Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

I get the attempt to make these arguments, but on the face and common sense of it, remote work promotes narcissistic behavior far more than some CEO does. The CEO wants the company to succeed.

Re: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

#6

Post by jdw64 » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

What I'm feeling is that this narcissistic personality might actually be a signal that society rewards. I saw a news report recently saying that narcissistic traits are often found in successful CEOs.

In my view, maybe society is designed in a way that makes it hard for people without narcissism to succeed. It's like bad money driving out good.

Most successful VC leaders in the US are generally considered to have narcissistic traits. Why is that? VCs are inherently dealing with uncertainty in their investments. Grandiose delusions and absolute conviction get packaged as 'vision' and 'confidence.' Elon Musk's space data center project might look physically implausible, but some famous VCs see it as vision.

Narcissistic leadership is an extreme high-risk, high-return play. They ignore others' advice and bet on their own intuition. If they succeed, it's called innovation (Tesla, Apple). If they fail, it becomes WeWork. We only ever see the narcissists who won, but on the flip side, that's exactly what society rewards as a signal.

Society can't measure actual ability directly. So it looks for proxy signals. But vision, grandiosity, self-promotion, and actual performance are hard to distinguish. In a mass market, someone who speaks loudly gets famous before someone who quietly does good work.

Narcissism is advantageous in this selection stage. People say the preliminaries don't matter, only the finals do. But without the preliminaries, there's no finals, and in the preliminaries, narcissism is almost always advantageous.

Summarizing the papers I've read, narcissistic leaders tend to resist pushback because face-to-face environments where their power and status can be checked are reduced over time. And our society has built a system that rewards exactly that.

So rationally, we all know that this is wrong, that we should respect others, and that we should cut down our own egos. But the capitalist system seems to run in the exact opposite direction.

Re: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

#7

Post by bibimsz » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #5

I get the attempt to make these arguments, but on the face and common sense of it, remote work promotes narcissistic behavior far more than some CEO does. The CEO wants the company to succeed.

found the CEO

Re: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

#8

Post by xchip » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #5

I get the attempt to make these arguments, but on the face and common sense of it, remote work promotes narcissistic behavior far more than some CEO does. The CEO wants the company to succeed.

Citation needed

Re: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

#9

Post by forshaper » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 8:27 PM UTC

jdw64 wrote: post #6

What I'm feeling is that this narcissistic personality might actually be a signal that society rewards. I saw a news report recently saying that narcissistic traits are often found in successful CEOs. In my view, maybe society is designed in a way that makes it hard for people without narcissism to succeed. It's like bad money driving out good. Most successful VC leaders in the US are generally considered to have nar…

At scale, a clear identity is needed to get people to give you what it takes to pay the bills. An identity that is continuously refined becomes clearer. The act of refinement of the identity may then create an attachment to the identity, like an IKEA effect. Any protections of the identity also serve to make the identity clearer to others.

Re: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work

#10

Post by 9x39 » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #5

I get the attempt to make these arguments, but on the face and common sense of it, remote work promotes narcissistic behavior far more than some CEO does. The CEO wants the company to succeed.

I wasn't able to find anything to either support or refute what you said.

On one hand, there's a poll that said 58% of respondents admit to ghostwork:

https://www.resume-now.com/job-resources/careers/ghostworkin...

But how many people sit at a desk or office idly to keep up appearances? That's so common its a trope.

Gallup has some interesting polls, they highlight manager engagement as the #1 link to employee engagement:

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-...

and

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/697904/state-of-the-global-...

Expectations on some remote work remain stable since 2023:

https://www.gallup.com/401384/indicator-hybrid-work.aspx

My speculation and experience at what's going on between the cracks since we're just talking:

-Leadership skills and leadership positions are woefully not 1:1 (lot of bad leaders out there)

-Leaders have to work a bit harder to make sure hybrid works well, whereas all onsite or all remote tend to naturally keep things more in sync with "one way to do things", this goes poorly with empty suits in leadership roles

-Enough people want better work-life that they dig in and treat remote work as birthright, this can drive anecdotes you see in the CEO-level rags when they clash with meh or worse leaders

-Employee perks like remote work don't always = ROI or better company outcomes, and vice versa