Mission vs. Ego: The Dangers of Narcissistic Leadership

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Welcome to the Curiosity Shop. A show from the Fox Media Podcast Network. This episode was filmed live in Austin, Texas, at South by Southwest. On March 15th, let's jump in.

[MUSIC PLAYING] How's it going? OK, y'all want to hear something fun? This is not really a talk. See, you are going to be really disappointed.

This isn't really a talk. We're actually officially announcing a new podcast right now. Yes! Can't believe we're doing a podcast together. I know.

It's great. #same. I'm excited. The excitement is mutual. But I feel like it's a little unfair,

because we're on your home court here in Texas. Let's go. Where are my long horns? Let's go. Not to get competitive.

No, just a win. OK, we have an interesting conversation for you today. We're going to talk about why we are so vulnerable to narcissistic leaders. Wait, I don't follow narcissists, do you?

“No, but I think the collective we, like I think people in general,”

can we can be somewhat vulnerable to it, because when we're scared and uncertain, the traits that ladder up to that type of leadership

can at first blush seem comforting before they turn into catastrophic.

But they can seem, I think, at first blush. So you wrote an op-ed, tell us about your op-ed. I thought it was really interesting. Oh, well, thank you. I have to, I think through whether I agree with everything I wrote

and they're not. But the place I started was, I was thinking about Greek mythology. And we all know the myth of narcissists who falls in love with his own image, and then he withers away. And I was just struck by the fact that

that was what happened in ancient Greece, but in modern America, he ends up, and he sort of lands in the corner office, and maybe occasionally even in the oval office. Every now and then. And there's something wrong with that picture.

And I wanted to try to understand it, and you have been studying this your whole career. Well, I have it. Well, one thing I want to say,

“and this is really important for folks watching or listening”

for those of you in the room. I'm a social worker, and this is where it gets really important to say this out loud. I'm a social worker, Adam's a psychologist. We are not talking about diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.

We're talking about patterns that we've observed in leadership that share some things in common, that very much align with some of the traits that we can see in narcissism. So I want to be really careful about that, because we're not talking--

we're not-- we need to one of us are clinicians. So we're not talking about the clinical disorder. We're talking about a pattern of leadership. When we started throwing around the word, oh, she's such a narcissist. He's a narcissist.

Every podcast was, you know, where you raised by a narcissist,

of vulnerability and what I study, what I saw

or what I still see is those traits are what I would say, are the shame-based fear of being ordinary. So they say it again. I like that. So someone's taking my job here.

Thank you for that. Yeah, Renee, can you say that again? Yeah. That was a really insightful observation. And I want to hear it twice so it lands.

We're taking you everywhere we go out there.

“Do vulnerability lands, I think narcissism is the shame-based fear”

of being ordinary. And what's interesting and scary about that that I want to get into with you is an actually psychoanalytic clinical work. There's a thing called when they write and people theorize around narcissism, the terror of ordinaryness,

a sheer terror of being ordinary. How does that fit? Just for those of you who don't know our work well, we spend 90% of our time in organizations working with sea suites and senior leaders.

So we see a lot of firsthand leadership traits. So how does that fear being ordinary fit for what you see?

Well, first of all, Renee, everyone knows your work well.

So no explain or needed. But to weigh in on your question, I think when you're talking about the shame-based fear of being ordinary, I would say also of appearing ordinary, because it's image not just ego.

And it's not just the fear of being ordinary, it's the fear of appearing ordinary, because it's not just ego, which is the fear of being ordinary, it's image. I don't want other people to think that I'm not saying it.

Yeah, that's huge. I'm going to miss their validation then. And I'm going to miss out on the sense of superiority that I want that I seek through claiming power and seizing status.

So when you describe that, I start thinking about a whole body research and psychology on narcissism as part of the heart of bullying.

“And I think everybody-- how many people were bullied in the audience”

growing up? Yeah. I mean, no one cheers for that by the way. No! You ask other questions people are like, "Whoa, yeah, me!"

How many people are bullied? It gets really quiet. I guess it was. I was. And I remember my mom saying, you know,

they just feel bad about themselves. And they're trying to feel better about themselves by putting you down. And I got to college. I started studying psychology.

I dove into some of the research on that. And I'm sorry, mom, but you were wrong. It turns out that narcissists do not suffer from low self-esteem. They suffer from high but unstable self-esteem.

They have an inflated view of how great they are, but it's fragile. It's like a balloon that could puncture at any slide. And I think that that seems really-- that seems so complimentary to the shame-based fear

of being ordinary is like, I have this desire to see myself as great and important and unique. But maybe I know deep down that I'm not and I'm extra sensitive to any signal that calls into question that fragile view of myself.

Discuss, please. Yeah, I'm taking a back because I don't know what mental picture you have in your head. I have several political pictures in my head. I have a full-on fricking Mount Rushmore of narcissistic leadership

in my head. One thing I would say is I wrote this note in preparing for today. While clinicians might ask does this meet the criteria for a narcissistic personality disorder, I think you and I check this out, yes or no?

