Mirror,Mirror on the Wall
December 14, 2007
CEOs are narcissistic – if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be leaders. Moreover, without that quality, they couldn’t grow their business or provide the organization with the vision it needs. In my experience, CEOs with the best confidant relationships have a healthy dose of narcissism, and their confidants provide positive and negative feedback, they bolster CEOs’ flagging spirits, and they encourage CEOs to achieve balance and creativity.
But some CEOs constantly need to be told wonderful things about themselves. Typically, these leaders are both grandiose and extremely vulnerable to slights, and they often have a hard time hearing bad news or facing harsh realities.They surround themselves with yes-men who are unwilling to tell them the truth; these leaders also tend to have failed marriages, trophy wives, or extramarital affairs with women who feed their egos. Some narcissistic CEOs, such as Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth or Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco, turn their organizations into elaborate monuments to themselves. Unfortunately, these leaders are also prone to selecting confidants who cater to their fragile self-esteem. These are the reflecting confidants.
The reflector intuitively knows how to make a narcissistic CEO feel good. Although all confidants may do this to some extent, reflectors are driven by their own neurotic need to please authority. That’s usually because they’ve grown up with narcissistic parents who demanded that their children mirror them to an inappropriate extent. These kids feel that they exist to take care of their parents, rather than the reverse. For example, children with depressed mothers typically feel responsible for their mothers’happiness. In such an environment, a child’s self- esteem becomes contingent on giving the parents what they want, rather than on developing an autonomous personality.
One confidant told me that the first thing he did each morning with his mother, a former actress, was to scrutinize her face to see if she was having a bad day. If she was, he used to take it as a signal that he needed to find some good news quick. As a confidant, he was equally terrified of angry outbursts on the part of his CEO. Like other reflectors, this confidant was extremely sensitive to the limited range of emotion that a fragile CEO could tolerate, and he twisted himself into knots trying to avoid upsetting
him.
In extreme forms, the CEO–confidant pair ends up creating its own distorted version of reality,what is known in the psychiatric literature as folie à deux – or shared madness. When shared madness develops and other key executives see how much the CEO values the reflector,some may try to become the CEO’s reflectors themselves. This often leads to a polarization of employees: A small group of employees fiercely defends the CEO, while a larger group rebels against the leader and seeks out another senior executive who serves as its unofficial leader and the voice of reality.
Consider what happened at Regal Software, a developer of video gaming technology.As a first-time CEO,Paul Rothberg almost instantly found himself at odds with the company’s talented software developers, who resented his autocratic management style. Rothberg’s unreasonable expectations of R&D eventually created a split between the organization’s research and business arms.As the gulf
widened, Rothberg found himself increasingly butting heads with most of Regal’s employees, and so he began turning for interpersonal advice to Frank Jordan, a former headhunter turned executive coach.
Rothberg had installed Jordan in an office at Regal’s headquarters, where he spent three mornings a week ostensibly to be available to coach all the senior executives. In reality, though, Rothberg was his only client. Rothberg would call Jordan twice a day; he also made frequent visits to his office at Regal. It soon became clear to other employees how much the embattled CEO depended on his new confidant. For his part, Jordan was seduced into believing that nothing was more important for him to do than to keep the CEO happy. He would listen intently to Rothberg’s concerns and then color his own observations to match Rothberg’s. To outsiders, they looked like coconspirators who spent endless hours huddled in conversation. Indeed, Jordan offered Rothberg constant reassurance
that he was doing the right thing, when, in fact, Rothberg was gravely misguided.
Consciously or not,Rothberg and Jordan created a symbiotic relationship in which they relied almost entirely on each other’s perceptions about what was happening at Regal. Rothberg had looked to Jordan to be his eyes and ears, but the more Jordan was drawn into his privileged role, the more unable he was to accurately understand the situation unfolding around him. Unfortunately, Jordan
supplied flawed advice, such as encouraging Rothberg to attend more of his software developers’ creative meetings, which only made him seem even more intrusive and controlling. At the same time, Jordan inadvertently bolstered Rothberg’s fundamentally harsh and rigid person to match Rothberg’s. To outsiders, they looked like coconspirators who spent endless hours huddled in conversation. Indeed, Jordan offered Rothberg constant reassurance that he was doing the right thing, when, in fact,
Rothberg was gravely misguided. Consciously or not,Rothberg and Jordan created a symbiotic
relationship in which they relied almost entirely on each other’s perceptions about what was happening at Regal. Rothberg had looked to Jordan to be his eyes and ears, but the more Jordan was drawn into his privileged role, the more unable he was to accurately understand the situation unfolding around him. Unfortunately, Jordan supplied flawed advice, such as encouraging Rothberg to attend more of his software developers’ creative meetings, which only made him seem even more intrusive and
controlling. At the same time, Jordan inadvertently bolstered Rothberg’s fundamentally harsh and rigid personality by consistently praising the CEO’s judgment rather than offering constructive criticism. A vicious circle ensued, fueling the polarization of employees into Rothberg loyalists or enemies.
Although it isn’t always the case that shared madness between a CEO and his confidant leads to paranoia, these ingrained attitudes of mistrust and negativity are easily magnified under these circumstances.Rothberg’s naïveté, for instance, was not the only cause of Regal’s organizational
tensions. Deeper down, the rift was fueled by companywide worries about the feasibility of Regal’s developing technology. But Rothberg’s misuse of his confidant brought organizational anxieties to a crisis point. Ultimately, as Rothberg’s manipulations and deceptions continued to escalate, senior management felt betrayed, and Rothberg was ousted.For his part, Jordan had squandered his reputation as an independent expert. Lingering suspicions and resentments prevented him from functioning effectively as an outside consultant, and he, too, was eventually forced out.
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