How Psychopaths Operate Effectively In The Workplace.

What would you think if I told you that psychopaths may exist in one per cent of the population of the 45 million men that work at the world’s 500 largest companies? That’s 450,000 psychopaths; 900 per company.

How the hell do you know that? I hear you ask. Well,I have no way of knowing for sure, but in my own experience (as a marketer, not a psychopath) of working for a number of the world’s 500 largest companies, and based on the widely accepted estimate that psychopaths may exist in one per cent of the general adult male population — female psychopaths are thought to be much rarer — I think my hunch is a good bet.

In 2010, researchers Paul Babiak, Robert Hare and Craig Neumann examined psychopathy in a sample of 203 individuals from numerous companies’ management development programs.The research showed that approximately 3% of those assessed in this management development program study scored in the psychopath range — well above the incidence of 1% in the general population. By comparison, the incidence of psychopathy in prison populations is estimated at around 15%.

Anyway, the mathematical predictions aside, I think those of us who work with or for large companies, know that psychopaths do exist and many of us deal with them every day. Can you think of someone in your company who has zero empathy and remorse?

Ray’s Story.

Let me share a true story about the time I recently spent with a psychopath, who used to be my client; the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Let’s call him Ray; a charismatic, Clooney-esque man in his late fifties.

We sat on a curved marble bench, next to a statue of Plato and a huge ornamental olive tree in an elaborate gold pot and gazed across immaculate lawns, dramatically lined with snow-white concrete. Cupping his hands to his ears, Ray said:“Can you hear that? He asked.

“What?” I said. “I can’t hear anything.”

“Exactly,” Ray said. “It’s the sound of nothing; perfectly engineered silence. They designed this place to shut out noise — the trees, the hedges, the walls, the way the place sits in natural hollow. It was built to be quiet.”

It was hard to believe that we were 10 minutes from London, a short drive from Paddington. I hadn’t even see a plane in the sky. Surreal.

Ray was a few days into a week’s voluntary stay a private outpatient facility, where patients pay between £10,000 and £20,000 for treatment. Alcohol is the substance that the doctors here most frequently see executives like Ray struggling with.

Ray is “straightening” himself out. He has taken early retirement, has a few million in the bank, a boat house on the Thames in Surrey, a bevy of beautiful girlfriends and is planning his next business venture — something to do with medical diagnostics technology. “I’ll make a million in six months,” he said. “We’ve just sacked the inventor; paid him off. He’d served his purpose.”

During time as CEO of a major global technology company, for whom I had worked as a PR consultant, Ray had exhibited many psychopathic traits, including ruthlessness, fearlessness, impulsivity, reduced empathy, developed self-confidence and lack of remorse.

“We used to call you Gordon,” I said.

“As in Gekko?” Ray said.

“Yes,” I said. “You were a complete twat.”

“Thanks Phil,” he said. “But a twat who paid you.”

Ray is what I call a functioning psychopath, like most of the other 450,000 psychopaths who work at the world’s 500 largest companies. “I am aware that I can turn up or turn down my so-called psychopathic traits,” Ray said. “Depending on the situation I need to control.”

“I guess if they’re all turned up to maximum, then you’re a dysfunctional psychopath,” I said.

“Yes, I think so,” Ray said. “I’d probably be in prison instead of rehab. But when you are operating in high-pressure business environments, where billions of pounds are at stake and you’ve got hundreds, thousands of people to manage, then you learn to turn down your empathy and block out other concerns. If you don’t, then you won’t survive.”

“So the job makes you a psychopath?” I said.

“No, psychopaths are born and take jobs that only a psychopath can succeed in,” Ray said. “There are many of us in many top jobs in many top companies.”

The Predator Syndrome.

As the brother of a schizophrenic, and someone who has spent the past 20 years trying to understand the machinations of the mental-health establishment, I am completely frustrated by the lack of respect shown to psychopathy by that same establishment. Hardly anyone is funding research into the science of psychopathy. The average dysfuntional psychopath will be convicted of four violent crimes by the age of forty. Schizophrenia, which causes much less crime, has a hundred times more research money devoted to it.

Why? Because schizophrenics are seen as victims, and psychopaths are seen as predators. The former we feel empathy for, the latter we lock up.

In the outside world, though, psychopaths are much harder to identify Some are successful functional psychopaths, like Ray, holding down good jobs in many types of industries. It is generally only if they commit a crime and enter the criminal-justice system that they become officially diagnosed.

