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Comment by erik_landerholm | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm...my experience is very different. A lot of seemingly normal people are just fine, if not happy to be led by psychopaths and narcissists. They view their "confidence" as a plus because they don't dig deeply or are just scared, wimps and like a big strong "asshole" to lead them. I honestly blame the rise of asshole CEO's and leaders on the normies, who don't want to be be held accountable.

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It's not happiness, it's complacency. Huge difference. Psychopaths and narcissists do a LOT of unseen damage if not kept under a very tight leash.

People follow the path of least resistance - it's easier for most people to play the office politics game where the boss will let them than do the work before them. It's still a failure of management and leadership however.

Confidence and assertiveness are important leadership traits. I don't know what's considered "seemingly normal", but different people can make radically different judgments of character, and a lot of narcissists can exploit this. People who can and do reliably detect psychopaths and narcissists tend to develop an aversion.

I agree here 200%. People may not want to be “the asshole”, but they want to work under “the asshole” because they think it will benefit them and help them get what they want because their leaders are willing to be cutthroat, which may benefit them.

This is the truth about leadership. As long as everyone is getting their due, few will care about the overt sociopathy of the leader and those that do will have no political power to change it. That's one truth I had to discover via experience and it destroyed my morale and idealism.

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