The Financial Times, Monday January 24, 2000

Life / Careers
CEOs: Bringing the egos back down to earth
The way to cure the narcissism of the super-executive is not
psychoanalysis but good, old-fashioned common sense.

...What do CEO superstars like Jack Welch, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and
Andy Grove need? According to the latest Harvard Business Review, the answer is
quite simple: they need to work through their rage, their alienation and grandiosity.
They, and the rest of their kind, need to go into analysis.

...In a long article called Narcissistic Leaders, Michael Macoby (who is described as
an anthropologist, psychoanalyst and management consultant) tells us that the world's
most successful business leaders have classic narcissistic personality types. This has its
advantages: these people tend to have great vision, drive and charisma. It also has its
disadvantages: they can be bad-tempered, demanding and will not listen.

...You do not need to be an anthropologist, a psychoanalyst or a management
consultant to recognise that some of our corporate superstars are somewhat narcissistic.
Nevertheless, it is good to have it spelt out in an organ like the HBR, which usually
peddles the fashionable but ludicrous view that today's best leaders are great mentors
and team players.

...Mr Macoby performs a further service by telling us how to work with these bosses.
You must empathise with them but never expect them to return the favour. You must

supply them with ideas on the understanding that they will always take the credit. You
must be on call at all hours. And if the job doesn't seem worth the candle, don't try to
change anything: quit.

...All of this is admirably sensible. Where Mr Macoby falls down badly is in suggesting
that these leaders might benefit from analysis. It may be true that most of our corporate
heroes have precious little self-knowledge. It may also be true (although I don't believe
it for a moment) that if they went into analysis they might come out knowing themselves
a bit better. But even if that were the case, I am certain analysis would make them

worse leaders.

...If I were a shareholder in General Electric, Amazon.com, Apple or any other
company with a strong boss, and heard that he was traipsing off three times a week for
a spot of analysis, I would sell my shares at the double. What makes these people
great leaders is their lopsidedness, blinkeredness, and lack of balance.

...What narcissistic leaders need is not a good rummage around in their psyches.
Instead, all of them could benefit from a few powerfully delivered home truths. They

need someone they can respect to tell them the odd thing, every now and then, and go

on saying it until it sinks in.

...In the early 1980s I worked in a foreign exchange dealing room in the City. I was
just out of university. I looked about 15, had a posh voice and was the object of great
mirth. Every day a gang of miserable little oiks who daily made and lost large fortunes
buying and selling pounds and D-marks would ridicule my clothes and my accent.
They'd laugh at how I blushed, how I couldn't hold my drink.

...Sometimes I ignored it; sometimes I laughed along. Sometimes I felt I was winning,
sometimes I cried in the loo. But even at my lowest I never questioned it: they were
barrow boys, I didn't belong, so eventually I quit. The same treatment and worse was
handed out to others who didn't fit the loutish mould.

...You might think that nearly 20 years on all this would have changed. Yet last week
Kay Swinburne told an industrial tribunal about the "juvenile and mean" culture at
Deutsche Bank and how she had been accused of sleeping with a client. Evidently
things have not changed one jot.

...Indeed, the City has distinguished itself as a last bastion of sexism and yobbishness.
Some of these jobs offer a corrosive mixture of high pressure, high bonus and high
burn-out. The result is heavy drinking and loutish behaviour all round.

...It need not be like this. In the early 1980s, I spent a couple of months working in a
dealing room for the same bank on Wall Street. The traders were under just as much
pressure and earned even more. There were plenty of women there, none of whom
appeared to be the butt of endless vulgar jokes.

...Britain is the unchallenged world leader in oiks and oikish behaviour. Just as they
gravitate towards football matches, so too do they gravitate towards certain kinds of
financial sector jobs. The UK response is for more City institutions to sign up to
worthy initiatives like Opportunity Now. Maybe things are about to change. I'm not
holding my breath.

To contact Lucy Kellaway by email, click on lucy.kellaway@ft.com

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