Productive Narcissist : The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership

by MacCoby, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780767910231
• ISBN10: 0767910230
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Broadway

Summary

"The Productive Narcissist" provides a new understanding of the misunderstood concept of narcissism, presenting author Maccoby's theory of the "productive narcissist, " the kind of visionary leader who dominates the business landscape.

Author Biography

<p>MICHAEL MACCOBY, PH.D., is president of the Maccoby Group and director of the Project on Technology, Work, and Character, a nonprofit research center. A psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and consultant, Dr. Maccoby has advised leaders at numerous corporations, from AT&T to Volvo, as well as at institutions such as the World Bank. From 1970 to 1990, he led a research program on leadership and work at <br>Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of the bestseller <i>The Gamesman</i> and author or coauthor of seven other books, most recently <i>Why Work? Motivating the New Workforce</i>. He lives in Washington, D.C.</p>

Table of Contents

Preface: What Went Wrong?	xiii
Introduction: The ``Change the World'' Personality	1	(17)
Recognizing Personality Types	18	(17)
Patterns of Personality	35	(46)
The Productive Narcissist	81	(65)
Strategic Intelligence	146	(55)
Working with a Productive Narcissist	201	(28)
The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership	229	(23)
Appendix: Interpreting the Questionnaire Results	252	(13)
Notes	265	(23)
Index	288

Excerpts

RECOGNIZING PERSONALITY TYPES
Let's start out with a question I have asked hundreds of people at work: Can you describe your personality? If you're like most people, you don't have a ready answer. You may cite temperament traits such as "upbeat," "reserved," and "outgoing," or behavioral traits such as "dependable," "caring," and "hardworking." Some people focus on a key part of who they are, like "I play to win" or "I never give up." You may type yourself according to a work role--engineer, designer, manager--or a lifestyle label--parent, spouse, single. Very few people think of themselves as having a personality type that encompasses how they habitually meet the challenges of work and social relationships, the deep-rooted way they resolve the human needs to survive and prosper physically and emotionally, to make life satisfying and meaningful.

Imagine that you work in a small, successful technology company. You report to a manager who is known throughout the office as the "numbers guy." He sets the budget for your department, keeps an eye on the bottom line, and runs the office infrastructure. If you have a proposal for a new initiative, you know you won't get anywhere with him unless you've done your financial homework--worked up a spreadsheet or a detailed profit-and-loss report. How do you know this? Because you've seen how he reacts whenever he's approached without the financials in place; he can be rude, dismissive, even blow up at anyone who ignores his need for facts and figures. You and your colleagues like to complain about him, thinking that his obsession with the numbers gets in the way of more creative or spontaneous ideas. Nevertheless, you take his concerns into account whenever he pops into your office to ask a quick question, or when you need something from him, or whenever you're called upon by him to make a snap decision at a staff meeting. There's a pattern to his behavior, a typical, habitual response that you and your colleagues have noticed over time. He's not just playing a role; you think he's expressing his personality. You may even have a name for his behavior, calling him "anal," or a "little picture" person, behind his back.
You are already engaged in personality typing; in fact, you use these "typing" skills all the time, without even being aware of them. You may not have a manager or colleague who is exactly like this "numbers man" (although many people do), but surely you have a boss, coworker, or colleague whose behavior you can predict with a degree of accuracy. You have a good idea of what certain people will do in any given situation, how some of your colleagues will react to the stress of a group meeting, the demands of a deadline, or a particularly hard-driving boss. You might say about one of your coworkers, "She would never disagree with our boss," meaning that, in your experience, it's not in her nature; you've never seen her do it, and you can't imagine her acting differently. You notice the little smile of pleasure she shows when the boss nods approvingly at her positive statement--or how she turns off when a colleague looks for support to challenge the boss. Even if you can't come up with a label for her behavior, you've done some mental accounting of her personality, and this unconscious typing plays a part in all of your encounters with her.

Each and every day, we are confronted with a flood of people whose personality quirks and qualities baffle and intrigue us, challenging our own ability to "deal" with them, to decide, in a moment, how to act and react in a variety of settings--at home, in school, on the job, and even on the street. We intuitively recognize that there are different personality types, but there is a much better way of looking at people, a deeper and more precise understanding of personality type that can make you more effective in handling all of your relationships, especially in your career. This book is the result of my own endeavors to make sense of personality type, to provide diagnostic and conceptual tools for recognizing and understanding the different types. This "typing" is not a mere intellectual pursuit or parlor game to be played for fun, nor is it meant to be reductive; I believe that a better way of seeing personality can have a profound effect on our view of human nature and the way we interact with people. The example I opened with was meant to show just how much we use this information to bring order and sense to the profusion of personalities we encounter on a daily basis.

Since information about type influences your own behavior, it can only be to your benefit to have a greater understanding of personality type when managing your relationships. The ability to recognize personality type can be learned, and so can applying these insights to your career. When people come to me for coaching, they usually ask: What should I do? What steps should I take to be more successful? I never give advice without first determining an individualÕs personality type, then exploring the qualities of that type; once a client has a better grasp of his or her own type, we can strategize together. There is no one-size-fits-all career advice. It depends on personality type. Before you can fully understand your own potentialities and shortcomings, how they can work in concert with the personalities of others, and how you can become more productive, you need to define and understand your own personality.

