Creating solutions
The Holy Longing
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent, because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive, what longs to be burned to death.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Creating Solutions emerges from identification and diagnosis of key issues, generating and developing of possible options, and deciding on the best solutions.
“A recent study aimed to understand narcissistic leaders and who is most likely to follow them. The results revealed a few patterns:
1. If you are someone who is always looking out for others, empathizes with others, and seeks harmony and consensus in your team (known as agreeable followers), you are more likely to be susceptible to following a narcissistic leader.
2. If you are someone who gets anxious and worried easily, or likes to get started on work projects early on to prevent anxiety as a deadline draws closer (known as neurotic followers), you probably prefer engaging with narcissistic leaders.”
Our reflective judgment provides us with the capacity for Creating Solutions.
The agility with which leaders can carry out the tasks associated with creating solutions depends on their reflective judgment - the thought process employed to determine the best solutions for identified problems. And this capacity comes from increasingly becoming aware of the ways in which their own judgment, and that of others, is shaped by non-rational factors, and from challenging themselves to learn to question underlying assumptions and seriously consider a range of diverse viewpoints. As larger-than-life leaders develop, their restlessness to see the big picture and paint a compelling picture with a dramatically different future, is replaced with learning to face their rage, alienation and grandiosity.
Awareness of narcissistic tendencies in roles aids in sharpening reflective judgement.
Narcissistic personalities are often driven by intense needs for power and prestige to assume positions of authority and leadership. Individuals with such characteristics are found rather frequently in top leadership positions. Such a leader finds no need to love anyone else, may be of a masterful nature, absolutely narcissistic, self-confident and independent. Like all personality traits, people range in narcissistic tendencies, and some degree of narcissism is helpful in leadership positions. So-called productive narcissists are “gifted and creative strategists who see the big picture and find meaning in the risky proposition of changing the world and leaving behind a legacy”. While a small dose of narcissism can be of use, the damage of a high level of narcissism is well known.
Working with the tensions between the needs of the self, and the those of the collective, enables us to shape the organization’s identity.
Firms with more narcissistic CEOs take bolder, riskier actions that result in bigger wins or losses, compared to those with less narcissistic ones. In short, such leadership is attractive for the hope it generates, but dangerous for the volatility and risk it carries. While such CEOs produce bold visions, their visions are more personal ambitions than expressions of the greater needs of a collective. And when such leaders see their identity as central to the organisation’s identity, the exploitation of the organisation for personal benefit is the outcome.
