The heavy crown, shared throne: How coleadership tempers ego and sustains leader well-being

Mitchell and colleagues (2026) provide a well-reasoned, sound, and thought-provoking case for why HR practices can promote or discourage narcissistic tendencies in leaders.Acknowledging their contribution, we offer two points of pushback and one point of extension based on those areas of pushback.The first point of pushback is that counter to the authors, we contend that hypercompetitive selection methods that seek to identify the best leadership candidate, although not ideal, are necessary.Do such processes (e.g., head hunting, in-depth assessment centers) admittedly have the potential to inflate individual egos and promote narcissistic behaviors in leaders?Yes.Does leadership have a large impact and warrant very careful selection and extensive development efforts?Also, yes.(e.g., Hogan & Kaiser, 2005;Khuong et al., 2022).Second, although Mitchell and colleagues do a good job covering sizable ground on their core topic, something missing from their discussion is the body of work demonstrating that leader impact comes at a significant cost to leaders themselves.Spend a typical day with a CEO of a Fortune 500 firm, a morning with a small business owner, or an afternoon with the president of a university, and one question is likely to emerge: Why on earth would anyone want to be a leader?If we're being candid, the benefits of leadership are frequently a few nontrivial perks mixed with an all-to-often awful set of daily experiences.Leaders take on every crisis and engage in near constant problem solving.Decades of research underscore the toll leadership takes on people willing to take on these roles (e.g., Byrne et al., 2014;Ganster & Rosen, 2013;Harms et al., 2017).There is a reason U.S. presidents and world leaders seem to age so rapidly after years in office.The crown may be made of precious metals and stones (i.e., CEO salaries are admittedly exorbitant), but it is also quite heavy.Leadership comes at a significant cost.Narcissism and the all-too-often linkage to leadership.These collective observations illustrate the intuitive observed relationship between narcissism and leadership emergence (e.g., Brunell et al., 2008;Grijalva et al., 2015).To be sure, some individuals pursue leadership with prosocial aims: They recognize that stepping into such roles may be necessary to advance meaningful causes, or they do so reluctantly to prevent a more narcissistic colleague from embracing power.These cases exist, have significant impact, and should not be dismissed.All too often, however, leadership positions serve as magnets for those seeking power, status, and prestige for their own sake.The very way most leadership structures are designed rewards self-interest and ego, creating an environment where narcissistic tendencies are not only common but almost a prerequisite for ascending to the top of many organizations.As Mitchell and colleagues illustrate