You and I are saying does this pattern of leadership reliably corrode trust accountability and shared reality inside of a system?

“Like, that's what we're looking for in the leadership world, right?”

So here are the things I was thinking I want to ask you about. So when I think about the leaders that I've worked with are the leadership I've seen, when I think about this kind of narcissistic

trait, the first thing I think about is structural impact.

Trust erosion, the things, the kind of the structures that we can depend on are broken down, even purposefully. And then there's really weird incentives, like the incentives change from goodness to like ego maniacal incentives.

So what do you see, like, what does the research say?

I think that that aligns pretty well with the evidence I've read. So narcissistic leadership seems to have three predictable consequences. One is that leaders put their ego above the mission. And that means people redirect their effort away from how do I

contribute productively and effectively and toward what is going to please the boss? And so you see a lot of brown nosing, a lot of kissing up, also a lot of a backstabbing of people who might threaten my standing with the boss.

“And I think that goes to the second pattern,”

which is narcissists encourage cultural cultures, arriving in shatmen among others who've studied this.

And what they show is basically that narcissists want to do whatever they can

to feel special. And that includes cutting corners. And they end up normalizing that behavior at lower levels of the organization. And then the third piece is they end up really undermining collaboration and cooperation.

And I think that's the trust piece you were talking about. For sure. And it's not to say that there aren't times when narcissists succeed. But I think that they often succeed in spite of their self-love. And ego is not because of it.

Yeah, because when I think about the shame-based fear, how many of us are good in shame? Like zero, like I'm thinking about heartling and heartlings research on and the stone center at Wells Lady did this incredible research on shame

and that how we defend against it. We move toward by people pleasing. We move against by using shame and violence to combat shame. Like we don't make good choices when we're in shame. And so that comes to this relational patterns.

Can I say a question about that? I've always wondered. There's a paper that Rick Begozi published a while back looking at cross-cultural differences in reaction to shame.

And the finding that always stuck out at me was that in the Philippines

sales people perform better after they felt shame. And he was suggesting that if I remember correctly in a collectivistic culture that people were able to harness shame to repair as opposed to fight or flight. And that never sat right with me.

And I wondered if you could explain it or help me make sense of it. Can we ever derive benefits from shame? So from an evolutionary biological perspective, shame worked when you were a danger to a collective society. When you kept making a mistake that put us in danger,

we would just shun her shame you until basically you died

“because you depended on the community of live, right?”

Today it's just too far blunt of an instrument to work because shame is the threat or belief that we're unlovable and unworthy of connection with other people unworthy of belonging. And it moves us into some very-- how many of you--

let me just see, like I showed a hand, how many of you are parents? How many of you had some of your worst parenting moments when you were in your own shame? And you just responded, you acted out. It's like we're not good from that place.

Because one thing is we're not when shame happens, it's such a primitive emotion that it hijacks the limbic system. And it's not like we're in the prefrontal cortex where we can think through rationalize and regulate. We are in fight, flight, and parasipathetically freeze.

So the cross-culture studies on shame are so important. I don't envy any researcher taking that on for a very interesting reason. English is the only language that we know of in the world where there's a singular word for shame.

Really? Yeah, because if you go into French, or you go into any other language, there are multiple words that are very nuanced. And I'll tell you why. We were, how many of you are Spanish-speaking in here,

or speaks Spanish? So when we were translating the curriculum, it took two years, because we had native Spanish speakers from four different countries working on the translation. And they could not agree.

First, they said, they couldn't agree. They were like, oh, no, they didn't. Yeah, no, they're like, they're like, it's the word for sin. They're like, no, no, no, it's, but it ended up being better whensah, which we use for embarrassment,

because the context is different. So if I fall over and I'm all single better whensah. Like, I'm embarrassed. But if I walk down the stairs, and my mom or grandmother, look at me and go, no, 10 in better whensah.

Because I have on a short skirt. That goes right into the shame category.

“Right? And so I think cross-cultural studies”

have shame or difficult because the language is very hard. Okay, life-all moment. Okay, great. So I just, as you were describing the evolutionary perspective,

I just realized what never,

if I remember correctly, they were studying anticipated shame.

“And that was where they found a function that worrying”

that you were going to be unlikable or unlovable with your colleagues was enough to prevent you from making a big mistake. And that's good for that being more adaptive. That's good. Well, that's different. But anybody raised in a faith community that used that to keep people in line

would tell you that that does not work so well. That ends up with a lot of like God scars or whatever kind of scars. I mean, that is shame as a form of social control. I don't think anyone argues about a short-term efficacy in a sales column, which is the research here.

I've been familiar with the research. The long-term result of that is a very different story. So it's like fear in that way. It's like fear in that way. You can shame me into following cultural or community norms,

but the impact of that is lifelong. Support for the show comes from Canva. An idea is just an idea, but actually transforming that idea into a thing. That's where the real work lives. It can be a journey full of pitfalls and banging your head against the wall.

