Is Your Boss a Psychopath? 878
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!"
The question is why do they exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's too common to be a mutation because genetic diseases often have percentage rates of 0.01% or below.
It makes me wonder!
Simon.
Douglas Adams knew why (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Politicians (Score:1, Interesting)
Retort (Score:3, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wweek.com]
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!
See what I mean?
psychopath vs sociopath (Score:5, Interesting)
Functional Psychopaths (Score:3, Interesting)
Anti-Social Personality Disorder (formerly known as psychopathy) is a DSM-4 disorder that has a wide variety of presentations. "Psychopaths" is quicker to type.
Normally, people think of psychopaths as con-men and serial killers. These are the ones that are noticed by the system. What about those who aren't? These are referred to as "functional" psychopaths.
An advertisement, placed in newspapers and designed to appeal to psychopaths by presenting their features in a good light by saying they needed someone who wasn't tied down, loved adventure and excitement, etc., led to the discovery that there are many psychopaths out there.
These are people who are highly motivated by money or power, willing to take risks, view people as tools to be manipulated and used, and appear charming. Is it any wonder that bosses, politicians, and others are functional psychopaths?
But is someone truly a psychopath just because they have some of the traits?
Police and other public safety personnel tend to score high on the psychopathic deviancy scale on the MMPI (a standard psychological personality test), but not as high as the psychopathic criminals they must deal with.
I believe the inventory referred to in this article simply tests for psychopathic traits, or at least their appearance. Whether these folks are truly psychopathic would require far more in-depth investigation.
Some bosses are psychopaths. But some may simply act that way.
Re:The question is why do they exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
bunk... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've had some pretty crazy teachers in my day.. It obviously doesn't work.
Re:Screen them "in" is more like it... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Monster saved us from a boss... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Why psychopaths exist... (Score:2, Interesting)
The selection of inherited characteristics through selection is a mechanism that is subtle but powerful. I don't think using this tool to explain things gives anyone a bad name.
For figures, I'm sorry, but this is slashdot, not Scientific American. For predictions, ok, here are some. First, let's agree that we're discussing a set of related behaviours that range from the ability to lie well, to murder, and not a single identifiable behaviour:
- all human societies will have psychopaths.
- the relative male/female distribution of will be the same in most societies.
- in all societies, young boys who exhibit such behaviour will grow into men who exhibit the same behaviour, in similar proportions.
- in violent societies, there will be more psychopaths.
- in all societies, men will be more likely to adopt and learn psychopathic behaviour than women, given violent circumstances.
- in any society, the higher one goes up the power pyramid (political, military, business), the higher the percentage of psychopaths.
- in any society, you will find the most violent psychopaths in the military, and the most diplomatic psychopaths in the top levels of politics or management.
- all societies have soldiers, politicians, and managers.
- most soldiers, businessmen, and politicians are men.
etc. I could go on for ages but you get my drift. It's a complex genetic payload usually but not always triggered by environmental conditions, and overwhelmingly gender-linked to male genes.
Re:The question is why do they exist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mao was not a psychopath he was a zealot .
Pol Pot i will give you
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. (Score:5, Interesting)
He was convicted of harassment. The ADA told me that Barry Lewis threatened him and some of the other employees of the court.
Re:Douglas Adams knew why (Score:2, Interesting)
Because it's the bosses job to make you do your job, and often people don't like to be made to do their jobs. There's your answer.
The rest of your post is just bitching.
My experience (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
We all possess the innate ability for violence (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I know what Borderline Personality Disorder is (Score:2, Interesting)
More importantly, I suggested it as a MISDIAGNOSIS, which it could very easily be.
Linking to indicatiors has no bearing on how a patient presents, and if you had any experience, you'd know patients often intentionally hide their symptoms, leading to EXACTLY SUCH MISDIAGNOSES.
Also, if you knew anything about personality disorders, you'd realize that professionals are loathe to diagnose more than one at a time.
"if women were truly psychopathic, they would be diagnosed as such alongside the diagnosis of BPD"
This is just WRONG. Again, symptoms (especially in BPD and PPD) are INTENTIONALLY MASKED. I've seen many competent professionals fooled. Suggesting that they would figure out the correct diagnosis and apply it is incredibly naive.
I believe your rudimentary understanding of personality disorders could use some polishing.
Re:How about the system itself? (Score:3, Interesting)
A corporation must become psychopathic once it reaches a certain size (defined by number of investors, and not the same for every company). Look at it this way: A sole proprietorship is answerable to only one person, so it will act according to that person's ethics. A publically-traded company has a practically infinite number of investors, and is answerable to them all. The only common factor amongst them will be a desire to make money.
Compensation and employment practices also contribute. Because executives are compensated largely in stock options, their personal interest lies in keeping the stock price increasing, which (because of the way stocks are priced) means keeping the profit growth rate increasing constantly. Also, since executives are "disposable" employees like you and me, they have no incentive for the company to be healthy in the long term (as they would if, say, they were going to retire and draw a pension).
This short-term thinking leads to companies putting next quarter's profit numbers above all else (including the long-term survival of the company). It's obviously not good for a company to destroy the society of which it is a part (and which supplies it with customers), but they are trying, because it's good in the short term.
Many think this is a Good Thing, because free-market capitalism has been shown to lead to good GDP growth (leading to more wealth available to all), and any profits the company is making get put back into the economy in the form of returns to shareholders (which theoretically anyone can be). I don't personally buy it, because it also leads to concentration of wealth, and "tragedy of the commons" damage to society due to externalities.
