Recognising a narcissist manager

There are some CEO or manager narcissistic behaviours identified in research (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a). Collectively these behaviours might identify a particular CE or manager as possibly being a narcissist. 

It can be helpful to know what these behaviours are so that we can identify potentially toxic situations early. "Knowing" allows us take control over our own destinies and make the choice about when to move on from a role which is in danger of becoming toxic... or to avoid stepping into what is a potentially poor situation in the first place. Forewarned is forearmed.

The six items are (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a):

1. Praise. "The need for praise makes narcissistic CEOs more likely to take actions that lead the media to make them celebrities". This type of media-hungry CEO will play to the crowd: "violating conventions" (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a), look in the mirror when successful, through the window at failure (Collins, 2001). 
2. High-status people. "The need for praise makes narcissistic CEOs more likely to include larger proportions of high-status" staff (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a) in their teams. We are surrounded by high-flyers who make us feel special by association. So lots of stars (and see point 4 for the other side of this one)
3. Manipulation. "The need for praise and the presence of more high-status [staff] make narcissistic CEOs more likely to manipulate [their people] in ways that results in less [...] monitoring" (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a). We get left alone to do our work, without oversight; providing we do as we are told (see the next point)
4. Domination. "The need to dominate makes narcissistic CEOs likely to have more lower-status, younger, and less experienced" staff (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a). Then we can't argue with them. We more than likely lack the experience in dealing with this personality type. So.... lots of question marks to balance out the stars. 
5. Rewards and protection. "The needs for praise and domination make narcissistic CEOs more likely to give outsized rewards and protect loyal management team members who flatter the CEOs and defend them after poor firm performance" (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a). We get the big bucks working for these people, and they will protect us in order to prevent secrets from being spilled... until we fall from favour and then we get thrown to the wolves. Ouch.
6. Short (or long) tenure. "The need to dominate leads narcissistic CEOs’ [staff] to have either very brief or very long tenures with the organization" (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2022a). We either cope with this type of person and stay for ages because the roller-coaster we are on fills us with a continuous adrenalin high; or we leave fast because we can't cope with the roller-coaster. There is no mid-term.

What immediately springs to mind is the spread: stars versus question marks. Short versus long. Domination versus lack of boundaries.

This is a very interesting set of lenses for viewing our managers and CEOs through! 

Sam

References:

Chatterjee, A., & Pollock, T. G. (2022a). Six Things to Expect from Narcissistic CEOs. Academy of Management Insights Summary. https://journals.aom.org/doi/pdf/10.5465/amr.2015.0224.summary?download=true

Chatterjee, A., & Pollock, T. G. (2022b). Six Things to Expect from Narcissistic CEOs [infographic]. Academy of Management Insights. https://journals.aom.org/cms/10.5465/amr.2015.0224.summary/asset/images/medium/six_things_to_expect_from_narcissistic_ceos_infographic.png

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. HarperCollins Publishers.

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LinkedIn group managers

For those of us who are still involved with LinkedIn groups as administrators or 'managers', removing administrators or managers is easy: we simply go into the "Manage Group" button on the top left-hand side of our screen, then go to the Admin tab (also on the left-hand side, and click the menu button at the right-hand end of each administrator's details, and select "Remove Manager Permissions" (see the accompanying image for details).

However, discovering how to add new administrators or managers is not quite as intuitive. What we have to do is to go to the list of members, ie, the members tab in the management view, search for the member we want to add, then at the end of the prospective administrator details, select "Make Manager".

If we go back to the Admin tab, we should then see that person in the updated list of managers.

However, if we are a manager, and want to change the group owner, we can't. Only the group owner can reassign the ownership of the group.


Sam

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Newsletter Issue 210, December 2011

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 210, December 2011

Hi guys,

Are you having trouble getting the most out of your team? Perhaps you need to consider Five Ways to Transform Managers Into Coaches below.

Excel's Convert Function   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Five Ways to Transform Managers Into Coaches

Mike Noble posted this article on the American Management Assocation's website in October, 2011.

If a manager wants to be a leader, he must develop the ability to coach others. It is core skill required of every successful manager in the 21st century. The days of command and control leadership as a standard way of managing people are long gone. Coaching and collaboration have taken over as the most effective way for managers to lead. If managers do not become skilled at coaching their employees, it is unlikely that they will be able to achieve sustainable long-term positive results for themselves or their organizations.