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That's less than the price of a cup of coffee per month. That's hostingor.com/cshop. promo code C-shop for an extra 20% off. Okay, before we go back to narcissism, this is the curiosity shop, so I'm allowed to explore any curiosity and stuff.

Okay, so I read, I read this paper years ago. That argued that we think about emotions wrong, and it's exactly on this point.

“I think most of us assume that emotions are supposed to drive behavior, right?”

So I feel guilt, I repair, I feel gratitude, I show appreciation. The argument was that most emotions don't actually exist to drive action. They exist so that we can learn the consequences of our action, and then anticipate what we need to do differently next time. And I think this was especially for negative emotions.

So the thought was, like, regret isn't supposed to change our behavior today. It's supposed to teach you about the systematic mistake you're making into decisions, so you can learn to avoid that the next five times you're in a similar situation. And it really shift to my thinking a little bit and let me to wonder if most of the way that we deal with emotion in terms of processing, what does this mean for what I do today is actually short sight.

And if we should be asking more of, okay, emotions are teachable moments. Is regret a masterclass in making better decisions?

Is guilt a whole tutorial in learning how to write wrongs or avoid committing them in the first place?

Is embarrassment a cue that I need to be a little bit more attuned to how other people perceive me. And I just be so curious to hear your take on our emotions and disciplatory tools as opposed to immediate action causes.

Damn it!

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that, you know, it's, I think it was an Atlas of the Heart,

Dan Pinkenai, a line on regret as a very useful emotion.

“I think regret is, you know, I always think about what was the movie with Jennifer Aniston?”

And Jason Sudakas, we are the millers. Yeah, and the daughter brings home this guy and he's got a tattoo and it says no regrets and it's misspelled. Jason Sudakas is like, no regrets, he's like no sir, and he's like not one, he goes no sir. Jason Sudakas, this goes, not even a single letter.

And so I don't, I always write that I think regret is a tough but fair teacher.

So I do think in some ways it's retrospective about, I mean, I think regrets a function of empathy. For me, often it's like, wow, I'm going to another quote, I think it was Georgetowners that gave the commencement dress that said the things he regretted most in his life for failures of kindness.

“You know, and so I think I think they can be retrospective. I think they can be predictive in a way like,”

like I always tell you like I have a spidey sense. It's probably a psychology person would probably say strong pattern recognition intuition, but I think they can be reflective, predictive, and just also

in the moment. I like it. Okay, take us back to narcissism. Okay, what about this? This is like how

how narcissism or traits of that can affect relationships. I was very freaked out when I read this in the research. Taking undue credit is related to narcissistic leadership patterns. Do you think that's true? Okay, so when I was studying givers and takers, I was like confronted with the question of, okay, we all would prefer to be surrounded by generous than selfish people, but there must be some value of the selfish people otherwise they wouldn't exist. And so I started

coming through the research to try to figure out, okay, like what a what a givers take and what it's

“takers give. And the only thing that I could find out of that was givers really love to give credit”

and take responsibility and takers are really good at taking credit, but they also give something, blame. The takers, the givers. No, I mean, I think that a huge part of narcissism is credit hogging. Or it's a major consequence of narcissism anyway, because it's part of how you show that you're not ordinary. I think the NBA did on this or are so striking. There's a study where Emily Grihalva and colleagues, they actually code NBA basketball players tweets on a narcissism scale. So, and I realized this

may be a world in which the base rate of narcissism is somewhat higher than the average in the population, a large. But you can still see variations, right? There are some players who tweet and say things like, you know, tough game yesterday, I really let the team down. And others who this was an actual quote, who posts a shirtless photo themselves that says under with under it with caption, when I look at myself in the mirror, all I see staring back is greatness.

Me too. So, I mean, there's the credit taking, right? The question is what does that mean for the team? Well, the higher the average narcissism level on your team, the more stagnant your team's performances over the course of the season. Because narcissists are hogging the ball, they're hogging the glory, they're taking the credit, they undermine the collaboration that's we were talking about earlier. And that is especially true if the point guard is a narcissist. Having a self-centered

person, move the ball up the court and control the offense is deadly to a team's ability to become more than the sum of their parts. And I think the credit taking dynamic is probably part of that. Damn. I know how I'm going to be thinking about the final four. Okay. All right. No, no, hope, right now. I have a question for you on this. So, it's really easy to see these patterns from a distance. It's hard to deal with these patterns

when you confront them on a daily basis. You spend a lot of time coming into organizations and trying to cure them. I don't know. I like to cure them, but trying to heal them, trying to improve the way that they work together. And maybe maybe I don't want to say squash egos, but maybe

a narcissist when you when you see these tendencies? You know, I'm hesitant to say the truth.

