The Disturbing Link Between Psychopathy And Leadership
Why your boss could easily be a psychopath - Telegraph
Horrible bosses: New study shows that modern offices reward narcissism and psychopathic behaviour | Daily Mail Online
Are CEOs and Entrepreneurs psychopaths? Multiple studies say “Yes”
October 1, 2013 by 5 Comments
Either it is the sign of our times, where success is almost akin to mental sickness, or our generation has a rather unfair share of mentally sick individuals. Because some of the findings on the world of business seem rather strange.
A news research study by Australian School of Business at the University of NSW suggests that psychopathic tendencies can also make for good entrepreneurs. The behavior of psychopaths and entrepreneurs is not very different. Their modus operandi seems seems very similar in how they handle things.
“Psychopaths commit an offence, go to prison, then come out and commit the offence again, because they fail to learn from the prison experience,” said PhD student Benjamin Walker. “Our study showed the novel result is that participants high in entrepreneurial intentions showed the same pattern.”
This particular research comprised 605 participants across three laboratory studies. Mr Walker and Professor of Business Psychology Chris Jackson found that people with either psychopathic or entrepreneurial intentions persisted through adversity in a risk-taking task in a very similar way.
But this study is not the only one which suggests that entrepreneurs or those at the helm in business have psychopathic tendencies. Even British journalist Jon Ronsonhas discussed similar findings in his latest book discussing the psychopathic tendencies of the CEOs.
British journalist Jon Ronson immersed himself in the world of mental health diagnosis and criminal profiling to understand what makes some people psychopaths — dangerous predators who lack the behavioral controls and tender feelings the rest of us take for granted. Among the things he learned while researching his new book, “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry”: the incidence of psychopathy among CEOs is about 4 percent, four times what it is in the population at large.
In another study psychologist and Executive coach Paul Babiak found that One in 25 Business leaders are psychopaths.
One in 25 bosses may be psychopaths — a rate that’s four times greater than in the general population — according to research by psychologist and executive coach Paul Babiak.Babiak studied 203 American corporate professionals who had been chosen by their companies to participate in a management training program. He evaluated their psychopathic traits using a version of the standard psychopathy checklist developed by Robert Hare, an expert in psychopathy at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
There was a time when successful and rich people were known by the amount of charity they did for the society. But it seems that as the stock markets rule the world of business and what the CEOs do every day and every month, traits insincerity, lack of truthfulness and lack of remorse and shame become second nature.
Traits of psychopathsdefined below.
The following characteristics of a psychopath, defined by Hervery M. Cleckley in 1941 in the bookMask of Sanity include:
- Superficial charm and average intelligence.
- Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.
- Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations.
- Unreliability.
- Untruthfulness and insincerity.
- Lack of remorse or shame.
- Antisocial behavior without apparent compunction.
- Poor judgement and failure to learn from experience.
- Pathological egocentricity and incapacity to love.
- General poverty in major affective reactions.
- Specific loss of insight.
- Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.
- Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink, and sometimes without.
- Suicide threats rarely carried out.
- Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated
7 Reasons Why Psychopaths make Great Managers
What do you think of when you think of a psychopath? Hanibal Lecter? Serial killers and axe murderers? Then you would be in good company.
But being a psychopath in the workplace is no bad thing, according to the recently published book ‘The Wisdom of Psychopaths’ by Professor Kevin Dutton a research psychologist at Oxford. In fact, he says that psychopathic traits can make for a very successful manager – assuming the manager can keep his or her more antisocial psychopathic impulses under wraps.
Here are 7 reasons why psychopaths make great managers:
- They are charming: charm is an essential ingredient in business success – charming people make more friends, they get more business opportunities, and important people are more likely to remember them.
- They have charisma: Psychopathic personalities
have the ability to captivate and inspire an audience – a hugely important
leadership quality. - They are fearless: They will stand up for their
beliefs and forge ahead regardless of what the risks may be and what others
think of them. - They are persuasive: Persuasion is a key indicator of leadership success, from persuading the cleaner to make the lobby extra sparkly for some important guests through to presenting ideas to and gaining agreement from peers and senior executives.
- They are ruthless: Psychopaths take what they want and stop at nothing to achieve their goals. They are focused and, more importantly, feared. Fear lasts longer than love in the workplace – sad but true.
- They lack conscience: Basically they don’t care that they are ruthless and do not lose any sleep at night over people they may have upset – if they have even noticed they have upset anyone, of course.
- They are narcissitic: Psychopathic personalities know what they want (to be the leader), they strongly believe they are the best person for the job, and they have no doubts whatsoever that they should be in charge; they are confident, assertive, and focused on self-interests. They have great visions and achieve them. It’s argued that many of the revered leaders of the technological revolution are narcissists – think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Of course, remember that all research points to the fact that managers are made, not born – so don’t despair at your career opportunities if you lack the psychopathic edge – you can still aspire to a senior management role with the right personal development and training!
7 reasons why psychopaths make great managers
A book came out some years ago on the same subject:
Let's say you're about to hire somebody for a position in your company. Your corporation wants someone who's fearless, charismatic, and full of new ideas. Candidate X is charming, smart, and has all the right answers to your questions. Problem solved, right? Maybe not.
