Let me clear something up before we start: neither you nor I can diagnose anybody. Narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical condition that only a professional can identify, and your boss will never sit for that evaluation.
Here’s the good news: you don’t need a diagnosis to protect yourself. You need to recognize a pattern — because patterns predict behavior, and predictable is survivable. After a career in law enforcement, security, and federal service, watching this kind of leader operate in every setting imaginable, here are the nine traits I’ve seen define the narcissistic manager — and what each one tells you about how to respond.
The Nine Traits
1. Every conversation returns to him. Your project update becomes his war story. Your problem becomes his bigger problem. The meeting is a stage, and there’s only one lead role.
2. He needs constant admiration — and it never lasts. Praise him Monday and he needs it again Tuesday. His ego is like a tank with holes in the bottom: everything you pour in drains out by morning. This is why flattery buys you days, never safety.
3. Criticism of him — however gentle — is treated as an attack. Feedback that any healthy leader would absorb becomes a wound he’ll remember for months, and repay.
4. Your success threatens him. This is the trait that matters most if you’re a strong performer. A secure boss celebrates your wins; a narcissistic one experiences them as theft. If the treatment turned cold right after your best work — the promotion, the praise, the visible win — you’ve found the pattern. Scripture captured it three thousand years ago: after the crowd praised David over Saul, “Saul eyed David from that day and forward” (1 Samuel 18:9).
5. He takes credit and assigns blame. Wins travel upward wearing his name. Failures travel downward wearing yours. Watch this one across months — it’s one of the most consistent tells.
6. Rules are for other people. The policies he enforces on you bend for him. The behavior he punishes in others is standard for himself.
7. Empathy shows up only when it’s useful. He can perform warmth impressively — with clients, with his bosses, on the days he needs something. The mask drops with people who have nothing to offer him.
8. He keeps people small and dependent. Development, visibility, and relationships that don’t run through him get quietly starved. His ideal team is capable enough to make him look good and dependent enough to never leave.
9. His reactions are wildly disproportionate. Small slights produce huge storms. That’s because you’re not measuring against your stakes — you’re measuring against his. To a man whose entire identity is the title, every ripple in the office is an earthquake.
What to Do With This Pattern
If you counted five or more of those traits with a sinking feeling, here’s the strategy in brief — and notice what’s not on the list: winning him over. You can’t fill a leaking tank, and you can’t earn permanent safety from a person whose insecurity resets every morning.
Instead: stop feeding him reactions (calm, brief, factual — always). Pin agreements in writing with polite same-day confirmation emails. Keep a private, dated record of incidents and witnesses, off company systems. Stay visible beyond him — people above and around him who know your value firsthand are your real protection. And keep your options quietly alive, because leverage changes everything, including how you sleep.
Go Deeper
The full psychology — why this kind of leader targets his best people, the seven disguised weapons he uses, and the complete survival playbook drawn from the original case study of an insecure king and his excellent servant — is in my book, The Spirit of Saul: Surviving the Boss Who Wants to See You Fall.
You don’t need his diagnosis. You need your strategy.
Commissioner William Epps is an author and security leadership consultant. His books are published through E.P.P.S Method Publishing Co.
Commissioner William Epps 
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