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Competitive leader selection and promotion practices promotes the advancement of narcissistic individuals.

Extraordinary high pay and perks for leaders encourages thinking themselves as more deserving than followers.

Focusing on collective leadership and team outcomes and success helps combat leader-centricism.

Public trust in leaders is at an all-time low. Why? Too many prominent, self-serving, narcissistic leaders have eroded public confidence in those at the top. How can there be so many terrible, ego-driven, narcissistic leaders in high-profile positions?

Part of the problem is that human resource (HR) practices can foster and reinforce leader narcissism. A recently published paper (Mitchell, et al., 2026) suggests that HR practices encourage the appointment and advancement of narcissistic individuals, to the detriment of the organization as a whole.

There are 3 common HR practices that reward self-promotion over team and organizational success:

Leader Promotion and Selection Procedures. Hyper-competitive selection practices have the potential to amplify narcissistic tendencies.........

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