“Always a good place to start. Yeah, like what I'm about to say is not going to be 100% candid,”

but bear with me. No, I'm going to say, no, no, what I'm going to say is when I say that, I'm saying, I'm going to say 100% the truth and it could give me a shit ton of trouble. Is that's usually what I mean? You know, when we go in and do dear to lead work, we say yes to those kind of embedded interventions where I'm in there doing work with leaders

about 30% of the time. The others are 70% or no. And the first thing, and we go through very

rigorous assessments, where I interview people in the C-Suite, I interview senior leaders, and I interview people with the least power and proximity to power. And so the thing that I'm looking for for and it's probably a little bit of like creaming the crop for the intervention,

“what is definitely creaming the crop for the intervention? Let me just be straight. That I am looking”

for in the C-Suite specifically leaders who want to win more than they want to be right. So if I'm working with a CEO or senior leaders who care more about winning and doing what's right for the organization and they do protecting itself image, then I'm all in.

And in fact, I just did an interview with the Wall Street Journal when I was with Kate Johnson at Lumen,

and we've been together working together for maybe three years. And the Wall Street Journal guy said, "To what do you attribute some of this transformative success?" And I just looked at Kate and said, "She went to win more than she wanted to be right." And you know, he said, "What does that look like?" And I said, "Showing up at everything we did, leading the way, modeling vulnerability, modeling empathy, modeling rethinking, modeling learning and unlearning when it was super uncomfortable

when she knew it could come up on an investor call, like really just saying, I care more about getting it right than I do about being right." And that I can't think of a better way to demonstrate mission over ego than that. The mission over ego thing is so interesting, it takes me immediately to an experience I had, have you ever done work with St. Jude's? No. About 10 years ago, I went to go do work with St. Jude's, and I was going to meet with the leaders, and they said, "Do you want to get

here an hour early to go to tour of the hospital?" And I said, "Oh, I'd love it." And so I got there,

and I got on the elevator to go to the second floor where I was meeting the docent who was going

to give me the interview. And when I stepped on the elevator, the only other person on the elevator was a woman in her kind of mid-60s, and she was pushing a cart of desserts. And I said, "You know, how are you doing?" And she said, "Good." And I said, "What do you do at St. Jude's?" And she said, "I care cancer." And I said, "I'm sorry." And she said, "I care cancer." Families, patients, physicians, nurses, staff don't eat. We can't care cancer. Yeah, she said, "I care cancer."

I got up to this, and I was like, "Cal, yeah, you do." I was like, "Right. That makes sense." I get up to the second floor, and I meet the docent, and we're just starting to walk on the tour,

“and I said, "How long have you been volunteering for St. Jude's?" And she said, "God, I think I've been”

carrying cancer for about 18 months." And it made me realize that that is a culture where the oncologists are not taking credit for curing cancer, that everyone is taking credit, and everyone is sharing credit. And that takes a very special kind of deep humility and curiosity in leadership, that I would say is the opposite of narcissistic leader trends. Okay, so when you confront the opposite, what do you do? You know, exactly what I do, I dig in and figure out how it got there,

who brought it in, how do they build it, how do they operationalize it, how do they, I'm curious about, you can have, I've met singular leaders that are driven by courage and humility that cannot scale that across their organization. They can't even get it in their own teams. So when I see that, I'm curious about where that started and how it was built and how it's operationalized every day at every level. Okay, so if I'm, if I'm your boss, because one thing that's

that's really striking to me is, when we go into organizations, we have very little to loose, because we're outsiders. We're sort of brought in to hold up a mirror. And we're in case scenario, people say, "We don't want, we don't like the reflection, go home." I get that a lot.

to colleague or a narcissistic boss or a narcissist to senior executive. And I guess the question is,

"What do you say to that person? How do you, how do you manage that dynamic when you're not in a position of freedom or power?" Yeah, because I have a lot of walk-away stuff and set power. I personally think that it's really important to have a mentor and someone in the organization that you trust that knows that person that has more proximity to power that can kind of be a good mentor for you. But I also think those relationships are normally abusive and you should have a plan B.

Yeah, there have been many times where I couldn't walk out of a job because I needed to, you know, pay my rent, you know, keep my insurance for my kids. And so, you know, when people said,

“"Well, you should just leave," then they're all like, "Okay." But I think you should start developing”

a plan B. I think those behaviors are very hard to change. So what I would say is, you know, this is the old Union Stewart in me, document. Use a playback as a tool. So like, let's say you're the boss and you say to me, "I need you to do this, this and that." And then I would say, "Can I play back for you what you're wanting me to do?" You need me to prioritize this. This is due on Wednesday. And this is more important than this. Is that correct? And I would probably do the playback and

writing, "Hey, thanks for the time today." I just want to send an email real quick to play back what you're expecting for me. So that's another just form of document. Like, in God, we trust everyone else, bring data. You know, like, so I think that's part of it. The other thing is, I find engaging to be, especially if there's a power over situation, I find engaging with those folks to be somewhat dangerous.

“Like, I would not, I would try as much as I could not engage. What about you?”

What about me? Well, what, what would you tell these folks? You know, I, I had a narcissistic boss earlier in my career, actually. And to your earlier point, not diagnosed with a personality disorder, just showing normal narcissism signs, which, you know, involve, like, sort of airing your grievances like every day as festivists. If you have any sign-filled fans in the room, showing lots of entitlement, believing that you deserve special treatment, lacking empathy for other people, and not ever owning

the consequences of your decisions. I'd have boss like that, and a bunch of my colleagues were

being mistreated, and I basically spent a whole summer afraid to speak up. And finally, I just,

I couldn't, I couldn't take being such a coward anymore. And I walked into her office, and I said,

“I think this is, you know, this is really unfortunate the way that people are being forced to work”

over time without, hey, the way that their, you know, their concerns are not being heard. And I'm really worried that we're going to lose them when we can't afford to go. They're really valuable. And I, I got dragged by my ear down the hall into the, the women's restroom, which is the only room on our floor with no windows. And she said to me, if you ever speak up out of turn again, you'll be fired along with your co-workers. And that was why I became an organizational psychologist.

I did not know that. I, I, I do not ever want another person to have power over me again. I could have attended your sounds of really safe right now. But one of the, one of the things I had to do then was I had to keep working with her. And I will tell you, the single, most helpful thing that I did was having conversations with her that were not about work where she was not interested, where she didn't have to prove that she was special and extraordinary. And I found out that she

loved survivor. And I was watching survivor. And within a few weeks, I was on her good side again, just from talking about a TV show that was a common interest. And that, I think that got me through it.

And I, I wrote down, after I finished that job, I will never, ever work in a situation again, where

someone who believes that where somebody who, who puts herself above the organization and above the team has the power to ruin my debt. Never again. So yes. So now I write books and talk and hope that other people can use these, these ideas. Yeah, I just want to have, I feel like this ethical obligation to pause us right now, like in the, you know, normally it just be you and me talking, but in the room,

Oh, thank you. I'm over it now. No, but I am sorry that happened because you represent something

that I'm sure a lot of us have done. I also just want to acknowledge the fucking emotional labor of having to find what she likes that you can both talk about and having to, you know, like, I don't know if y'all are familiar with like the egg shell thing, like walking on eggshells and how traumatic that is for those of us group in houses where you had to kind of walk on eggshells sometimes because you can predict a radical behavior. And then like having to talk, like, that's

not free for people that have to do that. And like just to get very, and this is going to be

opinion that like the closer you are away from what power looks like in your organization in terms

of gender and race and ethnicity and age, the heavier that load is to pick up and to have to carry around. Like that is not free. Like if you, if you're like, good morning, Adam Grant, here's your $100 to spend for the day. In cognitive lift and emotional lift, you could spend 70 of it if you were a generous employee on mission, but you would not have 70 of it to do that day if you're working and you're, so you're going to spend 68, 50,

or 68, 99 trying to figure out what fun thing about survivor you could talk to her about and you're going to have a dollar or one left to spend it work. And the hard thing is that the spend that we make, it's not like we walk through the back door at the end of our, our office day. And then the bank account was like, "Jing-Jing, $100 to find the goggles and the shin guards and to see what's for dinner and your mom wants to meds." And no, you got like, you got 1450 left folks.

“You know, and so it's like, that's why I would say have a plan B and document because”

in the world today in the U.S. I would say we're looking at some of the consequences of this style of leadership and like people are dying. So like I don't think these are easy behaviors to change. Like I'm looking at the things I list it like taking undue credit, assigning undue blame, devaluing, dissent. And then this was what I thought was interesting. And the research they call them contextual amplifiers. So what is the environment in which this thrives, right, uncertainty,

depletion and exhaustion? This one freaked me out. Systems that reward spectacle and self-promotion. Hmm, I'm in church. But the reason why I thought this was so huge is because as a leader in organization, like I had a team in organization, I can choose every day whether we build a culture that rewards spectacle. Like what I'm trying to tell my people right now is we've been grinding really hard for the launch of the podcast, but what I'm trying to like build into my team is

this should never be normalized. We should not take our endorphins from grind. We should take our

“joy at work from groundedness, predictability, instability, not from grind. You know what I mean?”

Like we will have to grind at times. Yes. But there's less glory in that than what we think. Do you know what I mean? What do you think? I'm having a hard time disagreeing with that, which is little disappointing. Given how often we are not on the same page. No, I think that's right. Sorry, what I should have said was, hey, great for today. Well, good. I had a hard question for you. Oh, bring it. I was rereading the op-ed. It's in the New York Times. We'll link it in the show notes

on the podcast. Oh, we're going to have show notes. Yeah, yeah. This is exciting. Yeah, Paul's going to do it. Paul's going to do it. Paul's going to do it. Um, where would you draw, and this is from my own personal interest? Where would you draw a line between, man, this is a narcissistic pattern of leadership behaviors versus self-involved or ambitious? Oh, that's a good question. That's a very

“good question. I think I think ambitious is easier to distinguish than self-involved. God, me, too.”

It's almost the outlier, right, ambition. Yeah. So, okay. So, let's take ambitious off. Let's take. Wait, you're taking, I was going to do it. Okay. Go, go, go, go, go. Yeah, no, no, no, no. The other two are more nuanced. Don't you think like, those are really narcissistic trends versus these are,

get to the bottom of this by distinguishing between two flavors of narcissism. grandiose and vulnerable. One of them is named after your work. So, I reject that claim but go ahead. What, one of them is named in a way

“that will feel very familiar to you. Better. I think when I historically, when I've studied”

narcissistic leadership, I was thinking about the grandiose kind. The larger than life,

I am the most important person in the room, it is all about me. That's the aspect of narcissism that

Lyndon Johnson scored highest on when political scientists and historians rated the American presidents. It's sort of the Steve Jobs flavor as well. But we forget that there's a vulnerable variety as well, which is that it's more fear driven and less ego-driven of to go back to your your point at the beginning. It's not just I'm afraid of seeming ordinary. It's a fear of being worse than ordinary, a being inferior. And it seems, from my way to the research, vulnerable narcissists

are extremely self-involved, extremely self-involved. But they don't walk around thinking their gods gift to humanity. They walk around thinking, oh no, oh no, everybody's judging me negatively. And I've got to bend over backward to please them and carry favor with them and convince them that, in fact, I'm worthy. And I think that that is a way of being self-involved that's different from kind of the grandiosity that we've been critiquing today. Wow, that's really

interesting. Yeah, but I think as-- It's still narcissism. I still as malignant in my mind. Yeah, it is. Okay, so let me try one other way to get it your question then, since you rejected that one just now. He was like, ah, ah, ah, I saw it. You were like, no, I get it intellectually. I'm

tracking research while-- So best. Not, no, I would never put that label on it. You said malignant.

No, I would say narcissism can still be malignant. Yeah, it's like normal or grandios. Okay, so I think here's a, here's maybe another, another crack at it, which is, there's a, there's a whole body of evidence on how people become self-involved when they're anxious. So if you start to get stressed or nervous, you worry, you ruminate, your attention turns inward.

“That's true. And you need to self-protect. And that can be self-involved, but it's not narcissistic.”

Oh, and in fact, you may, you may be telling yourself a story that you're protecting other people through your anxiety and the concern that you're showing. And so I think you can, you can get to self-involvement through other past and narcissism and extreme anxiety might be one of them. Wow, that's, that's, that's, that's really interesting because I will say that when I am in peak eldest daughter anxiety, aren't those memes rude? Instagram is calling me out every third scroll.

There's, but can I just point out, there's no love for the eldest son ever. We never even get mentioned.

Yeah, but we get mentioned in the, my meme, my meme yesterday said, "Where you really a pleasure to have in class?" Or were you the oldest, the eldest daughter with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder? It's like, fuck you, dude. I mean, I don't even know you. I'm looking for shoes on here. Like, so I think we should, I think we should take away your Instagram password.

“Yes, you should. That's what you're being served. Go on. I am. The next one was like,”

the oldest daughter could read a room before she could read a book. I'm like, okay, like, hyper-vigilance has an upside. I always know what's going on. Next door, I can tell you if you need to know, I can keep us all safe. But I do think anxiety, I don't know, would you say, like, the vulnerable, I'm not familiar as familiar with those constructs and the differences, but it seems to me through my lens, they're ultimately both about self-protection,

right, ego protection, whether it's because I'm not good enough or because I'm better than everyone else. But this is what I always say about that. When I was growing at my Mima, my mom's mom, she lived in Santonio, I would just stay at her house for a week and she would say, whatever you want to do, you can do, like we could do anything. And I was like, put, put, go off on Monday. We're going to see PG movies on Tuesday, because I wasn't allowed to see a

PG movie called '16. Yeah, she took me to, what was the name of that with Sally Fields and

So, as she said, "I'll take you anywhere, Brunei." It's called me Sissy, actually. I'll take you anyway, say, "Anyway, you want to go Sissy, but not anywhere where I have to stay in one place for too long." And as a child, you didn't understand, like, how a standing one place could be worse than walking, but at my age, I get it now. I can't stand in one place for too long. But

I often think about people always used to ask me, so is the opposite of, I'm not enough,

I'm better than everyone. And I said, "That's the pain of standing in the exact same place for too long." Like, I'm better than anyone, and I'm not enough, two sides of the exact same coin. It's judgment. It's lacks complete self-compassion. It lacks grace for yourself. So now, I'm like, "Oh,

“that's why Mimo's legs hurt when she stood in one place for too long." Like, we try to jump out of,”

"I'm not good enough," which is that vulnerable narcissism to I'm better than everyone else, which is the grandiosity, same thing. It's a place of self-protection and woundedness. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder, with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odo, it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform

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“I want to pick up on this theme of judgment, which I think is so interesting. I think that people,”

people are judgmental because they're trying to be discerning. And what they don't realize is that judging actually impairs judgment. Wait a minute, I'm going to disagree. Hold on. I feel it coming. Oh, good. Wait. No, wait. Judgment. Say that. Judging impairs judgment. So let me explain that. Okay. So the moment that I judge you, I am no longer capable of looking at you through an even close to neutral lens.

I've already predetermined what you're like. I have identified a list of flaws or shortcomings of yours. And at that point, I can't see you accurately. I can't see you clearly anymore. And so I've judged you instead of actually being an accurate judge of you. But what if I'm right? Then you're too invested in being right. I'm asking for a friend. What if what if my judgment is spot on? Well, we were texting about this. But we didn't talk about it. Oh, that's right.

You said save it for the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. So I think that that sometimes you have strong reactions. Oh, shit. You mean this conversation. Yeah. Do you want to have this conversation? Sometimes you have strong reactions to people you've just met. Is that a fair statement? Especially if they're if they're influential. I don't like fancy people. When I meet people that are either used celebrity power

influence, I'm going to be suspect. And I understand this suspicion.

No, I don't say that. I don't say that. What do you say?

Their dodgy is fuck man. That's different. I would never label someone as a social worker. I don't

believe in pathologizing. I would just say you're dodgy and no. All right. So but then then anything else you see them do is going to be filtered through that lens and you become it's confirmation bias. It's a cell phone from you. Yeah. Yes. I knew you were going to go right into confirmation bias. Adam confirmation bias grant. Go ahead. And you're doing it right now. I love it. It's a minor miracle that we're still talking, isn't it? I wonder how much of it is confirmation

bias and how much of it is that maybe the the evil cousin of confirmation bias, which is desirability bias. No, this one. So do you all know the distinction between the two confirmation and desirability bias? Okay. Here. This is going to be a 30 second crash course.

You ready? It's powerful. Confirmation biases. I see what I expect to see. Desirability biases.

I see what I want to see. And I wonder what worldview leads you to want people who are powerful to be dodgy. Okay. So do you want that? I guess is the first one. I don't. I don't want that. But let's let's be okay. We're going to go here. Let's go back to when you and I were together at a conference. Uh-oh. And I said, I'm waiting for someone to walk with me to this thing. And you said, well, you know, you don't like to go by yourself or what? And you just friendly

question. And I said, I don't know. It's weird when I go by myself. And you said, why? And I said, because I'm going to get stopped many times. And especially because this is a conference where there was a lot of powerful people. And they will unload on me demand things from me and ask me.

“And I don't know them. But they'll just be like, you know, and you're like, really?”

Because we do the same thing. And that never happens to you. And I said, why don't you walk with me?

By the time we got there, he was like, hey, oh, no. Who? Why are these people stopping you? What is going on here? So I think it's not, I don't want, it's not desirable or confirmation bias. It's self-protection. Because I don't think people know that I'm super introverted. And if you stop me and you, you tell me really hard and heavy things. And then you're, and if anyone in here did it, it would probably be, it would be okay. It could be maybe awkward.

Well, not everyone, but most people. But yeah, but like, but when, but when it's an influential or famous person, they'll say, can I get your cell phone number? I'd love to talk to you about this. You know, and I'm like, I don't have a cell phone. I'm a terrible liar. I'm like, they're like, email, and I'm like, I don't even know. Let me, let me, let me, let me in,

“there's my fax number. Yeah, yeah, fax me, fax you. So I think it's self-protective. But it's also,”

it's like I see dead people like that movie. Like, I sense. Yeah. Spoiler alert. Yes. I see how people sometimes with influence have entitlement and are open to collecting people like me, like they collect charge keys. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And so, I'm suspect. So what, why does that happen to you not me? I think I can think of three possibilities. One is gender. Okay, we're done. No, but there's more. Two, you know,

I tend to talk mostly about data and you go deep into people's emotions. That's true. I think that maybe creates a more personal or a pair of social connection. But then three also, you're a social worker. You actually help people. You can, right? And they think you're a therapist. I mean, people do you think I'm a therapist, which I'm like, would you want me to be your therapist? I have a therapist,

“but would you want me to be your therapist? No, you would not. I'd be like, and he said, what?”

No. We're done. Let's text him right now. You know, I would be terrible with that. You're the

raise your hand if you've been held by Adam's work. Like, that's not true. I think it's the topics I study, but I think it's gender. I think a lot of it is gender. Okay, so then the question is, you make a judgment of that person when they very inappropriately dump vulnerability on you, and maybe also show some entitlement and even some narcissism in what they ask of you. But is that an indication of their character or is that a moment that showed you a problematic

tendency they have, which may coexist also with some virtues along with that face? Or do I give a shit, which one of those it is? Like, but honestly, that is the question. Like, do I care if that's your character? Do I care if it's a temporary lack of judgment? I don't care. Just keep walking. Like, just, I actually, I actually, I am a, I am a good person. If you don't have to defend that.

