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...
by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
How do you work for a narcissistic boss as a senior executive? Avoid the two instinctive strategies, public confrontation and silent endurance, because the first triggers retaliation and the second licenses escalation. What works is calm, boundaried usefulness:...
by Arvid Buit | Jul 30, 2026 | Leadership Blog
What should a board do about a narcissistic CEO? Diagnose the phase before the person, gather stakeholder reality independently of the CEO’s narration, act while results are still good, and choose deliberately between three options: govern the pattern, develop it...
