How to Become a Narcissist

Read Time: 7 Minutes

Let me tell you a story about a potential you.

You’ve recently started working at a large, multi-game studio. Thousands of employees. You’re in a leadership role, and you know you want to have a positive impact on the people around you and the game you’re working on.

Fresh eyes give you an advantage over people who have been there a long time. You find it easy to spot areas to improve, but you haven’t yet gone about making changes.

The reason? You’re not quite sure how to drive change in your new environment, and you’re politically wise enough to use a little bit of caution. 

You don’t want to burn trust with others, so rather than going to #general chat on slack and declaring your 12 point plan to help everyone else stop sucking (a bad move), you spend some time watching how change happens. Through observation and time investment, you develop relationships with influential peers and leaders above you.

The longer you are there the more (and bigger) problems you see. You continue to accumulate credibility, starting to make small changes. The changes you target aren’t necessarily the most helpful, but they do build the most credibility and are certainly appreciated by those around you.

As time goes on, this cycle continues. Some well-chosen wins with the right visibility from leadership create a promotion for you, and that exposes you to even higher status problems you may be able to tackle. But, with the promotion comes a new layer of leadership to understand and navigate.That’ll take some time. Back to relationship building!

Of course, the problems you saw when you first arrived that impacted the people you used to lead… those are pretty small problems now, and they just weren’t visible enough then and still aren’t worth investing time in. You’ve gained sufficient influence to - with a bit more work - solve bigger problems. You leave the small ones, and the team that has them, behind for someone else to figure out.

Over the course of the next few years, you advance in the organization, building strategic relationships, solving the right high visibility problems, and developing other skills to both preserve your existing role and influence, and expand your reach in the org.

At one point, a dysfunctional leader you disagree with, and who is likely causing some of the problems you’re trying to solve for the good of everyone, makes a significant blunder. To help the company succeed, you very tactfully and without taking a serious risk make it obvious that said leader is a failure and misaligned with leadership. A few weeks later they’ve resigned, and due to some deft handling, you’ve taken over their space and influence.

You’re excited by your own progress, and are even more confident. Soon you’ll be able to get to the real issues that abound and that you are uniquely suited to fix. But you’re not quite there, you need to consolidate your position a little bit - change is likely to cause some blowback, and you need to be secure to bring about the transformation the company needs and that you will soon be perfectly positioned to tackle.

Fortunately, there are people who work with and for you who are incredibly supportive of what you do. They see the same issues you do, and are happy to have you leading them. You ensure their good judgment and quality is rewarded, and they rise with you. It’s good to know that such capable people agree - it reinforces that you’re on the right path.

One day, one of those peers who regards you highly and who you have a working friendship with asks some tough questions about what you are both doing, and is this the right thing? They bring up some of the problems that have been left behind, and some of the methods that you’re using to secure your position in the company's senior influence game. They’re concerned that you’ve both drifted into a bad space. When they started, this isn’t who they wanted to become.

Your peer’s points give you pause. Not because they’re good points, but because they’ve clearly lost the plot. The way to drive change is to create the influence to fix the problems at the highest level. That is the path. You know you’re here to make everything better for everyone. And now you realize you can’t trust them. 

Over the next few months you work to distance yourself from them and succeed before they make a career-limiting move challenging a C-level about some poor leadership practices. You still care about them, so you tried to warn them without exposing yourself, but they ignored you and drove on, and now they are basically useless to you. Just not worth sticking your neck out, even if they were right about what they were calling out.

Time moves on. Another one of your chosen leaders makes a move for more authority without checking with you, seeming to be interested in taking credit for work you did. Fortunately, your network of leaders gives you a heads up and you beat them to the punch. You quickly end any chances of their further advancement in the company. They quit a month later.

Eventually, you’re secure and ready; the ammunition you need has been gathered. You wait. 

The moment finally arrives. Your CxO slips up, and you take the risk and go after them with the support and information you’ve gathered. 