Coaching requires both skill and time; but, before one applies either of these, managers should understand what coaching is and why it is important. In its simplest form, coaching is the act of helping others to perform better. Sometimes it is focused on helping to correct poor performance or improve existing skills. At other times, it’s targeted at developing entirely new skills. Whichever the case, it is important because good coaching by managers will accelerate the development of employees and lift their organizations to higher levels of achievement. So, why don’t all managers coach? Most likely due to one of three major reasons: (1) they don’t understand the value or importance of coaching; (2) they don’t possess the skills to coach others; or (3) even if they understand the importance and have the skills, they don’t have the time.

To overcome these barriers and transform your managers into coaches there are five things that you can do to foster change.

1. Build the personal case for coaching. You can’t force coaching responsibilities on managers who don’t see its relevance. While most managers have a strong sense of loyalty to their organization that alone may not be enough to motivate them to develop their coaching skills. There is still an element WIIFM (what’s in it for me) that must be addressed in building the case with most managers. When you point out the fact that the strongest leaders and most successful executives in their organization and/or discipline are also excellent coaches (this is almost always the case), they will be more inclined to seize the opportunity to learn how to become an effective coach. Once the managers understand that they can get more done and achieve stronger results through the efforts of others, they will want to learn how coaching, not command-and-control, will enable them to better leverage the talents of their employees. Whether they are just trying to do a better job for their employer or seeking to promote their own careers, managers will embrace coaching as an effective means to a mutually beneficial result.
2. Establish some firm expectations. Making it clear that coaching is a primary responsibility of each manager in your organization is an essential prerequisite to creating a coaching organization. If you don’t establish firm expectations around coaching, you are unlikely to get the results you want. Coaching should be a key element in your organization’s culture and part of every manager’s job description. Coaching requires skill and time. Enabling managers the opportunity to develop the skills and allocating the time for them to both learn and apply their skills should be incorporated into every organization’s operating model. It should be a topic of discussion at every performance management evaluation and highlighted when managers are promoted or assigned to new roles.
3. Teach coaching skills and put them to practice. Coaching does not necessarily come naturally to most managers. In fact, before they become managers, employees are generally rewarded for their individual skills and their ability to get tasks done on their own or in small teams. So, the appointment to a manager role can represent a significant and sometimes difficult shift in both what the manager does and how he allocates his time. Core coaching skills such as listening, questioning, observing, building rapport, constructive analysis and feedback, empathy, supportive encouragement and holding others accountable are all skills that can be enhanced or taught in a variety of formats. Whether it is in workshops, mentoring relationships or simply modeling those who are strong coaches, managers can improve their knowledge and understanding of coaching skills. But they need to be able to put the skills to use in real-time situations. This means allocating the time to practice these skills when coachable moments occur. If also means creating coachable moments or situations. When managers delegate tasks or responsibilities to direct reports, they create a coaching opportunities by default. Delegation is a powerful management tool and a powerful vehicle for practicing and developing one’s coaching skills.
4. Give a manager a coach. There is no more effective means for learning than through hands-on experience. Therefore, if you want to transform a manager into a coach, it’s a good idea to give them the opportunity to experience coaching first hand. Having a manager coached by another executive in your organization will accomplish two things. It will enable the manager to experience the benefits of coaching and become more committed to coaching as a method for developing others. It will also provide a model of how to provide coaching for others. If you don’t have skilled coaches within your organization, you should consider hiring third-party external coaches to work with your key managers.
5. Reward the best coaches with the best jobs. This should not be a stretch. The managers who demonstrate the strongest coaching skills are likely to be the strongest performers. As such, they should be candidates for the most important manager and executive roles in the organization. Placing these managers in the most important roles and crediting these assignments, at least in part, to their excellent coaching skills will send a strong message to the rest of the organization that coaching is a critical skill for all managers

These are just five of the steps you can take to accelerate the transformation of managers into coaches and to turn your organization into a coaching organization. The benefits will accrue to both the individual managers in terms of their own career advancement and to the overall organization in terms of the enhanced collaboration and stronger performance. In many organizations the evidence is compelling. Many have discovered that their strongest managers are also their strongest coaches. In fact, the V. P. of Global Executive Development, Tanya Clemens, has stated that, “We have done lots of research … and we have found that the leaders who have the best coaching skills have better business results.” When managers become aware of these types of outcomes, they will be motivated to begin their own transformation.

