The price we pay for the psychopath leader (64)

Not all psychopaths are knife-wielding killers. Others are over-represented in positions of leadership, where they do great harm.

A great episode of BBC’s Horizon series "Are you good or evil?" hinted that business leaders may feature 4x more psychopaths than the average population – up to one in 25. (Sadly this episode is no longer available, but a search will find related items)

This just might explain why some leaders have driven banks, retailers and other successful firms to keep doing things everyone knows are dumb, messing things up for the rest of us in the process.

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I guess we each have our own examples – I worked with one in academia too! The Horizon programme reviewed basic findings about psychopathy [I heard “gene malfunction leads to missing brain function, causing lack of empathy and need for thrills”] – then got on to why some become killers [most don’t because of nurturing up-bringing].

The psychopath leader

Then the punchy issue for us – most psychopaths are not killers but they are all around us – they still lack empathy, and seek thrills for the brain stimulation the rest of us don’t need. They blend in just fine by mimicking others without caring at all about them.

As a program contributor said – ‘What better environment for the psychopath than the modern corporation?’ where they can charm, manipulate, lie, cheat, intimidate and defy reasoned argument to get their way and make the big throws they need for their thrills. These might come off, but might destroy the business and its people’s well-being.

In one case, half of colleagues thought the person a great boss – the essence of the charismatic leader – the other half thought him the devil incarnate.

The last finding is bad news – while these characters featured high on charisma, their actual performance was lousy, both as a team player (very divisive) and in delivering results. Maybe we need checks to make sure reason (including sound strategy!) doesn’t get destroyed by psychopaths leading our corporations?

Categories: : business performance, strategy