Have You Employed A Psychopath?

Halloween Special:  Psychopaths are real, and may not be what you've believed from movies. Furthermore, if you're in business long enough, you will unknowingly employ one. The damage they cause cannot be underestimated. Find out just how they act, and the secret weapon you have to defend your business against them.

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Have you employed a psychopath?

An appropriate topic for Halloween, but it's no joke. We've all heard of psychopaths from the movies and literature and they're mostly serial killers or evil-doers of some sort, however psychopaths are in fact real and the vast majority are not murderers. A majority of murderers are probably psychopaths, the serial ones in particular.

Psychologists estimate that around 1% of the population have this disordered personality. It is a personality characterized by low empathy, anti social behaviour, bold actions, no remorse for their actions and a large ego. They can be charismatic and charming. They can also be highly talented and intelligent. It is estimated that around 4% of corporate CEO's have these personality traits, four times the population average. Around 25% of the prison population is said to have these characteristics. The ones that aren't in jail are sometimes referred to as the "successful psychopaths". They've managed to avoid the usual criminal pathways.

The real danger for the business owner is in your manager roles and sooner or later, if you're employing people, you're going to employ one.

Chances are, they are going to look to you like a real A-player. They will be charismatic, talented, resilient, happy to manage people and hold them accountable, happy to have the difficult conversations and provide difficult feedback. You can see why they climb to CEO so often.

But there's a problem. They are charming to the levels above them, but abusive to the levels below them. You might say they kiss upwards and kick downwards. Their impact on the organisation is terrible and may include bullying, conflict, manipulation and lying, and the results can be stress, high staff turnover and low productivity. People will stop wanting to come to work.

They will spread mis-information through-out your business, turning people against one-another which will divide your staff, generating havoc and confusion. Their confidence and charisma will cause people to believe their lies. It will get to a point where people just don’t know who to trust and it won't be clear who is causing the havoc.

I am not exaggerating one little bit. I've worked with plenty of businesses and every so often, come across a manager with psychopathic traits.

So what can we business owners do about it? Luckily, psychopaths have a weakness which gives you an advantage. Their lying is compulsive - in a way they can't help it. Unlike a Machiavellian personality, who can lie strategically, a psychopath will lie even when there is a reasonable chance they will get found out.

To defend yourself, your business, and most importantly your people against the damage potential, you need to create a culture in your business of psychological safety. This is an actual thing. It simply means that everyone feels safe to "say it how it is" - to deliver bad news in a constructive way without recrimination - to critique something without throwing themselves under a bus - so to speak. This is a culture which you, the business owner needs to create and nurture. This culture is a good idea for plenty of reasons, not just this one.

Next you need to keep in touch with the people below your managers. Keep up that human connection. Make sure there is plenty of opportunity for them to speak to you privately, without others knowing they are doing so. Especially when putting a new manager in place, keep up that connection and communication with the people your new manager supervises.

If the stories of mis-information about co-workers start coming in, keep an open mind. It will take a while to work out what's true and what's false. You will probably be stunned at the audacity of the deceit. For most of us, it's just inconceivable that someone could treat people the way they do. Talk to plenty of people in your business separately and establish a complete picture, for two reasons, first to satisfy yourself that you've worked out who the problem is, and secondly to present the perpetrator with the facts. They are likely to resign. Because of their compulsivity, they usually get found out and have to move on, so they're used to it. You just want to find out quickly to limit the damage to your business and your people.

A couple of notes: don’t tell anyone you think someone's a psychopath, we business owners are not qualified to diagnose people and it's a quick way to end up in defamation court. Furthermore, I'm told that diagnosis is complex and usually involves additional issues - it's never straight forward.

Apparently there is no treatment for psychopathy. In fact, treatment attempts have usually resulted in the psychopath gaining insight into how they can disguise themselves better. Let's leave this problem to others.

Lastly, don’t confuse psychopathy with spectrum disorder. Pepple who are on the spectrum, also known as autism spectrum disorder, or Aspergers Syndrome (about 2% of the population) are sometimes though to have low empathy. This perception comes about because Aspies have difficultly reading people, reading body language, reading between the lines. So people think that they don’t care. The opposite is actually true. Once an Aspie is told and understands that someone is suffering, or an injustice is being done, they are VERY empathetic. In the right roles with the right support, they can make wonderful employees - loyal, open and honest, and highly focused.

So create a psychologically safe work-place, keep in touch with your employees at all levels, and carefully monitor managers making sure their direct reports are happy. If the rumours start to fly, act quickly to find out what's going on, and act quickly to hold perpetrators to account.

Keep the ghouls out of your business and have a happy Halloween.