Published on: April 15, 2026 at 9:51 am
While narcissistic leadership is a well-known problem in governments worldwide, it also plagues countless businesses, ranging from lower-level management such as department heads and assistant managers to high-level management such as CEOs and managing directors. In today’s polarizing political climate, the line between business and government has been blurred, as business leaders—either iconic or notorious, depending on your perspective—hold power, and narcissistic leadership has increasingly become an unfortunate norm.
Academy of Management Scholar Tim Pollock of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville shared some insights into powerful alliances between business tycoons, using Elon Musk and President Donald Trump as a top-of-mind example.
“Musk is a classic narcissist,” Pollock said. “And basically everything Trump has done in the White House, especially in the second term—when there are no guardrails anymore—you can see the effects of malignant narcissism.
“And I’m not talking about the policy stuff,” he said. “I’m talking about the unqualified but sycophantically loyal people he is putting into positions of power, the erratic, self-absorbed behaviors, the gyrations on decisions such as tariffs based on his whims and who he thinks has insulted him most recently, and blaming everybody other than himself for any mistakes or failures.”
With a strong partnership between two influential businesspeople who became celebrities and, more recently, political figures with apparent narcissistic tendencies, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), initially led by Musk, drives home the reality that the Trump administration is running the American government as if it were a business whose leader values blind loyalty above all else.
Profiting off the presidency
Narcissists focus on how they can reap benefits for themselves regardless of how that affects others. In addition to get-rich-quick courses, mail-order steaks, gold sneakers, and a range of other Trump-branded paraphernalia, not to mention hosting official functions at his own hotels and golf courses, cryptocurrency in general—and TrumpCoin in particular—is a prime example of a calculated business plan recently backed by the political powers-that-be, with the president himself leading the way. There are various examples of products that he hawks, gets a quick profit from, and then walks away from if it fails.
“On the business side, Trump, his family members, administration insiders, and business associates have seen opportunities to make money via TrumpCoin and other cryptocurrencies too,” Pollock said. “There’s no problem that crypto, and especially TrumpCoin, is actually solving.”
“It’s mostly a grift—something that’s easy to promote and quickly make lots of lots of money off of,” he said. “There’s also definitely been more of a pay-to-play culture in the Trump administration.”
Cultural shift—for better or worse
The union between an unethical business culture and a political movement led by a narcissist with authoritarian tendencies could shape what is accepted in companies’ cultures and politics alike. In that context, the public falling out between Trump and Musk in 2025 and rumored reconciliation at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona are notable.
“When your interests align with the narcissists’ interests, it’s great, but when they diverge, you run into problems,” Pollock said. “Think about the small town with the business guy who has his fingers in all the pies and dominates all the other businesses.
“It isn’t just in the White House,” he said. “Narcissists are going to be more likely to do well in that type of ethics-free environment, because they’re not bound by the same kind of moral *strictures.”
