Narcissist Employee in the Workplace: 2023

The term Narcissism is a personality disorder, which is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a sense of ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy.’ The disorder of narcissism is found to be prevalent in highly successful people at different organizational levels contributing to negative organizational culture. Narcissist approach inculcates a sense of entitlement that is responsible for interpersonal exploitation and showing empathy towards others. Narcissist behavior is a result of an employee’s preoccupation with the idea of achieving self- sufficiency in their profession.

The difficult employees are those that are the most temperamental, i.e., they are busy back-biting, criticizing and bullying others. The idea behind the exhibition of such negative traits is the achievement of self-entitlement. Hence, these employees are termed as ‘difficult’ as they are involved in creating incivility at the workplace and are norm violators. The violation of ethical norms and policies in an organization is highly resistant in developing a culture of cooperation and mutual understanding. The difficult employees as per definition are not only limited to mid-management levels but are also seen in leadership positions. The difficult employees at leadership positions are more troublesome as they act as a very strong disruptive force in building a community-culture, thereby lowering the organizational performance. However, regardless of the position of the employee in the management cadre, every difficult employee offers resistance in the achievement of organizational objectives. This resistance offered by the narcissist employee is in the form of creating a barrier in teamwork and elevating stress in the workplace environment.

The growing need of using wide-spread workgroups by contemporary organizations has increased the demand for effective team-building. Therefore, much emphasis is recently being placed on the inculcation of citizenship behavior and positive influences within the organization for successful management of different workgroups. Recent research studies have been specifically targeted to define and control the emotional tone of a workplace to avoid conflict and aggravation of negative personality traits. It is suggested that community-centered organizational models shall be implemented to experience less toxic behavior and healthy organizational culture. It is suggested that the phenomenon of narcissism at the workplace exhibited by leadership and at different levels of hierarchy is a reason of toxic environment and negative organizational performance.
It is revealed that uncensored behavior of an employee at any organizational level and overly demanding bosses can contribute to workplace toxicity. Further, leadership narcissism may lead to increased employee turnover as the employees are treated as financial liabilities, and bosses are prone to throw temper tantrums and exhibit unethical behaviors. Narcissist employees tend to exhibit self-centered behavior and focus more on self-gratification at work. Therefore, such employees in their pursuit of climbing the success ladder may cause bullying and exploitation. This exploitation may reach the level of abuse and violating the rights of other employees.

Hence, the idea of community building in contemporary organizations is a far cry in a negative organizational culture. The concept of community building in an organization refers to the transformation of one’s skills into a cohesive entity manifesting a diversified set of skills. In order to build a community culture, it is important to assemble teams containing mutually supportive individuals and make policies that are fair and unrestricted to improvements.

It is observed that the narcissist behavior of employee leads them to exercise performances that are directed to achieve their hidden motives of achieving self-success. Hence, the consequent unethical actions taken by a narcissist for achieving their selfish motives may cause a negative impact on the performance of the organization. The organization may face increase employee turnover due to unfair and illegitimate workplace climate.