Why a lot of grandiose narcissism can be a good thing for leadership effectiveness: Political skill as game changer

Abstract

We tested the productively tempering role of political skill, which is a developed level of social skill and an acquired interpersonal competence, on the relation between leader grandiose narcissism and leadership effectiveness. In a sample of 640 supervisors and 1259 employees, we found that at high levels of leader political skill, both low and high leader grandiose narcissism have beneficial consequences for leadership effectiveness, yielding a U-shaped relation between grandiose narcissism and leadership effectiveness. Individuals high on political skill and grandiose narcissism have the self-control capacity to temper aggressive impulses and simultaneously productively package and present their desire for admiration and adulation in a manner that allows them to gain subordinates' acceptance. Individuals low on grandiose narcissism display high honesty-humility. Supervisors high in political skill and low in grandiose narcissism effectively direct their motive to get along (honesty-humility) to be well-received by subordinates. If leader political skill is low, we found the inverse U-shaped relation between grandiose narcissism and leadership effectiveness previously established in meta-analytic research. Our findings show that higher levels of political skill are helpful for leaders both high and low on grandiose narcissism.