When selecting people for promotion, we need to pay attention to weaknesses as well as pronounced strengths, Prof Furnham added. We should beware of fast-tracking corporate Wunderkinder. Drawing on leadership expert Morgan McCall's work on high flyers, Prof Furnham argued that fast-trackers get promoted for excelling in certain ways, while their faults are deliberately overlooked. But their limitations soon become apparent when they land in jobs that are beyond them.
That is the bad news. So where will we find the leaders we need now and in the future? Surprisingly, perhaps, some argue that narcissistic leaders – who are often blamed for their excessive self-esteem and grandiosity – may have the right mix of qualities for these times, if they can be marshalled effectively.
Writing in the Washington Post a few weeks ago, the anthropologist and psychoanalyst Michael Maccoby stated that “productive narcissists can be charismatic and inspiring”. They are visionary and take risks, he said. They seize upon the uncertainty that characterises a period of unsettling change, and take action. He wrote approvingly of Barack Obama's ambitious attempt to reform US healthcare: “Only a productive narcissist would attempt such profound change”.
The crucial qualifying adjective here, clearly, is “productive”. Narcissists who lack self-knowledge are unrealistic dreamers: emotionally isolated and highly distrustful. Narcissists need good colleagues, and especially a trusted sidekick or deputy – a “productive obsessive”, in Mr Maccoby's words – to allow them to perform at their best. But productive narcissists have perspective, and are able to laugh at themselves.
Joe Gregory, Mr Fuld's deputy, was criticised by some colleagues for reinforcing rather reining in his leader's excesses.
It is a tantalising picture. Great strengths, unchecked, can do us down. But without strong and forceful leaders, businesses and organisations will fail. Get the balance wrong and you are in trouble.
“For companies whose narcissistic leaders recognise their limitations, these will be the best of times,” Mr Maccoby wrote in an earlier Harvard Business Review article in January 2000. “For others, these could turn out to be the worst.”
We had been warned.