Are You Vain Enough to Get Ahead?

The Wall Street Journal:

You don’t have to be a total narcissist to be a successful executive – but a solid dash of ego can help.

Self-aggrandizing individuals with a need for impact and power are slightly more likely to become leaders than the general population, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and personality testing firm Hogan Assessment Systems. But while a dose of self-confidence is necessary to raise your hand for the top job and steer a big corporation, too much can cause a leader and company to falter.

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It’s helpful to think of narcissism as distributed along a spectrum.  On one end, self-doubt isn’t a useful characteristic in a leader—they can look weak or have trouble making decisions, according to Peter Harms, one of the study’s authors and a management professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. But individuals on the other end don’t take feedback well and can make reckless choices, he says.

Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal