The Productive Narcissist
Subtitle: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership
Publisher: Broadway; Broadway Books
Published: April 8, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780767910231
Subjects: Personality; Leadership; Business & Economics; Business / Economics / Finance; Business/Economics; Management Science; Business & Economics / Management Science; Narcissism
First sentence: Let's start out with a question I have asked hundreds of people at work: Can you describe your personality?
Description: "What is it that Oprah Winfrey, Jack Welch, Martha Stewart, and Bill Gates all have in common? According to psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and consultant Michael Maccoby, it's not just enormous success and celebrity - it's narcissism. In The Productive Narcissist, Maccoby proposes a new paradigm of modern leadership and zeros in on one common character trait: the narcissistic personality.

Challenging prevailing leadership theories, Maccoby argues that today's most innovative leaders are not consensus-building bureaucrats; they are "productive narcissists" with the interrelated set of skills - foresight, systems thinking, visioning, motivating, and partnering - that he terms "strategic intelligence." Rejecting the negative stereotype of the individual who is destroyed by a pathological preoccupation with himself, Maccoby redefines the productive narcissist as the personality type who is best suited to lead during times of rapid social and economic change. At the same time, he makes clear that narcissistic leadership doesn't always mean successful leadership and that narcissists lacking strategic intelligence are fated to crash and burn."--Jacket.