It works. The old CxO resigns. You are the obvious successor. You “humbly” jump into the most senior level of the company, negotiating a hefty raise. Those who supported you are rewarded. Many who were on the wrong side of history end up leaving. You’re a star. And now you’ve got access to the organization at the highest level.

Of course, the CEO and the board remain, but once you figure out how to gain leverage, you’ll be able to really do some good for the org. Time to consolidate power so no one can stop you… from all that positive change you’re almost ready to unleash.

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The U.S. Army is a giant organization. It does many things well, and also has its share of issues. In my time in the service, I and many officers talked at length about the problems we saw and what it would take to fix them. Often, the answer was something like, “You gotta stick it out long enough to reach the rank where you have the power to make the change happen.”

Many of us (myself included) weren’t up for that. I left after four years. Massive respect for the Army and military, but it wasn’t a culture fit for me.

Some did stick it out. And they encountered a problem: as you advance inside of a large organization, you learn what it takes to advance, and you practice the behaviors that lead to advancement. Unfortunately, if you manage to survive and break through the system to the point where you have the power to make changes, odds are you don’t really remember what the issues were, and you’ve now been practicing what it means to succeed in the midst of DYSFUNCTION for so long that you have become a supportive part of the broken system.

Young officers now look at you as the obstacle and wonder if they’ll ever have the authority to bring about change inside the system.

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Leaders are change agents. Your job is to bring about positive change. 

But change is hard. In the story I wrote above, the idea that you need to develop relationships and build organizational influence to have the maximum positive impact is real. 

Some stubborn leaders reject this idea entirely. They refuse to “play politics,” and hamstring their ability to bring about positive change. It’s not that they can’t make a difference - it just won’t be that meaningful, and will be frustrating. They’ll often quit, looking for a “place without politics” where they can do the right thing uninhibited. Such a place does not exist.

If that’s one end of the spectrum, the other is the story I wrote above. With the best of (starting) intentions, you could become the political animal, the self-serving narcissist convinced only they can fix things, who is willing to cut down anyone who threatens you. The whole way, you’ll believe you are doing what is best for the org by doing what is best for yourself. National and global politics comes to mind.

You’ve probably seen both of these. The problem with both ends is that they have a chunk of truth in them. They’re both true to an extent, with one extreme becoming the monster they wanted to destroy, and the other extreme dying on every hill of principle available but at least not compromising who they are.

If I had to choose between the two, I’d say pick the stubborn leader who avoids politics. At least you won’t transform into someone you’d not recognize.

But it’s not a binary choice. 

We have another option, and it is to acknowledge the reality of politics, recognize the importance of compromise, and seek to drive positive change for the entire org, but WITHOUT becoming the self-serving political animal.

To utilize this option, you have to be grounded in something outside of the work you’re doing. If you’re stuck in the work as your whole world, that increases your vulnerability to becoming the monster. 

What you need is a set of values or an ethical framework that you follow even when it hurts. And that framework cannot be, “The ends justify the means,” or “The greatest good for the greatest number,” two related moral ideas that are both deplorable when played out to their logical endpoints.

Without an ethical frame to guide you, diplomacy will rapidly become a zero sum game about winning. Wisdom will be replaced with craftiness. Self-preservation will rule the day.

So, with that in mind, here’s a few values to keep you leading well, interacting with the political environment endemic to human organizations, and not becoming the very problem you used to want to solve.

Three Values

Humility

Humility is a core part of a well-lived life. It is the opposite of pride and the check on arrogance. Humility is not self-denigration or low self-esteem. It is pointing your thoughts away from yourself towards the world around you. As C.S. Lewis eloquently said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.”

Why it matters: To lead well (morally and effectively) your focus must be on those you lead, not on yourself. You are helping others reach the goal, and the way you help is through leading. You develop the skills of leadership, you learn to negotiate, you understand the politics, but you take yourself as out of the equation as you can. You are here for the good of others, not your own glory. 

A huge advantage of this: leaders who are humble definitionally get to worry about themselves less. They can be curious about others and different points of view. They can listen and hear feedback about themselves without self-focus overcoming their situational awareness. 

