Which ceos are psychopaths

Until it impacts job performance, psychopathy itself is not grounds for termination. Rather, it is the underlying behavior that accompanies psychopathy that could be grounds for termination or even a criminal investigation.

While many companies have personality tests and extensive interview processes, they are ineffective at screening out psychopaths, especially the intelligent ones. Psychopaths can lie with ease, and they are clever enough to provide the preferred answer on any personality test. In that sense, a psychopath has an advantage over another executive with a similar aptitude and accomplishments who will not lie for career advancement.

Based on media reports, it appears likely he was a very persuasive and charismatic person. Miss Holmes was the youngest female self-made Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, also appeared to hold a similar sway over supporters, which included the Clintons and the Obamas.

Opinions vary on how to deal with the psychopathic CEO. Landay disagrees. Whatever the tactic, carefully documenting all aberrant behavior can prove useful down the road. Members of the CFO Leadership Council, a global membership organization for financial leaders, shared their stories of CEOs whom they believe might be psychopaths. They did so anonymously to avoid any retribution.

But, at a certain point, there is no difference. A sample of their stories include the following:. Lied to CFO and said her husband was having an affair. He was finally reported to the board, but employees feared him, so the complaint went nowhere.

Even the CFO was made to wait outside his office in a classic power trip. CFO believes there would have been a physical fight if he had not been present. Routinely tells employees they are stupid and untalented.

Encourages the CFO to yell at employees to inspire fear. According to Retraction Watch , senior author Katarina Fritzon accidentally paraphrased another student's dissertation on a similar topic rather than Brooks' when she was writing up the paper for submission. She apologized to the other student and a revised version of the paper has been resubmitted to the journal, although it has not yet been republished.

Yet the figure still gets routinely cited, which is one reason Landay and co-author Peter Harms—also of the University of Alabama—wanted to revisit that and other prior studies.

Harms thinks there is more wrong with the study than accidentally paraphrasing the wrong dissertation. The one-in-five rate is much too high—the base rate for clinical psychopathy is only around 1 percent one in —due in part to the relatively small sample size of senior professionals. Also, the data was collected by asking workers to rate the psychological traits of their bosses.

Landay and Harms conducted a fresh meta analysis of data from several prior studies examining the possible correlation of psychopathy with corporate leaders.

This time they didn't just look at how employees rated their bosses—they included data on how the bosses rated themselves to factor any mismatch into their analysis. However, the analysis also showed that certain traits associated with psychopathy were perceived as slightly positive for men, but negative for women. The men are promoted, while the women are held back. Women are often told that they should act more like men if they want to get ahead, but the same strategies that work for men clearly don't work for women.

It's as though the part of the brain which holds your "pause button" didn't develop properly. Rather than pausing in situations to think about other people, psychopaths are more likely to make rash, impulsive decisions. There is a theory that this could be a result of traumatic brain injury. Sociological differences can also trigger people in different ways.

According to Swart, many psychopathic CEOs she has worked with were sent off to boarding school at a young age, and experienced institutionalised humiliation and violence during their time there. As a psychiatrist, Swart also worked with prisoners, and saw first-hand how rapists learned to have remorse for what they had done. However, the person has to realise they have a problem, or any attempts to make them better will have even less of a chance of working.

So, a coaching relationship should be one of trust, and it should be one where the person sees you demonstrate empathy, and wants to learn to do that for themselves. If you'd like to see whether you have psychopathic traits, you can take a test created by psychologist Professor Kevin Dutton here.

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