You hear this all the time about millennials or those born between the late 1970s and 2000—they’re just a bunch of arrogant narcissists. Even though the “me” generation was first identified in the 1970s and referred to in Christopher Lasch’s book The Culture of Narcissism as the baby boomer generation, millennials are seen as more self-oriented than their parents.
It’s not clear where the label narcissism came from as applied to this entire generation, but the idea has certainly been reinforced in the popular press. The rise of Facebook, selfies, and other social media has certainly contributed to the narcissism rate as well. Another theory is that millennials were overly pampered and patronized as children by their “me” parents who focused on their offspring as reflections of themselves. Either way, the label is still entrenched and shows no signs of dying out.
New research on millennials in the workplace suggests that it is time to abandon this misconception, and especially to stop lumping everyone in one generation into a single diagnostic category. Robert Giambattista of the University of Scranton and J. Duane Hoover of Texas Tech University (2018) set out to challenge the popular wisdom about millennials in terms of their ability to learn to work together in an organizational setting. Questioning the view that all millennials have the same personalities, they believed that only individuals high in narcissism would exhibit teamwork problems due to their “dysfunctional and disruptive behaviors” (p. 3). The authors studied narcissism in a nonclinical sense—that is, as a set of personality traits rather than a diagnosable disorder. In the workplace, people with this trait “generally behave as selfish individuals who need to succeed as individuals at any cost, perhaps even at a net cost to the team itself… (and) as unlikable bosses” (p. 4). The authors then explain that high-performing teams share a purpose and vision that goes beyond the needs of the individuals on those teams. Members are accountable to each other and work together to achieve collective goals. They trust each other, which means that they sometimes have to show their weak sides. None of these traits, the authors point out, should be found in people high in narcissism. Furthermore, when they evaluate their abilities, people high in narcissism have difficulty being objective and deciding where they need to show room for improvement. These are additional barriers to high performance in a team.
Giambattista and Hofer tested the idea that people high in narcissism might be poor team players in an innovative study of master’s students taking a behaviorally-based course in organizational behavior (n = 168). Students completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) early in the semester before embarking on the course. The behavioral focus meant that students in the course participated in realistically designed learning activities in which their ability to work in a team was continuously assessed. Their performance on an assessment of teamwork skills was the outcome variable in the study, with narcissism scores as predictors. In addition, the authors developed a behavioral test of narcissism by comparing self-ratings of abilities to actual performance on a skill-based assessment exercise. People high in narcissism, as defined in this way, should overconfidently rate themselves as better than they are. The results showed that people with high levels of both the entitlement and superiority components of narcissism had higher levels of overconfidence and poorer teamwork skills and that their teamwork performance continued to decline over the semester. The other components of the NPI scores were unrelated to teamwork or learning teamwork skills. Thus, scores for narcissism as a whole were weaker than the specific components of entitlement and superiority. As the authors conclude, “Individuals who have ‘the sky is falling’ concerns about working with millennials and some individuals with narcissistic tendencies may be overly pessimistic” (p. 15). This suggests that even if a person’s form of narcissism is characterized by high levels of entitlement and superiority, these traits may also live within a personality as a whole that includes other good qualities. As Giambattista and Hoover point out, it is not particularly fun or easy to try to teach teamwork to people who believe they are better than everyone else and deserve special treatment. These individuals may resist a skills-based approach that assumes they are imperfect and have something to learn. Instead, these individuals might be better served by pointing out how the success of each factor benefits the team as a whole: “Narcissistic learners, as well as sports fans, may be able to empathize with the many examples of professional athletes who have exploited team success to make huge financial gains… even if they were not star players on their teams” (p. 17).
There are ways, then, to manage people who are high in both of these components of narcissism and to help them become better at cooperating and working toward common goals. The authors have harsh words for those who engage in “confusing millennials with narcissism,” or assume that “slightly higher levels of narcissism come with disastrous consequences.” They also point out that the “sinister portrayal” of millennial narcissists “may contain a significant amount of ‘old-fashioned retrogradeness’” (p. 17).
In short, if you’re one of those in older generations who looks with dread and fear at your younger colleagues, friends, or family, the current findings suggest that you shouldn’t dismiss them or write them off as pathological narcissists. By all means, identify those whose behavior suggests they have an extremely high opinion of themselves and tailor your coaching methods accordingly. You don’t need to limit this approach to those born in the late 20th century. Millennials are not the first generation to include people high in certain aspects of narcissism, and they certainly won’t be the last.
