing other people and trying to get them to succeed. In other words: the best athletes are not necessarily the best coaches.
Narcissism is often cited as the major personality hurdle standing between the desire to be a good manager and actually being one, and several studies show that the trait is on the rise. One nationwide meta-analysis and an examination of data within one campus demonstrated significant increases in American college students’ narcissistic traits over the generations, according to researchers Jean M. Twenge and Joshua D. Foster.
“The larger cultural changes in parenting, education, family life, and the media toward greater individualism have apparently affected the personality traits of individuals,” they write. The nationwide meta-analysis shows that the increases are a little more than one third of a standard deviation over one generation.
Sometimes, a narcissistic leader can be inspirational. Several studies, however, show that such leaders are more likely to create destructive workplaces. “The difference between having healthy levels of self-confidence and self-esteem, which are appealing and useful qualities for leaders, and being narcissistic is that narcissists have an elevated sense of self-worth such that they value themselves as inherently better than others,” write Charles A. O’Reilly III, Bernadette Doerr, David F. Caldwell and Jennifer A. Chatman in “Narcissistic CEOs and Executive Compensation”.
Good management can be learned, but there are core qualities that make good leadership that are harder to strengthen, many experts feel. Amongst them are a deep level of self- confidence and a deep sense of personal security. In other words: Not narcissists, but balanced people who know their own strengths and weaknesses, make good managers. According to Useem and others, people who lack that, will not receive the long-term trust of their organisations because they are too worried about themselves.
Read more on:
Are Good Managers Born or Made?
Birth Cohort Increases in Narcissistic Personality Traits Among American College Students, 1982–2009
Narcissistic CEOs and executive compensation