Psychopaths don’t exhibit the manias, hysterias, and neuroses that are present in other types of mental illness. Their main defect, what psychologists call “severe emotional detachment” — a total lack of empathy and remorse — is concealed, and harder to describe than the symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which my younger brother has suffered with much of his adult life.

This absence of easily readable signs has led to debate among mental-health practitioners about what qualifies as psychopathy and how to diagnose it. Psychopathy isn’t identified as a disorder by many medical professionals. The more favoured term, “antisocial personality disorder,” known as A.P.D., usually covers the condition.

Some psychopaths — Ray included — may be charismatic, charming, and adept at manipulating one-on-one interactions. “In a large corporation, psychopathic qualities such as charm, charisma, grandiosity, which can be mistaken for vision and confidence, and the ability to perform convincingly, are also qualities that can help one get ahead in the business world,” Ray said. “I should know; I’ve hired psychopaths for that very reason — you can rely on them to get the job done.”

You Stabbed Me, You Psycho.

Many psychopaths, of course, are not suited for the business environment. Some do not have enough social or communication skill or education to interact successfully with others, relying instead on threats, coercion, intimidation, and violence to dominate others and to get what they want.

As a young journalist, 30 years ago, I worked for a psychopathic sub-editor who was manifestly aggressive and rather nasty. He relied on bullying approach to assert his seniority and once, during a disagreement over the use of punctuation in a news story, stabbed me in the hand with a pencil.

Incredibly, this was not an isolated incident — other people had similar stories of physical and mental abuse — and even more incredibly, the psychopathic sub-editor enjoyed a long and illustrious career. I remember the managing editor saying “yeah (the sub-editor) is a nasty son-of-a-bitch, but he’s the best sub-editor in the business. He gets the job done.”

It’s amazing how psychopaths operate effectively in the workplace. I used to manage the PR for a very well known company and the marketing budget was, oddly, owned by the HR director who was also a psychopath. Everyone in the marketing department lived in fear of him. He had poor impulse control, complete lack of empathy, was a pathological liar, a bully and tried it on with more or less every female in the business — and yet he thrived with the full backing of the rest of the board of directors, two of whom were women.

This guy scored highly on the Psychopathy Checklist, or PCL-R, a twenty-item diagnostic instrument created by Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist, which includes parasitic life style, pathological lying, conning, proneness to boredom, shallow emotions, lack of empathy, poor impulse control, promiscuity, irresponsibility, record of juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility, among other tendencies. Subjects are scored zero, one, or two, depending on how pronounced that trait is, and most researchers agree that anyone who scores thirty or higher on the PCL-R is considered to be a psychopath.

Can Psychopaths Change?

I asked Ray. “Well, if I am a psychopath, then yes I believe they can,” he said.

“Are you a psychopath?” I asked.

“Well I tick enough boxes on the checklist,” he said. “But I have changed.”

“In what way?” I said.

“Emotionally,” he said. “I feel emotion sometimes, and I never used to.”

The truth is it’s not hard for a psychopath to do emotions, it’s simply that the biological apparatus isn’t there, which means Ray was lying or confused.

“Give me an example,” I said.

“Ok,” Ray said, “for example, when I sacked the inventor — two weeks ago — he looked crushed, completely gutted. Like I had just taken away his reason for living — which I had — and I swear I felt a twinge of compassion, somewhere deep inside of me. And then it disappeared, like a light in the black. Gone.”

“And then what?” I said. “What did you feel then?”

“Nothing,” Ray said. “I was already working out how I could screw him out of his royalty payments. I’d worked with him closely for three years. He was a lovely, trusting man, who I didn’t give a shit about. He was a means to an end.”

“Did you screw him over?” I said.

“Yes,” Ray said. “He has nothing now.”

“Any remorse at all?” I said.

“None.” Ray said. “It’s business; it’s tough. Nice guys have no place in business. Nice guys are not as effective.”

“I disagree,” I said. “There are plenty of nice guys who are successful businessmen.”

“Name a CEO, CFO, COO — any high ranking corporate officer — you have known who is not a psychopath,” Ray said.

I racked my brain for a minute as Ray listened to the engineered silence again. “Think of anyone yet?” he said.

“Two,” I said. “I can think of two CEO’s who are not psychopaths.”

“Out of how many?” Ray asked.

“I don’t know, 20, 30 maybe,” I said.

“There you go,” Ray said. “Nice guys rarely get to the top.”