Goncalo

Sadly, it is often an office windbag or a charming but deeply shallow self-promoter who rises in the ranks. The ILR School's Jack Goncalo spoke to reporters Dec. 7 at an Inside Cornell media luncheon at the ILR Conference Center in Manhattan about how to handle the workplace narcissist.

"Narcissists are confident with no reason," said Goncalo, assistant professor of organizational behavior. "They can mislead the effort to identify creative ideas because they're so good at conveying ideas in a confident and charismatic way that they get their ideas picked, even if they're not very good. What we can learn from them is how to pitch our own ideas in a way that gets them heard by adopting elements of their style."

In Goncalo's research, most of which focuses on group creativity, "narcissists" are those who score above the median on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, "which is not indicative of a mental disorder; there is a full distribution of these people throughout the population. And the more narcissistic you are, the better you are at pitching your ideas," Goncalo said.

Do these idea-pitching wizards believe in what they're selling? "Narcissists are utterly convinced that their idea was really very good, was highly creative," Goncalo said. "We asked them to estimate how creative their idea was. They thought their idea was better than any other idea being pitched -- completely unaware that their ideas were, by an objective standard, entirely mediocre. But they went into the pitch session with such confidence that it was infectious and could be mistaken for creativity."

Other downsides to narcissists: They can be aggressive, oblivious or hostile to negative feedback, and they steal credit from other people. (They are also more likely to have professional, rather than casual, Facebook profile photos.) But it's not all bad for the egotist in the next cube. Goncalo advises using narcissists at work in a positive way.

"Narcissists can actually contribute to a creative group outcome when they're a part of a group," Goncalo said. "Individualism and competition promote creativity in groups. Everyone is trying to stand out, to suggest new and different ideas to try to one-up each other. Narcissists can help the group to do that."

To a point. The more narcissists in a group, the more creative the group, Goncalo found. But too many narcissists plunges groups into dysfunction and destructive conflict as overblown personalities clash.

Goncalo's research "paints a more positive portrait of narcissism than we get from most of the research that's out there, because it shows that narcissists are good for some things," he said. "Maybe you have a great idea but you don't have the personality that's required to sell it. You may want to pair up with a narcissist and have him or her pitch it. And in a group doing creative work, you may want to include a couple of narcissists because they contribute to the creative tension that you need to produce ideas."