Reference:

• Noble, Mike (Oct 2011). Five Ways to Transform Managers Into Coaches. USA: AMA. Retrieved 2 November 2011 from http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/Five-Ways-to-Transform-Managers-Into-Coaches.aspx?pcode=XA9T&CMP=NLC-LeadersEdge&wm_tag=email&spMailingID=3719297&spUserID=MjQzMTUxNzEzMDgS1&spJobID=116052285&spReportId=MTE2MDUyMjg1S0
• About the Author(s) Mike Noble is a Managing Partner at Camden Consulting Group, a consulting firm that provides focused, practical, customized and integrated human capital management, leadership development, executive coaching and training services to organizations and their employees. Noble oversees all of the firm's strategic business development activities and client engagements. For more information, visit: www.camdenconsulting.com.

Excel's Convert Function

You can converting measurements from one metric to imperial, or from the format to decimal in Excel 2007, by using the CONVERT function.

So keying "CONVERT()" and specifying your data three sets lets you change a measurement using in-built conversion factors from one scale to another. Such as miles to kilometres; Fahrenheit to Celsius; cups to millilitres, hours to minutes.

The basic format is this: CONVERT(Number, "From_unit", "To_unit"). So =CONVERT(52, "ft", "meter"), which returns 15.85m. The terms below "Inbuilt" means that as you type the term in, Excel will autocomplete for you. Multipliers won't.

Following is a list of the measurement term abbreviations, which are case sensitive:

• Angstrom "ang" Inbuilt
• Foot "ft" Inbuilt
• Inch "in" Inbuilt
• Meter "m" Inbuilt
• Statute mile "mi" Inbuilt
• Nautical mile "Nmi" Inbuilt
• Pica "pica" Inbuilt
• Yard "yd" Inbuilt
• Kilometre "km" Multiplier
• Millimetre "mm" Multiplier
• Centimetre "cm" Multiplier

 

In the next newsletter, I will give you weights :-)

 

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:

• 5GL, Fifth Generation Programming Language. Problem-solving using programme constraints, rather than a programmer's algorithm. Some declarative languages and most constraint-based and logic programming are 5GL.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

In this newsletter, we look at all you can do in Excel with Page commands:

• Excel "Display next screen to the right while working in a worksheet or workbook" Alt & Page Down
• Excel "Display previous screen to the left while working in a worksheet or workbook" Alt & Page Up
• Excel "Extend the selection down one screen" Shift & Page Down
• Excel "Extend the selection up one screen" Shift & Page Up
• Excel "Move by one page when zoomed out (in Print Preview)" Page Up Or Page Down
• Excel "Move up one screen or move to the same field 10 records back" Page Up
• Excel "Move down one screen or move to the same field 10 records forward" Page Down
• Excel "Move to a new record or next sheet in the workbook or select the next sheet in the workbook, until the chart sheet you want is selected or switch to the next tab in a dialog box or select the next or previous toolbar" Ctrl & Page Down
• Excel "Move to the first record or move to the previous sheet in the workbook or select the previous sheet in the workbook, until the chart sheet you want is selected or switch to the previous tab in a dialog box" Ctrl & Page Up
• Excel "Preserve your selection while you scroll through the worksheet" Scroll Lock & Page Up Or Page Down
• Excel "Select the current and next sheet in the workbook " Ctrl & Shift & Page Down
• Excel "Select the current and previous sheet in the workbook " Ctrl & Shift & Page Up

Hot Linx

If you ever get confused about when to use either imply or infer, check out Oxford Dictionary's article on the differences at http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/10/imply-or-infer/

There is a shortcut to creating a PowerPoint to support a presentation straight from a Word document. Check out TechRepublic's "how to" at http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/msoffice/use-styles-for-quick-word-to-powerpoint-exchange/6383?tag=nl.e056

The US Chronicle reports on an interesting study which appears to say that if you want to earn middle-class wages, you had best have a degree these days. Read on at http://chronicle.com/article/Bachelors-Degree-Is-Still/129784/

Read Mike Garver's take on posting bite-sized lectures online and spending lecture time instead workshopping applications at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/15/professor-tries-improving-lectures-removing-them-class

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

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