Is Your Boss a Psychopath?

Dogers writes "Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy Checklist, has recently been applying his test 'Is your boss a psychopath' to businessmen and has found some disturbing results. From the article: 'Why wouldn't we want to screen them? We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?'. Citing Enron and Worldcom management as an example, it seems a reasonable argument. The same source also has a quiz (magazine produced it seems) which allows you to test your own boss, too!"

Comments

Douglas Adams knew why

[Dark Paladin]

Why do so many bosses suck?

Because those who desire the power should be the least likely to have it. I've had some good bosses, and 90% of the time they didn't really want the job, they just kind of grew into it over time.

Other times - whew. There was the one boss who, coming in the first day, told everybody that he wasn't there to be a friend, and he could fire the whole department at a moment's notice if he wanted.

5 minutes later I was dusting off my resume. When he found me dressing nice (so I could go on lunch breaks, which were really interviews), he told me he'd fired me if he caught me interviewing somewhere else. And he'd know, because he had "contacts" all over town who would tell him. "Contacts" who would call him and ask if I was applying somewhere. Private eyes - were watching me - they'd see my every move.

Oddly enough, I guess his contacts forgot to call him three days later when I quit and went to my new, higher paying, better hours job.

So if nothing else, I'm thankful for bad bosses, since they seem to be the greatest force in people finding new and better jobs. (Even though they suck.)

Re:The question is why do they exist?

[AKAImBatman]

If Psycopathy has a genetic component, then has it survived natural selection.

Putting aside the arguments over "natural selection", it remains in the gene pool because it works. There are often situations that require someone to push through the bullcrap and make something happen. These sociopaths are far more suited to this task because they care nothing for the consequences, or who's opinion they ignore, or who's feelings they hurt. They may not even care about who lives or dies. (Which in some situations, someone will die no matter what course is taken.) The problem has always been that they are a tough fit for any society they create. As the article says, they want the next thrill immediately. Yet emergency situations requiring their brashness tend to be very rare.

Retort

[imstanny]

'Why wouldn't we want to screen them? We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?'

Because if screening teachers & policemen for psychopaths has taught us anything, it's that it obviously doesn't work.

And secondly, are we to assume that if you are a psychopath you cannot do your job?

Screen them "in" is more like it...

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

Are you kidding me?... These are desirable characteristics for an executive! You're talking like this should BLOCK them, when in fact they should be screened FOR being a psychopath before they're offered that top management spot.

The faster we get this mess over with, the better. We should just start offering MBA's to the prisioners in all the "super-max" facilities.... That way, they could start being useful immed. upon their return to society. I can just see it now...."IPO to be offered upon parole"

To prove my point... http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=5176
see the story about this guy, he's continuing to get paid WHILE he's serving 18 mos. for criminal offenses. The board kept him on because he's a "visionary" and "knows the business" the best!

Last week, Wiederhorn pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to two felonies--bribing local money manager Jeff Grayson and lying to the IRS. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail and ordered to pay $2 million in restitution and a $25,000 fine.

Then the other shoe dropped. Turns out that Wiederhorn managed to engineer a deal in which his current company, Fog Cutter Capital Group, granted him a leave of absence, kept him on the company payroll at $350,000 a year--and handed him a bonus of $2 million.

See what I mean?

Re:Screen them "in" is more like it...

[vidarh]

I think you better RTFA. The point being that a psycopathic manager, while many of the characteristics may seem desirable in isolation, is there only to serve his/her own goals and has no loyalty to the company. They do what they do for their own self interests, and if there are shortcuts that help them achieve it they will take those shortcuts even if it harms the company. Witness Enron, Worldcom and other companies that have collapsed as a result of their managers attempts to manipulate themselves to power and money.

Ultimately, these kinds of managers are a threat to shareholders because they have no empathy not only with the competitors, but also not to the employees nor to the shareholders they are responsible to. They don't care if the company collapses as long as they get out first (and sometimes they don't).

These people get hired because some of their traits are highly useful, but the people doing the hiring doesn't know about the remaining aspects of their personality. The goal of the test is exactly to expose those who aren't merely tough and able to detach themselves and do the difficult jobs when they have to, but who are actually psychopaths and will happily do something because they don't have any empathy or driven only by self interest.

