by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
Why write a novel about a narcissistic CEO? Because a narcissistic leader who would fight any feedback report can still recognise himself in a story. Fiction gets past the armour: there is no messenger to shoot. Wahlberg, my business novel about CEO Dirk Wahlberg, has...
by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
How do you negotiate with a narcissist? By negotiating with the pattern instead of the person you wish were present. Concretely: manage the relationship between the deal and their self-image, because the pattern will pay real money to protect the story; never spend...
by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
Can you screen narcissism out of executive hiring? Not with the tools most organisations use: assessments entertain, references defend, and interviews actively select for the pattern, because interviews reward confident self-presentation, which is the pattern’s native...
by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
How do you tell a narcissistic leader from a strong one? Not by confidence, decisiveness or impatience, which both share. The reliable differences show over time in four places: what happens to people who correct the leader publicly, where credit and blame travel,...
by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
Where does narcissistic leadership come from? From an early deficit in unconditional recognition, what clinical psychologist Martin Appelo calls an ‘oersoep’ (primal soup) problem, compensated by narcissistic inflation, which produces a structural deficit...
by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
Can narcissistic executives be coached? Some can, under three knowable conditions: the executive must privately feel the cost of the pattern, the method must target behaviour rather than biography and measure progress through stakeholders rather than self-report, and...
