Picture two managers who both think the world revolves around them. One radiates confidence, talks constantly about big goals, and seems energized by the prospect of standing out. The other is touchy and defensive, quick to see rivals, and bristles when anyone questions his authority. Both could be labeled narcissists, yet they may push their teams in opposite directions. One question that has long puzzled researchers is why narcissistic leaders sometimes spark bold collective action and sometimes shut it down.
A study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior offers evidence that the answer depends on which kind of narcissism a leader displays, and on whether the team treats the boss as someone worth imitating. The researchers found that one flavor of narcissism tends to energize teams to suggest improvements and try new approaches, while another tends to make them cautious and reluctant to rock the boat.
Splitting narcissism in two
The work was led by Xin Liu of Renmin Business School at Renmin University of China, along with colleagues at Chongqing University, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, and the University of Alabama. Their starting point is a framework called the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept, which proposes that narcissism is not a single trait but two related strategies a person uses to protect a grand sense of self.
The first is narcissistic admiration. This is the assertive, self-promoting side: chasing success, visibility, and praise. Leaders high in admiration tend to be confident, charming, and dominant, focused on advancing toward an ideal version of themselves. The second is narcissistic rivalry, the defensive, self-protecting side. It centers on fending off threats, guarding status, and neutralizing anyone perceived as a competitor. Leaders high in rivalry tend to be hostile toward critics and quick to devalue others. A single person can show both tendencies to different degrees, but the two operate through different logic.
The team was interested in “team proactivity,” meaning members’ self-started, change-oriented efforts to improve how the group works. Think of employees who volunteer better methods, flag problems, or push for changes rather than waiting for instructions. The authors note that this kind of initiative has become important for organizations operating in complicated environments, and that prior research on whether narcissistic bosses help or hurt it had produced mixed results.
How a leader’s mindset spreads to the team
To explain how a leader’s personality reaches the whole group, the researchers drew on social learning theory, the idea that people pick up not just behaviors but motivations by watching influential role models. In a workplace, the boss usually holds that role. The authors argue that team members observe how a leader regulates their own ambitions and fears, then absorb a matching motivational orientation.
They describe this shared orientation as a team’s “collective regulatory focus.” A team with a strong promotion focus concentrates on hopes, gains, and opportunities, eager to advance and reluctant to miss a chance. A team with a strong prevention focus concentrates on duties, security, and avoiding mistakes, preferring to play it safe.
The researchers proposed that a leader high in admiration, with that growth-and-glory mindset, would foster a collective promotion focus, which in turn would encourage proactivity. A leader high in rivalry, with that threat-and-defense mindset, would foster a collective prevention focus, which would dampen proactivity.
They added one more piece: team power distance value, meaning how much team members accept and expect unequal power between themselves and their leader. The authors reasoned that in teams comfortable with strong hierarchy, members would view the boss as a more legitimate and credible model and would absorb the leader’s mindset more readily. In teams that prefer flatter relationships, members would be more likely to question the boss and less likely to mirror their orientation.
Studying 100 teams over time
The researchers collected data from four manufacturing companies in China, working with the firms’ human resources departments. To reduce the risk that everything was measured the same way at the same moment, they gathered information from different sources at two points one month apart.
At the first stage, leaders rated their own narcissistic admiration and rivalry using an established 18-item questionnaire, and employees rated their power distance values. A month later, employees rated their team’s collective promotion and prevention focus, and leaders rated their team’s proactivity. After cleaning the data and dropping very small groups, the final sample covered 100 leaders, each supervising one team. The leaders were mostly male, averaged about 38 years old, and had roughly 11 years with their organizations.
The analysis supported the central predictions. Leaders higher in narcissistic admiration tended to have teams with a stronger collective promotion focus, and that promotion focus was linked to higher team proactivity. Leaders higher in narcissistic rivalry tended to have teams with a stronger collective prevention focus, and that prevention focus was linked to lower team proactivity.
The role of hierarchy showed up as predicted. Both of these pathways were stronger in teams that accepted unequal power. When power distance was high, admiration’s positive link to a promotion focus was clear, and rivalry’s link to a prevention focus was clear. When power distance was low, both connections faded to the point of not being statistically meaningful. In other words, the same leader appears to leave a much deeper imprint on teams that defer to authority.
An unexpected dark side of admiration
One result ran against the researchers’ expectations. Narcissistic admiration, the supposedly upbeat side, was also linked to a stronger collective prevention focus, which in turn was tied to lower proactivity. So admiration appeared to work in two opposing directions at once: encouraging an opportunity-seeking mindset that lifted initiative, while also feeding a caution-and-vigilance mindset that suppressed it.
The authors offer a tentative interpretation. They suggest that even self-promoting narcissism rests on a fragile need for praise. When attention or admiration feels uncertain, an admiration-oriented leader may shift toward defensive behavior, sending mixed signals that some teams read as a cue to be careful. They also raise the possibility that very high levels of admiration may tip the balance toward self-protective dynamics, though they note their study did not directly test such nonlinear patterns and flag this as a question for future work.
What it might mean for organizations
The researchers suggest that companies thinking about leadership selection and development could benefit from distinguishing between the two facets rather than treating “narcissism” as a single quality. Where initiative and innovation matter, they argue, admiration-based tendencies are more likely than rivalry-based ones to cultivate a forward-looking team climate. They caution, though, against picking leaders purely on admiration, given its potential to also trigger caution. They add that rivalry-oriented leaders are not necessarily ineffective and might fit roles where rule-following and stability are valued.
A few limits are worth keeping in mind. The leaders rated their own narcissism, which the authors acknowledge may understate its influence, and proactivity was rated by those same leaders. The design tracks associations over two time points rather than proving cause and effect, and the sample of 100 teams is modest, which the researchers say may have limited their ability to detect some effects. Several statistical measures sat at the lower end of accepted ranges, a point they discuss openly.
Still, the study points toward a reframing the authors press for: the useful question may not be whether a narcissistic leader is good or bad for a team, but which side of their narcissism is operating, and whether the team is the kind that takes its cues from the person in charge.
