Ever encountered someone at work who always seems to be miraculously falling forward? Someone whose name curiously appears only on the front of good news reports, promotion lists and on the awards stage, despite bad financial results, toxic team politics or talent turnover on their watch? Charming, celebrated and held up by the company as a model leader even though the majority of their team silently loathes them?

Up close and personal, you’ll likely discover their outer charm and persona of corporate servitude is simply performative. Once they are no longer in the company of those they seek to impress, they switch, becoming dismissive, manipulative, intimidating and devaluing towards those who work for them. Stealing their ideas, taking praise for others’ work, sabotaging projects that threaten to expose or undermine them, playing rotating favourites among the team and even blame-shifting when there is unwelcome news in their division. Does any of this sound eerily familiar?

Welcome to the murky world of the narcissistic boss. Interestingly, while narcissistic personality disorder only affects between 0.5% and 5% of the population (diagnosis criteria include a lack of empathy and being preoccupied with fantasies of success and power), it’s thought to be higher among senior executives in the workplace. A seminal book in this arena is Snakes In Suits. First published by industrial psychologist Paul Babiak and criminal psychologist Robert D Hare in 2006, it perfectly described the dark sides of a business leader – with traits leaning heavily towards what we would now identify in 2024 as narcissism (and at times psychopathy).

How to tell if your boss is a narcissist (and deal with it without getting fired), according to a psychotherapist