Humility is an interesting concept. It’s the golden principle of all religions–to live a virtuous life means to live a humble life. And you can find a thousand and two quotes on the same. “Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues”, “its humility that makes men as angels, and pride that changes angels into devils” and “humility is good and if you don’t have it, then you’re a narcissist and thus, a bad human.” Most texts promote humility and reduce narcissism to a thing deserving of scorn.
Narcissism, however, is a lot more complex. While it is used to refer to people who have an inflated sense of self and see themselves as having no flaws, there are many dimensions. Most only see narcissists as the media projects it---as the boss who doesn’t care about his employees, as the husband who always thinks he’s right, and as the friend who never listens to others. That’s a disorder. But not all narcissists are the same. In fact, those narcissists who have an obsession with status, power, and self tend to have more mental toughness. They tend to show lesser susceptibility to depression and are more goal-driven than anyone else. But this is coupled with feelings of grandiosity. We need a healthy dose of narcissism, which has good side effects.
Healthy narcissism acts as an emotional immune system that pulls us back whenever we are at our low. It helps build self-esteem and breeds an authentic self-concept. It makes sure we remain fairly proud of our accomplishments while not thinking too much about ourselves. It sounds like humility but there’s a distinction--we emphasize ourselves. It’s about having self-love, just the right amount of it. Not too much, nor too little.
How can this apply in our workplace? If you compared humble and narcissistic people, the former tend to be more productive and manage better, while the latter tend to scale up the ranks better. This includes people like Vijay Mallya. But we don’t need Vijay Mallyas, we need Ratan Tatas. And there is a way--become a humble narcissist. One of the reasons why Ratan Tata is famous is because of his characteristic groundedness. Before rising up the ranks, he started off by working as a blue collared worker for Tata Steel. This included rigorous labour such as managing blast furnaces and limestone production. A famous account of his humility was when the 26/11 attacks happened. He personally visited all 80 families, as the chairman of the Tata group; despite being the chairman of the Tata group. Under him, Tata’s profits turned over by 50 and went from local to global, successfully! The doyen is thus revered as the True Indian Industrialist. Ratan Tata is a fine example of a humble narcissist. These are great leaders who have mega-ambitions but aren’t attached to them. They understand the flaws they have and work on them. They remain humble about their ideas, performance, and plans. They remain ambitious, yet humble.
The central point I was trying to make through this blog was that thinking about yourself sometimes isn’t bad. It’s not selfish to dream high. It’s not wrong to want more from life. Nothing’s wrong as long as it is in the right balance. If we can stop demonizing concepts with hasty generalizations, we can gain a more clear picture of them and that can help us see that things aren’t as bad as they seem they are. We Demonize narcissism, we glorify humility and in the process, we cut out clarity. Narcissism isn’t bad, humility isn’t entirely good. The best of both worlds is the ambitious narcissist that accepts their mistakes, and that’s not that hard to be.
References-
1. Cohut, M., Field, P., McNamee, D., & Legg, T. J. (2019, October 30). Some narcissistic traits may be useful for mental health. Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326852#Beneficial-or-harmful-depending-on-context
2. Grant, A., & Gore, A. (2018, March 14). Tapping into the power of humble narcissism. TED Ideas. https://ideas.ted.com/tapping-into-the-power-of-humble-narcissism/
3. Lancer, D. (2019, October 22). Can Narcissism Ever Be Good? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/toxic-relationships/201910/can-narcissism-ever-be-good
4. Singh, H. (2021, January 22). All Heart: 11 Times Ratan Tata Showed Us He's So Much More Than A Business Tycoon. ScoopWhoop. https://www.scoopwhoop.com/culture/when-ratan-tata-showed-us-all-he-s-more-than-just -a-business-man/
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