There's a huge difference between someone that knows what is needed for the company to succeed and is willing to take tough decisions (like firing lots of staff) but that understands the effects that has on other people and only does it when it actually is needed, and someone who is a psycopath who would be ready to fire whoever they feel like using whatever excuse works if they think it will benefit themselves (ref. the example of Al Dunlap in the article) by impressing shareholders for instance.

Being able to determine if someone belongs to the former or latter categories would be immensely useful to a lot of companies.

psychopath vs sociopath

[krgallagher]

You know it always annoys me when I see these two words confused. As I was taught, a psychopath cannot hide his mental illness. A psychopath is the person who crashes into McDonalds and starts shooting. Sociopaths are serial killers that manage to hide their predilections for years without getting caught.

Monster saved us from a boss...

[Tominva1045]

My software dev team worked for Atilla-the-dumb once. The guy was so afraid of loosing the mid-management position he had clawed his way to that he spend much of his time getting the team to fight with each other so he could step in to save the day.

We found his resume on the network drive one day, submitted it to Monster, Dice, and a few others. Withn a month he was all excited about his "value" and took another job.

That's what we call a win-win.

Re:Not only business

[Quixote]

True. The difference is that in the academic world, noone can hold a tenured professor accountable. In the business world, there's the possibility of the shareholders or the SEC stepping in. There are no such protections in the academic world.

As long as the professor doesn't bang his hottie students (while they're in his class) or doesn't plagiarise, he's golden.

I have seen professors deliberately delay the dissertation defence of students by years, just to keep them working on their projects. After having spent 5-6 years working on the dissertation, the student can't just get up and leave. He has to stick around kissing the arse of the professor, working 60-hour weeks for below minimum wage just to get the coveted signature some day.

People who have not experienced the academic world up close have abso-fucking-lutely no idea how bad it can get in there.

Sociopaths

[FriedTurkey]

In American society, it seems like this kind of selfishness is a virtue Ayn Rand crap is increasingly becoming an accepted part of the culture. The crap that American is more successful because we have sociopaths running the government and corporations makes no sense. The Enrons and Haliburtons are draining our society and only bringing American down. Selfish politicians are killing the government.

People who subscribe to the philosophy that selfishness is a virtue need people who have a consciences to feed on. A world full of Ayn Rand sociopaths would not even be a place were Ayn Rand sociopaths want to live in.

Actually, no

[Moraelin]

I've actually worked with nice people in management positions. Even from the bad managers I've seen, the ways in which one can be "bad" at one's job are more diverse than being a psychopath or sociopath. Psychopaths do exist, they're not a majority.

Also, for a start, I don't think that berating someone is necessarily bad (much less a sign of being a psychopath). People make mistakes, or do something wrong, or whatever. _I_ make mistakes. I like to think a good manager would tell me when that's the case. (But don't blow it out of proportion, and don't forget the positive feedback too when/if that's deserved.)

I also don't think that "exploiting" someone is a crime. For better or worse, selling my work to a company is the way the economy works. A manager is there to manage and organize that process.

You can think of it as a necessary evil. Personally I don't even consider it "evil". If the boss is doing a good job of organizing things, that's less chaos for me to deal with, so that's actually improving my life.

And, anyway, if they do their job well, I see no problem with them earning a living out of that.

There _are_ ways to be an asshole about it, and yes I've seen awful assholes in management positions. But there are also ways of doing that job without being an asshole.

Re:The question is why do they exist?

[FidelCatsro]

Stalin was perhaps , he was defiantly an evil bastard .

Mao was not a psychopath he was a zealot .

Pol Pot i will give you .. he was quite possibly psychopathic .

  Castro (the nick is a joke) is defiantly not a psychopath and would possibly fall under the zealot heading.

Che Guevara was defiantly a zealot

Killing a lot of people does not mean you're automatically a psychopath , its the motivation behind you actions .

I worked for a couple.

[www.sorehands.com]

One psychopath that I worked for was Barry Lewis. He would have screaming fits on the phone. After he refused to pay me for a month, he still wanted me to spend time working for him, when I told him that I'd gather what he wanted, once I received payment, he then started calling me about 20 times a day.

He was convicted of harassment. The ADA told me that Barry Lewis threatened him and some of the other employees of the court.

