Narcissists are driven by need to uphold and maintain a false self - a concocted, grandiose, and demanding psychological construct typical of narcissistic personality disorder. The false self is projected to world in order to garner "narcissistic supply" - adulation, admiration, or even notoriety and infamy. Any kind of attention is usually deemed by narcissists to be preferable to obscurity.

The false self is suffused with fantasies of perfection, grandeur, brilliance, infallibility, immunity, significance, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. To be a narcissist is to be convinced of a great, inevitable personal destiny. The narcissist is preoccupied with ideal love, construction of brilliant, revolutionary scientific theories, composition or authoring or painting of greatest work of art, founding of a new school of thought, attainment of fabulous wealth, reshaping of a nation or a conglomerate, and so on. The narcissist never sets realistic goals to himself. He is forever preoccupied with fantasies of uniqueness, record breaking, or breathtaking achievements. His verbosity reflects this propensity.

Reality is, naturally, quite different and this gives rise to a "grandiosity gap". The demands of false self are never satisfied by narcissist's accomplishments, standing, wealth, clout, sexual prowess, or knowledge. The narcissist's grandiosity and sense of entitlement are equally incommensurate with his achievements.

To bridge grandiosity gap, malignant (pathological) narcissist resorts to shortcuts. These very often lead to fraud.

The narcissist cares only about appearances. What matters to him are facade of wealth and its attendant social status and narcissistic supply. Witness travestied extravagance of Tyco's Denis Kozlowski. Media attention only exacerbates narcissist's addiction and makes it incumbent on him to go to ever-wilder extremes to secure uninterrupted supply from this source.

The narcissist lacks empathy - ability to put himself in other people's shoes. He does not recognize boundaries - personal, corporate, or legal. Everything and everyone are to him mere instruments, extensions, objects unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his pursuit of narcissistic gratification.

This makes narcissist perniciously exploitative. He uses, abuses, devalues, and discards even his nearest and dearest in most chilling manner. The narcissist is utility- driven, obsessed with his overwhelming need to reduce his anxiety and regulate his labile sense of self-worth by securing a constant supply of his drug - attention. American executives acted without compunction when they raided their employees' pension funds - as did Robert Maxwell a generation earlier in Britain.

The narcissist is convinced of his superiority - cerebral or physical. To his mind, he is a Gulliver hamstrung by a horde of narrow-minded and envious Lilliputians. The dotcom "new economy" was infested with "visionaries" with a contemptuous attitude towards mundane: profits, business cycles, conservative economists, doubtful journalists, and cautious analysts.

Yet, deep inside, narcissist is painfully aware of his addiction to others - their attention, admiration, applause, and affirmation. He despises himself for being thus dependent. He hates people same way a drug addict hates his pusher. He wishes to "put them in their place", humiliate them, demonstrate to them how inadequate and imperfect they are in comparison to his regal self and how little he craves or needs them.

Why All Managers are Alike

Because, like you I suspect, they have key target audiences whose behaviors help or hinder them in achieving their organizational objectives.

But even in their own best interests, too few involve themselves in their public relations effort to degree they should.

The result can be a PR program that overemphasizes things like special events, media relations or communications tactics, without a basic, realistic plan for delivering key audience behaviors they need to succeed.

I’m talking about behaviors that lead to strong community support; increased repeat purchases; growing capital contributions; positive consumer reaction; higher employee retention rates; healthier relationships with bargaining units; legislators viewing organization as a key player in business or charitable communities; competitors with a grudging but healthy respect for your operation, and suppliers ever more anxious to keep your good will.

If this sounds like something you might like, make sure your public relations team applies a fundamental premise like this one to your unit’s operating priorities: People act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action very people whose behaviors affect organization most, public relations mission is accomplished.

The payoff for your department, division or subsidiary will be a public relations effort pretty much in sync with where you want to go.

For emphasis, I repeat – from get-go, you need to aim your effort squarely at those outside groups of people whose behaviors really DO affect your organization. In short, you need a blueprint that helps persuade those stakeholders to your way of thinking, hopefully moving them to take actions that lead both to your success and that of your organization.