An example from my own work makes clear that an understanding of personality type can have dramatic and lasting effects on your work life. I've been working for the last year with a businesswoman--the Professional Woman--and recently asked her to describe the effect that fresh insight into personality has had on her career. She immediately said that it had changed "everything," that she now sees personality type in everyone, including herself, and that this rush of readily usable data had sharpened her judgment and impacted how she handles a multitude of situations. She told me one particular story about her partner, a difficult and self-centered manager, who was arguing with one of her colleagues. After a few strained exchanges, the boss shouted in frustration, "Why can't you be more like the Professional Woman and just ignore what I say" The Professional Woman used to be the one who had a contentious relationship with her partner, always sparring with him over the right way to handle the business. She used to spend a lot of time trying to change her partnerÕs personality, to fight it, always hoping he would conform to her expectations. No longer: She has become the office model of how to deal with the boss and his personality. This important shift in office dynamics didnÕt come about through self-help books or psychotherapy (although she had tried those in the past); it was a result of learning more about her own type and that of her partner, and applying some of the lessons of typing to her day-to-day encounters. Only in the last year has she figured out, with a better knowledge of personality, that it is in her strategic interest to ignore a lot of what her partner says in the moment and phrase her own ideas and concerns in a way that allows him to respond positively. Knowledge of personality has allowed her to be a much better partner, a collaborator in the true sense of the word.

This is the kind of result I've seen in most of the people I've counseled. A psychoanalytic understanding of personality type brings something that was only dimly seen into sharp focus. Many of my clients have moments of "aha," when they recognize a pattern or dynamic. Then they don't have to be told how to react to or deal with people; it becomes obvious. I'm confident about the usefulness and importance of personality types because I have seen case after case when a know-it-all CEO starts to listen, when a needy and dependent human resource manager starts to stand up for himself, when a consultant who always checks the way the wind is blowing challenges the client--when certain personalities take the best of what their type has to offer and become more productive. These are the moments when a client realizes that he can change more than his behavior--that his new knowledge about personality can change his entire way of dealing with life.

When I began my psychoanalytic career in 1961, I was a skeptic about personality type, even with my academic background in Freudian psychology. It was true that I could spot temperamental differences, how some people could be called outgoing and others shy, or how typical pathologies, such as obsessive worrying, were woven into the fabric of certain people's character. But I thought that "typing" people, breaking the seemingly limitless personalities into rigid and narrowly defined categories, stripped human beings of their individuality, took away the qualities that made them irreducibly, ineffably, them. It wasn't until I worked with the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, whose books Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself dealt with personality types, that I began to challenge my own thinking. Fromm and I had long discussions about personality types--Fromm speaking in favor of them, I against. No matter how much he tried to persuade me of the importance of personality type, I remained unconvinced, unwilling to see personality types as anything but robotic categories that deprived people of the freedom to choose who and what they wanted to be. While late-night conversations and theorizing didn't sway me, my fieldwork, the systematic interviews that I helped conduct with 850 people in a Mexican village, did. Fromm sent me out with a questionnaire that asked people what they most liked and disliked about their work, their concept of love, how they thought a father and a mother should experience love, the people they most admired and why. I also asked them to describe their dreams, their children, and what they thought about disobedience or stealing. I spent about two hours with each person, and once the people believed I was really interested in understanding them, they opened up. Most of them had never considered these questions, but once they did, they started to learn about themselves and their values. It was only against the background of the extensive interviews that I saw distinct patterns of behavior emerge, take shape. I also observed how children were raised and began to understand why different types develop early in a childÕs life. It took observing, questioning, and talking to many people who lived and worked and grew up in almost exactly the same environment for me to see that different types continually, habitually react in similar ways, especially to the challenges of work and social relationships. I realized that my old way of thinking was akin to calling every single color simply "color," rather than recognizing the distinctive hues of blue, red, and yellow. The comparison to color is not chosen lightly, because while people, like colors, are often a mix of different types, one usually predominates.

In my consulting work, I've found that the best way to illustrate to clients that personality type actually exists is for them to determine their own personality types with the questionnaire on page 26. I've used this questionnaire with executives to begin a conversation about how personality plays out in the workplace and influences leadership. Toward the same end, I encourage you to complete the questionnaire to determine your own type. To get the most out of this questionnaire, try to put aside your ideas about the categories or behaviors that you usually label successful or good or desirable. Think carefully about each question, and respond in a way that reflects how you, not some idealized version of you, actually behave. This is by no means easy. As a psychoanalyst, I'm a participant in people's struggle to see themselves as they really are. Those who are better equipped usually have spent some time and work on self-reflection and honesty, and the questionnaire is meant to aid that process. The description of personality types that I present later in the book will allow you to interpret the results.
That said, it's still hard to see yourself as others do. Even if you're as honest as possible, your coworkers or colleagues might have other ideas about you. The way to get around this is to complete the questionnaire first, then ask a colleague or friend whom you trust to complete it "for you"--hat is, to answer the questions as they see you. You can then compare the results and see exactly where you may be lacking in self-knowledge, which will help you to arrive at an honest appraisal of your behavior and its strong and weak points. People who do this are often surprised by the results, motivated to learn more about themselves, and interested in how they can become more productive. Helping people to understand themselves and become more productive has been my professional purpose throughout my career: working as a child therapist in Boston, coaching teenage boys in a Mexican village, practicing as a psychoanalyst in Mexico City and Washington, D.C., and finally working with all levels within organizations, from factory workers and telephone operators to middle managers and CEOs. In every case, the people who were open to seeing themselves clearly, including their defects, were best able to free themselves from their hard-wired past and develop and grow into the people they wanted to be, to determine their future. A goal of this book is to facilitate your quest for self-knowledge as well as your understanding of the people you work with.

A note on the methodology: The questionnaire breaks personality or character into four types that I've adapted from the work of Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm. The questions are based on hundreds of interviews I've conducted with managers in more than twenty countries, particularly in my work with Hewlett-Packard, IBM, AT&T, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), and Volvo, as well as professional managers in health care, the federal government, and local law enforcement. The evaluation of the responses is in the appendix, and more complete descriptions of each type are laid out in the next chapter.

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Excerpted from The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership by Michael Maccoby
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.