A reductio in absurdum example:
Suppose through (bought) legislation, or some other means, a company found a way to charge everybody in the country a recurring charge every month, while providing no service at all. This is the Holy Grail of corporate America; every company that could do this would be required to, in orcer to keep the stock price up. This would lead to the company essentially being a parasite on the economy; a large enough parasite could bleed the economy dry.
I'm not sure you have to be either (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:How about the system itself? (Score:3, Interesting)
mean, can't the shareholders see value in the company doing things right for the surrounding society (including the shareholders) even for less profit?
You might think that, and in the classical model of a conscientious investor funding a well-managed company, you'd be entirely right. But that's not how things work. Today's investors don't care. Greed is good, didn't you hear? They see the stock market as a get-rich-quick scheme--some kind of lucky lotto for already-affluent people. The only difference from the real estate crap you see on infomercials is that it actually works.
Buy low. Sell high. It doesn't matter what. It doesn't even matter if they offer a valid product or service! Look at SCO, for instance: how else do you explain the rise in stock value time after time (or should I say press-release after press-release)?
Some investors have even resorted to what they call "algorithmic trading". This type of trading is completely automated and exploits periodic fluctuations in the market to *automagically* generate money. They do this by making micro-investments across a broad range of stocks that are then sold shortly after. With a proper statistics model, most of the chosen stocks rise before being sold... profit. Of course, in reality, the money came from somewhere, and the investor didn't actually provide any liquidable capital by any common sense of the word (I'm told that some of these transactions take place in milliseconds.) Moreover, the statistics model won't care about the ethics of a particular stocks business practices. But, again, such things matter not, because they are, of course, secondary to the Almighty Dollar.
So with investors concerned only with short-term gains, should it be surprising that companies do the same? We often mock the business paradigm of "expansion or death", because, in a sane world, it would make sense that a business can still turn the same profit it made last year and everything would be fine. And yet, we're wrong. Expansion is required in today's businesses because that's what brings in today's investors--not playing nice and most certainly not doing the right thing.
The whole system is rotten to the core. The one control (prudent, conscientious investors) has disappeared. It's no wonder incidents like Enron and Worldcom happen. Eventually, the whole system will fail--it's inevitable.
-Grym
Ah, good old Theory X. (Score:3, Interesting)
Carl Sandburg once wrote:
Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: 'What kind of folks live around here?' 'Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?' 'Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving gossiping, backbiting kind lot of people.' 'Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here.' And the dusty gray stranger had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: 'What kind of folks live around here?' 'Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?' 'Well, they was mostly a decent, hardworking, lawabiding, friendly lot of people.' 'Well, I guess, stranger, that's about the kind of folks you'll find around here.'"
I was faced on Friday afternon with a (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Douglas Adams knew why (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, this is done on purpose - and is the most efficient system we have. You don't dare risk your corporation and assets on someone you don't know personally, no matter how highly recommended he comes. This is a good system, it works.
The problem is people like you don't work to get on those networks - the networks need good people, and its not that hard to get in...
Re:The question is why do they exist? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, you know what? it's a false assumption. MOST people are convivial MOST of the time, and as long as things run smoothly enough, no-one notices. The 'action-chains' of daily life remain unbroken, and we can go on happily. One major jerk (read socio-psycho-techno-path) can muck things up for thousands, just by abandoning a car at a busy intersection or making a prank call.
We have, in this attitude, the ideology of 'nature red in tooth and claw' penetrating the capitalist fundamentalism that is holy writ in business school. History is one long string of relatively short violent convulsions, held together by long sessions of peaceful daily life that get forgotten. Likewise, the capitalist heros are successful on the backs of the fallen, and we take it for granted because they become representatives of The Capitalist Way.
Likewise, capitalism only appears to 'work' if you drink the ideological kool-aid (tm). It requires indemnity from externalities like pollution or health effects, an unemployed labour pool, a means of preparing consumers for a life of industrial scrabbling and obeying, horatio alger myths and the patina of open participation, and indeterminate expansion. Since the vast majority of the world's wealth is concentrated into a small few, how does that 'work' better than feudalism, given our current sense of human rights? Do you have a democratic workplace, or do you hang up your democracy hat when you go in to work?
Or do you mean it works because North Americans live heavily subsidized lives (see: externalities, trade agreements, colonialism, economic-hit-men, covert action, resource extraction) and 50% can afford a gas guzzler?
I have no issue with the fact that industrialization leads to wages and urban improvements throughout the world. This is not a process that requires capitalism, just capital. The monopoly totalitarian capitalism exercised by the Soviets under the guise of socialism (that would be 'communism' to the propagandists) is an example of its worst failings, but it still raised the peasantry out of dire poverty, through industrialism. The market oligopoly practiced here is more dynamic, but the 'underclass' is deeply tragic, and primarily a given condition of the economic system.
If there is a better sysytem, it will also assume that greedy psychopaths are in charge, or it will fail the same was that Communism always does.
Hm. An example of 'in the box' thinking as a result of years of propaganda. What's so impossible about designing a system where the scum doesn't rise to the top?
Re:Bought the t-shirt but didn't read the Che book (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? Even in the case where they bombed a restaurant because they thought Sadam was there? The odds that they'd hit Sadam were not that great, and they were virtually certain to hit someone innocent.
In what way is this not `deliberately putting innocent citizens in harm's way'? Because they didn't think of the consequences? At a certain point stupidity is no longer an excuse.