#elan

A classic British sports car known for its handling prowess.

Élan Dies When the Boss Can’t Hear “No”

TL;DR: Real élan comes from teams thinking together, and narcissistic leaders kill it by treating feedback like an insult instead of a navigation system.

The ego is the outage.

The blind spot factory. Élan isn’t just “good vibes” with a nicer accent. It’s the shared drive that makes a group move with trust, speed, and courage. You see it when engineers catch a flaw before launch, when nurses coordinate under pressure, when customer support says “people hate this policy” and leadership actually listens. That’s collective intelligence in motion. Not one genius on a stage. Not one founder with a personal mythology. A team with enough safety to tell the truth.

Then narcissistic leadership walks in and starts dimming the room. Because feedback is the fuel, and narcissists hear feedback as disrespect. Machiavellian leaders treat it as a threat to control. Psychopathic-style leaders shrug at the human cost as long as they look decisive. Different flavors, same poison. Anti-collaborative. Anti-learning. Anti-team. And yes, we’ve seen this movie recently in corporate life: vanity pivots sold as “bold strategy,” brutal layoffs delivered like content, return-to-office decrees from executives who don’t live the commute, leaders blaming “execution” after ignoring months of warnings. It’s not brilliance. It’s a feedback allergy with a bonus package.

The evidence is annoyingly clear. Research by Anita Woolley and colleagues found that a group’s collective intelligence isn’t mostly explained by the smartest individual in the room. It comes from social sensitivity, balanced participation, and the ability to read and respond to each other. Google’s Project Aristotle pointed the same way: psychological safety was the biggest factor in high-performing teams. Translation: the room gets smarter when people can speak. Dark triad traits attack that system at the roots.

Narcissism creates blind spots because criticism gets reframed as betrayal, so people stop bringing bad news early.

Machiavellianism creates fake alignment because information becomes a weapon, not a shared resource.

Psychopathy creates damage because fear looks like speed right up until customers, workers, or the public pay the bill.

And no, this isn’t a plea for mushy leadership. Hard calls exist. Urgency exists. Sometimes the group is split and someone has to decide. Fine. But conviction without feedback is just ego with a calendar invite. The best leaders don’t need to prove they’re smarter than the collective because they know the collective sees what they can’t. The warehouse crew sees the unsafe shortcut. The junior analyst sees the weird data. The frontline manager sees the burnout before HR does. The customer support team hears the market before the board deck admits it.

That’s what corporate culture keeps missing. It rewards the person who dominates the room, talks in certainty, crushes dissent, and calls the silence “alignment.” Then everyone acts stunned when the launch fails, the scandal breaks, or the best people leave. A strong economy doesn’t come from worshiping corporate gladiators who drain the life out of teams. It comes from people who are free enough, secure enough, and respected enough to tell the truth before things collapse.

Lightweight E!  SilhouetteHistory

Silhouettes of Lotus Elan M100 with open and closed roof and the Speedster Concept.

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Lightweight E! Speedster SilhouetteHistory

Silhouette of Lotus Elan M100 Speedster Concept.

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