ePsych News

Is Your Boss a Corporate Psychopath?

Do these characteristics sound familiar?

• Superficially charming, even warm

• Extreme intimidation of others, especially behind closed doors

• Impulsive behaviour

• Manipulative and controlling

• Self-obsessed

• Lack of remorse, and even apparent satisfaction or pleasure, after harming others

Yes?  Then you possibly have been, or currently are, working with a corporate psychopath.

Contrary to popular perception, psychopathology is not always about murderousness.  It is defined broadly as 'callous behaviour without normal feelings of empathy or guilt'.  And there's a surprising amount of it about.

According to a recent report on the ABC's Catalyst program, one woman in 200 is classifiable as a psychopath, as is one man out of every 50 - overall, approximately one person in 80.  This means that every large organisation has several of them; chances are, you have several psychopaths in your building. 

Worse, many companies are unwittingly selecting in favour of psychopathology, especially when recruiting executives.  Their charm, fearlessness and "whatever it takes" attitude can win over even experienced interviewers, and with rapid job turnover they can march up the ranks at great speed.

Consequently, the chance of psychopaths holding senior positions in industry and government is disquietingly high.  We only have to consider the great wars of history, acts of national aggression in our own lifetimes, and examples of extraordinary corporate self-interest, to see the power of the pathology that we have allowed to slip past the sentries.  Criminals in neckties.

Says Stephanie Thompson, Chief Psychologist at Insight Matters, "On our personality profiling tool we have a scale called "Dominator".  These people are very dynamic and get things moving, so they seem attractive.  However, they can get the wrong things moving because they intimidate and destroy people psychologically as they go.  It may look like there's a lot of activity in their unit, but it's a dance of one step forward and three steps back." 

Closer investigation often reveals staff protecting a 'family secret' of persistent abuse by their manager. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, Stephanie speaks from experience.  "It's really my fault that we have all these scales in our profiling systems at Insight Matters.  We have another one called "Directive Leadership" which is just a polite term for this set of traits.  My own horrendous experience with such a person has made me acutely cautious about the destructive power of hostile emotional dysfunction in the workplace."

How can someone behave this way?  Don't they just need interpersonal skills training?  Well, research on criminal psychopaths suggests that unfortunately this may just give them more effective tools with which to manipulate and intimidate.

The problem is that psychopaths don't have a normal response - or any response - to others' emotional or physical pain.  For most of us, when we view emotive photographs such as someone who's very upset, our brains respond.  We feel, literally, some of what the other person is feeling.  Empathy is in fact a physically measurable response - not some fluffy abstract notion.  It enables us to 'see inside' another person. 

However, psychopath brains don't respond this way - they don't light up.  That's how they are able to manipulate others.  It's pure logic, without any of the normal self-censoring which would otherwise protect others' feelings and rights.

What causes this extreme hard-heartedness is a subject of much debate and investigation.  Childhood abuse is often cited, as are illness, nutritional imbalances and genetics.  Some cases remain unexplained. 

How can you avoid this?  

Well, the bad news is that psychopaths can be initially very hard to spot.  If you don't work closely with them you could remain unaware for a long time.  If you do work closely with one, others may not believe you - "He seems so nice..." 

That's why 360-degree Profiling is useful to have as a standard performance development tool.  It becomes suddenly very obvious that there are glaring discrepancies between how staff perceive their manager and how their peers or boss perceive them.  It's a huge clue.

However, "It all really starts with recruitment", says Stephanie.  "So many problems could be avoided.

"I don't advocate 'clinical' profiling of job applicants, because there are laws in many countries which prevent such intrusiveness, and I agree with that.  However, there are a small number of business tools like Expert Profiler which can at least give you big clues.  There are specific patterns of personality data which in my experience do a good job of predicting problematic behaviour, and these tools are fine to use in most normal employment situations."

What if it's too late?  You have a psychopath...and he's your boss.  Well, for your own sake it may be easiest to leave.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Your sanity and health are more important than any job ever will be. 

But, before you go down that route, please - please - tell someone in authority about the problem.  Just like abused children, even adults can feel so beaten down and emotionally shattered at the manipulative hands of a psychopathic or dysfunctional manager, that they just don't tell anyone.  You may feel as though it might somehow be your fault, but it isn't.  You are not crazy.  Please ask for help.

Inspired by ABC's Catalyst program, May 2005.  Also with thanks to Peter Storey of the Macquarie Institute. 

Note:  Not everyone who displays some or all of these behaviours will necessarily be a true 'psychopath' by clinical definition.  Some managers may simply lack emotional maturity or understanding, which can respond to coaching.  Do not make your own diagnosis.

Related resources

Expert Profiler

Pre-employment Assessment

Coaching for People Problems

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