“But I, I don't love it. And I don't, the only thing I can tell you this, the only time I”

felt like this before was when I was pregnant. Oh, and everyone wants to touch you with no person, people would come up and touch me. And I was like, oh, a pregnant body is not a public body, a pregnant body is not a public body. You know, like, you know, back then when we were learning all the new language, like, this is my safe space. Quick aside, I had no idea that even existed

until Allison was pregnant with her oldest. And the first time someone made a beeline to rub her

tummy, I was like, wait, you, you think you can touch a stranger just because she's pregnant? And I was like, can I, can I go up and just like start rubbing out that like, how is this suddenly okay? And so I, I started drafting an iPad that was called, please stop touching my wife. And it's, not nothing came of it, but this is horrifying. And so you, you feel this when, when, yeah, I, okay, I, I get it. So here's a question. So I mean diagnosed by this like holidays.

No, I don't, in real time. I'm not qualified to diagnose you, and I don't have a diagnosis. I

“think the, the self-protective instinct is, is understandable. I think the question is, then,”

what do you do with it? Because I think your impulse is to just not be in the room. And we're talking, we, we, we, we, we're just, let me, we're talking about, do you want to go to this event?

Where there's a lot of people like this. Right. And I'm like, no. Never in my career have ever been,

do I, nor do I want to start going now? I'm waiting for a long, long football season. I'm waiting to start tubing when I get warm. No, I don't want to be with these people. At the same time, it's an amazing, the, the one time I've done something like that. It was a really interesting learning experience. But you know what, you know what I don't like. This is happening in real time. Is it awkward? I know. Well, no, but it was before, but you know what I don't like, I don't want to be a part

of a world of exchange and transaction. Like, I have no interest in power, celebrity, I can, you know, make my own money. And so I think I worry that that world is transactional and that we see evidence today of people that made very dangerous decisions to get close to power. And this is, this is what narcissists do, right? They use people for their own get. Yes, that's it. That's the connection. I knew it was going to tidy up in a bow. A big Texas taffin a bow.

“Here's the thing, though. I think, so yourself protective response is mostly to opt out,”

when you get invited to address a group of world leaders or, you know, CEOs or Hollywood people. And I get it. And there are people who will say, don't, you know, you should not be in that room.

And there are people who always are in that room. I don't want that room to exist without voices like yours in it.

I see, I mean, that's really thoughtful, that's really kind. You all are with me. So I'm just going to pile on a little bit more, because I want to be able to say later, Renee, remember when when all the people at South Byve were cheering for you showing up, where is the moral compass if you opt out? And only the transactional people show up and they run the world. That scares the hell out of me. Bummer. Can we do it not during football season?

I'll settle for that one. Yeah, no. I do. I have watched you do it in Navigator really well,

A star runner. Join me. Yeah, I think it's probably my reaction even when we're talking about narcissism and leadership. It's just, it feels so dangerous because at the, at the inside of it, whether we're talking about US politics, we're talking about global leaders, we're talking about leaders and organizations. At the bottom of it is dehumanization. And it's about transactional access to power, access to

influence. And I feel like that has just never, it has always been so cautionary to me.

And I don't, and I think part of it is like my pathological introversion that I'm not good in those situations. I mean, I am, I know what? I am actually very good in those situations. Yeah, I am very like them. Yeah, I'm very good in them at them actually, but it's very costly for me privately.

“And I think, I remember the first time, I was the first random house author in the history of”

random house to do a book tour without a book signing. And so the first time I went like the launched in LA, the book tour did. So I looked at, and I said, I won't be signing books today. I'll be happy to stay in extra 30 minutes or 45 minutes and talk to you about the work. But I'm not going to sign your book because there's nothing, my signature has no value. And I need to go home whole to my kids and my husband. And that leaves me less than whole.

And in that second, every woman in the room jumped to their feet and started clapping. I wasn't paying attention to what the guys were doing, but because I just saw women, like, there were four guys in the room at that time. No, there were, there were a lot, including I think the Seattle sea ox, but um, but I think the women were like, it goes back to the bank account.

It goes back to the, I can go to those rooms and I can talk and you know, do those kind of things. And I don't like, I wouldn't mind if they were here and I talked and I laughed, but the cost for me is high.

Yeah, I just, I've never known you to be someone who is unwilling to pay a temporary price

for potential lasting contribution. No, I'm not. I'm happy to send them a book. And listen to the podcast, the curiosity shop, wherever you listen to your podcast or on YouTube.

“Okay, so I think I think this, this recording is going to launch as our third podcast. So”

just, I'm curious because we have 20 seconds left. What do y'all think? Podcasts? We, we don't always get along. We always get along. We always get along. Mostly. But we, but we don't always agree. But I think that's okay today, right? People need to be able to get along and not agree. Potentially, but I'm grateful for you. The gratitude is mutual. I'm not going to make a cheesy part symbol. I like you. I really do. I know y'all had a lot of choices about where to go with your

fancy badges, but we were really excited about launching the podcast that's out by Southwest and really excited to do it with y'all. And so we're grateful. So thank y'all. The curiosity shop is produced by Brine Brown, Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to the curiosity shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast out. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

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Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoO.com.