My experience

[Dexter77]

I work as an R&D director in a medium size software company. Some time ago we hired a very promising director. She immediately became close friends with our managing director. At the time I didn't see anything wrong with it. But changes were about to come..

There was a well liked and very good technical worker in my team. Only problem was his appereance. The director couldn't stand the way he was. He was fat, quiet and wore an old sweatsuit all the time. Technical guy was very content with his appearance and felt no reason to make any changes.

Just in few months she succeeded to turn the whole management board againts this guy. He suddenly became a lazy and unreliable worker, who created a bad athmosphere to the whole office. When I found about the claims, it was too late. I tried to stand up for him, but couldn't defend him. The director was too cunning and I was too naive -- although I'm not anymore.

That wasn't the only trick the she pulled, but it was last one againts me. I found out that only way to avoid those tricks was not to talk to her at all.

I don't want to make this story long by telling about the ways she acted or methods she used. You propably can image them anyway. It's all charm, but totally hollow.

Problem is that the director still works in our company. I have no tools to fight againts a psychopath and I don't want to risk my position by showing it what I truly think. To psychopath its all black and white, if you're not on their side, you're an enemy.

If you have any ideas, please let me know.

I'm not sure you have to be either

[elucido]

Googles founders are not narcisists or psychopaths and they are doing just fine in competition with Microsoft.

A psychopath definately should not be boss, not because they run the company bad fiscally, but because they run the country into the ground to make the company successful. Having a narcisist is not much better if you want a clean environment and good health.

Do you think food companies give a damn about our health? They want us to have cancer and heart disease because its profitable. Do you think the government cares about our health? They want healthcare prices to rise above our limits and they dont want you getting drugs from Canada. DO you think doctors care about our health? They want to just sell the drugs the drug companies bribe them to sell.

Psychopaths are EVERYWHERE and unless we create some ethical standards for certain positions or even for getting certain degrees in college its not going to stop. If everyone who wants a masters degree or who wants to be a boss has to pass a psychological screening in the same way we have to pass a drug test I don't think there would be a problem. If we don't do this, then expect our bosses to destroy the world for profit because psychopaths do not care about the world, you do.

Re:easy

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I would say that remorse is not the key. A sense of duty is a far more powerful motivator.

I'm an ENTx on the Meyer's brigs personality survey. They puts me dead smack in between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I find that I almost never regret an action I took, even if things went badly. There are times though when my motives weren't all that pure, and those are the types of things that nag my conciounce. And I feel bad about the actions even if things went right in the end.

Folks like the person in your example lack a moral compass. They live only for themselves, and you are right, they are absolutely destructive in a position of authority. However, it you aren't careful about the adjectives you use to describe them your filter will net self-motivated individuals who ARE constructive in authority.

I have no idea how to measure one's moral compass. I take it for granted that I have one. Some of the things that are good and evil don't make sense logically. That's probably why I'm more comfortable saying I'm a Taoist than a Christian. Christ himself was probabably a Taoist, but nobody studies what he actually said. Most sermons I've heard focus on the writing of Paul (a moralist) and/or the old Testiment where God literally spelled out what was good and bad for you.

I was faced on Friday afternon with a

[crovira]

document on the Company comptroller's desk and since I can read upside down, I looked up at him and announced that I was quitting, effective immediately.

It was an announcement that we were to be saddled with a new head of IT who was getting the job because he sold us a bill of goods, had gotten us into a mess in the first place, (I knew he was the nephew of some muckity-muck at [censored]) and that he was starting on Monday.

I left that afternoon, with a letter of recommendation, (I was friends with the head of HR, only back then it was called payroll,) found a job that afternoon, and never looked back.

He didn't want the job and upon arriving he fired everybody, from the chief analyst who was a pleasant enough co-worker, to the data entry clerks.

I was already working for somebody else but all of the other employees weren't so lucky.

Sometimes the boss is a 'bungie cord' boss who gets parachuted in on you and when neither him nor you want him there, the results are just awful.

He was an idiot, an arrogant prick, a blow-hard, a bad manager, an incompetent and he was 'forced' into the job because he'd bankruped his own company so he had nothing better and the Corporate big-wig who'd made the mistake of buying his crap in the first place just couldn't admit it.