If you’re unlucky enough to work for a narcissist, they’ll expect compliments – and they’d prefer them in person, according to new research that suggests egotistical managers are opposed to home working.
Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania, in the US, set out to investigate why some bosses support remote working while many are firmly against it.
First, they collected records on 259 high-profile bosses from the Fortune 500 list of CEOs and looked for signs of narcissism in their public statements and company files. They compared these with their stance on remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the second part of their research, the University of Pennsylvania team conducted surveys with a further 100 leaders, 359 in all, to better assess their attitudes.
The results were striking. The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism – the tendency to be self-centred and entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves that the leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status – and the more they favoured mandatory office working.
