DIRECTIVE 136 / POWER

MAKE THE LEADER THE BRAND

Choose leaders who look decisive. Judge their results later.

Promote executives who speak confidently, appear constantly, and claim ownership of wins. Center organizational communications on their personal vision. When results disappoint, describe the setback as evidence that stronger leadership is needed.

THE MECHANISM

Executive image and charisma substituted for demonstrable leadership effectiveness.

Primary: POWERWORTHFEEDBACK
RATIONALE
Leadership emergence happens before leadership effectiveness can be observed, so observable confidence has a useful timing advantage.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
The person most naturally noticed as a leader becomes the leader and remains highly noticeable afterward.
COMMON FAILURE
Separating leadership emergence from leadership effectiveness and evaluating leaders on sustained follower, team and organizational outcomes rather than on self-presentation alone.
THE UNFORTUNATE PART

Evidence, with limitations.

Claim

Narcissism has different relationships with leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness. Meta-analytic evidence finds a positive relationship with emergence but no simple positive linear relationship with effectiveness, with some evidence of a curvilinear association.

Evidence

A meta-analysis found narcissism predicted leadership emergence partly through extraversion, while observer-rated leadership effectiveness was not positively related in a simple linear way; self-ratings showed a different pattern.

Scientific boundary: Narcissism and leadership emergence differ from effectiveness; individual traits do not determine all leadership outcomes.

Sources

These references offer context, not a completed review or a test of this instruction.