We'd like to think that if we met someone who was completely without conscience -- someone who was capable of doing anything at all if it served his or her purposes -- we would recognize it. In popular culture, the image of the psychopath is of someone like Hannibal Lecter or the BTK Killer. But in reality, many psychopaths just want money, or power, or fame, or simply a nice car. Where do these psychopaths go? Often, it's to the corporate world.
Researchers Paul Babiak and Robert Hare have long studied psychopaths. Hare, the author of Without Conscience, is a world-renowned expert on psychopathy, and Babiak is an industrial-organizational psychologist. Recently the two came together to study how psychopaths operate in corporations, and the results were surprising. They found that it's exactly the modern, open, more flexible corporate world, in which high risks can equal high profits, that attracts psychopaths. They may enter as rising stars and corporate saviors, but all too soon they're abusing the trust of colleagues, manipulating supervisors, and leaving the workplace in shambles.
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work: Amazon.co.uk: Paul Babiak, Robert D. Hare: BooksBut the idea resurfaced after the 2008 crash:
Psychopaths 'flourish' at top of corporate ladder -- Science of the Spirit -- Sott.net
A movie soon after made the same point:
On Your Head: Psychopathic and narcissistic: you should go far
ARE you passive-aggressive? Are you deeply resentful of successful people? Do you have low emotional intelligence? Don’t worry — there are many jobs out there where these characteristics are essential for success.
Passive-aggressive means you never express your hostility and resentment directly. It means being sullen and negative. And you might find it huge fun to bait others who are more successful than you. The pleasure of making the rich and powerful wait is unalloyed joy. Make them suffer for their success; get even.
The story is the paradox of your dark side. Most people, particularly when frustrated, exhibit the symptoms of personality disorders — arrogance or scepticism, avoidance or emotionality. Those studying the surprising number of chief executives who fail and derail are often surprised by the pathology they find. And what is most odd is that their dark side helped them climb the greasy pole of corporate life in the first place.
Again and again, two conditions are implicated in the derailing of very successful people in business: narcissism and anti-social personality disorder.
Narcissism is characterised by a sense of entitlement — the belief that you are made for leadership, especially talented and entitled to exploit others for your own end. It is also characterised by adolescent self-absorption and self-admiration — the belief that you are special and totally worthy of adoration.
Pathologically over-confident managers really believe in themselves. They have no doubt that they are unique and that there is a reason they are on this planet. They are often fiercely competitive and love getting to the top and enjoy staying there. They have no trouble visualising themselves as the hero, the star. They are certainly good at accepting praise gracefully and with self-possession, but they often have an emotional vulnerability to the negative feelings and assessments of others, which are deeply felt.
On the bright side, narcissists can be good at delegating, good at team building and good at delivering. They can also be good mentors and genuinely help others. However, subordinates soon learn that things go wrong if they do not follow certain rules.
The dark side of narcissistic managers is that they tend to have shallow, functional, uncommitted relationships. As they are both needy and egocentric, they tend not to make close, supportive friendships in the workplace. They can often feel empty and neglected as a result.
Next, the psychopath. Psychiatrists now talk about the “successful psychopath”, once called the “industrial psychopath”. They have identified two core factors: “fearless dominance” and “impulsive anti-sociality”.
The first reveals itself in seeming immunity from worry, stress or nervousness. These people are bold and thrill seeking. They have a sort of social zest — a need to take charge, push ahead. They thrive in poorly regulated sectors and are often called in to “kick arse” and do some “slash and burn” management. Their lack of conscience helps them a great deal.
More alarming are the characteristics of impulsive anti-sociality — huge unreliability, a failure to learn from experience, and lying. These people act on whims and want immediate gratification, whatever the cost. Psychopaths are both callous and interpersonally manipulative.
There is often a lot of anger in the successful psychopath. They ruminate on revenge and show significant displaced aggression, meaning they see aggression in others when it is within themselves. They also have criminal tendencies: stealing, lying, cheating — everything from bigamy (surprisingly common) to impersonation. But, worse, there can be violence, often associated with the movie-character psychopath.
However, successful psychopaths are not only able to survive, but to thrive in the business world. They prefer situations of great change and flux with little monitoring. They happily exploit the trust and naivety of good people, cheating them out of everything they have, from their fortune to their self-respect.
So the City beckons and rewards clever, articulate, handsome, narcissistic psychopaths. But what about the sour, less attractive and minimally socially skilled passive-aggressives?
You don’t have to deal with many public sector agencies to know where they thrive. Would any reader like to list the top 10 jobs for these people?
Adrian Furnham is professor of psychology at University College London
In fact, to what extent is the company or corporation 'psychopathic'?
Psychopathic behavior[edit]
Legal Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia Joel Bakan describes the modern corporate entity as 'an institutional psychopath' and a 'psychopathic creature.' In the documentary The Corporation, Bakan claims that corporations, when considered as natural living persons, exhibit the traits of antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy. Also in the film, Robert Monks, a former Republican Party candidate for Senate from Maine, says:
Criticisms of corporations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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