Defence also rewards (maybe unknowingly) this kind of behaviour. It is steeped in the culture. The sailors (non officers) tend to not have these traits but were still odd in that they all seemed to exhibit the same clone style behaviour.

Defence is constantly in the media for bullying and deception. Inquiries yield the truth…….sometimes, yet the outcome does not change….the behaviour continues. I believe they need the “help” of forensic psychiatrists and psychologists to alter the culture….waiting generations for a small culture change each generation is unlikely to occur.

NPD do not make for a safer Defence model in wars. In this modern society, very few Defence personal are placed in an old fashioned “you must follow orders” situation and these few come from the Army. The rest of them are in exceedingly safe, almost boring situations where NPD and petty power plays take so much time, money and lives.

I guess the other place is in hospitals…..the medical schools are trying to screen such personalities now.

It is interesting that our most significant in person and most productive GM was one who always stressed that it was the “team” that was important in Operations (production of ore and its gold); it was the “teams” we ourselves put together in our respective departments that would keep our mine running. Under this particular GM the mine went through what we called ‘our golden era’ because set targets were always achieved, all HODs and their seconds lived as a closely knit working team and each of us treated our respective departmental teams as part of our working family. For me, I took this working philosophy into the community – that’s another story.

Much later we lost our great GM (he moved on) and on the strength of his production records the company was sold and then we got another significant GM: teams slowly died under the new onslaught of “I ” and “you will”. Under a new CEO and this GM an exodus of the previous management team began : assets stripped, Operations dropped and its production levels plummeted; this GM also became disillusioned and he eventually guided the resale of the mine. I retired in 2007 approximately 12 months before the resale.

The mine has never returned to anywhere near its golden era, yet it holds enormous potential. I would say the rot set in under the “I” and “you will” strategy of management, operations and production. The further interesting point here was the “I” and “you will” was not the face shown in negotiations with government, NGOs and Church/Faith based organisations, which meant that back on site the team had to somehow reconcile this contradiction in our work and deal with the “gap” the contradiction was developing.

I did my BA at Macquarie as a mature age student, loved those days, then went on to Sydney and did my PhD in Anthropology and eventually worked on 2 gold mines in PNG.

Great research idea! Wish you the best of luck.

Dolly

George Maltby (CEO of OTC prior to its “merger” with Telecom) is not in the least narcissistic. OTC’s performance (on almost any measure) was excellent (even if it was a monopoly) when compared to other countries’ (monopoly) international telecommunications service providers.

On the other hand, Sol Trujillo’s ( former CEO of Telstra, that many would consider him a narcissist), performance in the CEO role could easily be described as (relative to say, current CEO, David Thodley) a disaster.