The disadvantage: you may pass up opportunities for your own advancement, or sometimes be blamed for something that wasn’t your fault.

If you are only interested in climbing the career ladder, avoid humility. If you want to make a difference for those you lead and the players you serve, humility is a good place to start. You’ll have more time to think about how to add value in all the time you save not focusing on yourself.

Courage

Courage allows you to do the right thing when it is hard. If the right thing were always the easiest thing to do, courage would be unnecessary. But in the world we live in, the right thing is often hard. It’s why we admire people who choose the hard, right path. We know it’s difficult. I can certainly think of times I’ve failed at it and either passively or even actively done the wrong thing instead.

In your career you will face moments where courage is required. You will be asked to do something you should not, or your self-preservation will tell you to cover something up so no one knows you made a mistake. Courage to do the right thing matters here. Courage sometimes forces you to acknowledge your own faults. It might push you to confront a leader doing something wrong.

A huge advantage of courage: if you get good at practicing doing the hard thing, you’ll become someone who does it more naturally. You’ll still be afraid, and you’ll sometimes experience negative consequences for running against the grain, but you’ll also learn that that’s ok. 

Courage doesn’t guarantee you are right, so it must be matched with humility. Combined, these two allow you to focus on the big problems and take risks trying to do the right thing. 

The disadvantage: you will sometimes lose (in big and small ways), alone on a proverbial hill of principle. Remember, doing the right thing is hard sometimes, and that’s when it’s most important to do the right thing.

But a practice of courage will mature you as a human being, teach you to pick yourself back up when you fall down, and create a force for good that is simply unequaled by those without it.

Care

Care, compassion, love, kindness, whatever you want to call it, this is desiring what is best for others. It’s more than empathy, it’s not just politeness or being nice. It is the genuine hope followed by action that attempts to lift up those around you.

Why it matters: Leaders lead people. To succeed morally and effectively, you have to care for the people you lead. In our case, in game dev, we also need to care for the players we and those we lead serve. 

A leader who doesn’t care about the people they lead and/or the players they serve is dangerous, and not a lot of fun to work for. Care brings the human element to the equation; it keeps us from becoming machines. 

It’s hard to maintain, especially as you scale. But I would argue it is as or perhaps more essential than both humility and courage.

A huge advantage of care: if you are able to truly care for those you lead, you have an abundance of daily wins available to you. No longer will success be dictated by whether the product was the best or your career is advancing, but you will be working towards and seeing the positive impact you are having on others each and every day. 

I want to emphasize something here: to truly care is to put action behind feeling. We may say we care about many things, but if we aren’t doing anything about it, it really doesn’t matter much. When we lead, we need to care with action, not just words.

Like courage, this will be hard. Sometimes our care will cause us to miss something important to us because someone needs our attention and we choose to be present for them in that moment rather than taking care of ourselves. 

Care is also challenging to do well if you aren’t humble. A prideful, self-focused leader can’t afford to care too much. It gets in the way of their own advancement.

Simultaneously, a person who is trying to be caring but not courageous will struggle to follow through on their care. They will back down when it matters most, and abandon people around them from fear of negative consequences.

But as a leader, care provides immense benefit. It gives massive meaning to every day.

To care about those you lead, in action and word, provides a reason to keep going forward. Expanding that care to the players who will play the games we make only increases that purpose.

Care is a value I highly recommend.

Summary

When I think about the people who have led well and I wanted to follow, they often had these three values.

When I think of leaders who I was suspicious of, regardless of their effectiveness, they often lacked one or more of these values.

If you cultivate humility, courage, and care, I believe you will be a leader worthy of being followed.

I also believe that these values will go a long way to keeping you from becoming the self-absorbed leader only interested in their own growth, with a rationale for every awful action taken.

I’ve used the word “practice” a lot. We become what we practice. If this newsletter resonates, I encourage you to think about what values you are practicing today, and to add in the practice of humility, of courage, and of care.

You will be a better human being if you do. And better human beings make better leaders.

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