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Thought Leaders
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Thought Leader: Paul Babiak on Psychopaths In the Workplace
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Dr. Paul Babiak is an industrial and organizational psychologist and principal of HRBackOffice, and most notably for these purposes he is co-author of the book, "Snakes in Suits." He recently spoke with David Creelman about his book and his work.
DC: Paul, why don't you tell me a little bit about how you got interested in this issue of psychopaths?
PB: Well, it started about 15 years ago when I actually met one. I didn't know at the time who I was dealing with, it was part of a consulting assignment and I had been doing some team building. There was one individual who, quite frankly, I liked very much and a number of other people did, but as I collected more data for the intervention, more and more information came forward that seemed to be discrepant. There were problems he had with certain people in the organization, they found him disruptive, he was bullying people, sabotaging the work of the team and probably why I was brought in was because the team itself had dramatically dropped in productivity.
Nobody at the time knew that he was the cause of that and it really wasn't until after that assignment was over when I was thinking about this individual that I realized that he had a lot of the characteristics of a psychopath. So I dug deeper and did some research and finally concluded that in fact he did have a psychopathic personality. Since that time it's been something I have had a lot of interest in and I have found quite a number of people since with those traits and characteristics.
DC: I got tuned into what you were doing through your book 'Snakes in Suits.' I read a lot of business books, it's a big part of my job, and this one really captured my imagination, because I saw it has a huge impact, both on the effectiveness of the organization and on the lives of individuals within the organization. Today, we are going to be talking about just what are psychopaths so we know what we are talking about. How do they operate? How do we stop them or how do we survive in an organization that has some psychopaths?
So, what is psychopath and what are some of the major traits?
PB: Let's start by imagining you have some open positions in your company and you try and upgrade your staff. You interview several people and after a long search, one stands out clearly above the others. The hiring manager is excited, you make the offer and after about three or four months everybody seems to be happy with this new employee, but you begin to hear rumblings among the staff. People claim he or she is rude, domineering, manipulative, and sometimes disruptive. Now the hiring manager is unaware of this and when you tell him or her what you have heard, they will tell you they haven't seen this behavior and they write it off as jealously or perhaps reaction to this person's strong management style.
But eventually you investigate further and learn that your new hire has distorted his or her resume and credentials, is bullying some of the staff and isn't delivering on expectations. So, are you dealing with someone who has a psychopathic personality? Psychopathy is technically a personality disorder. It is not mental illness as some people assume. Think of it as the person's mind being organized a little bit differently than the rest of us. And it has some traits and characteristics that are part of the personality.
There are 11 traits of psychopathy, (which is the proper way to say it - psychopathy) from the PCL or the psychopathy checklist screening version, which is actually a shorter version of the much fuller Psychopathy Checklist Revised, which is more of a clinical version of this. Now it's important to note that this list was empirically developed from many studies of several thousand individuals which psychopathic personalities and a factor analysis was done on the data and four major factors came out. Interpersonal, affective or emotional, lifestyle and antisocial and I will run you through all of them now.
Interpersonal: When dealing with others, psychopaths come across as charming and have a grandiose sense of self, which we often label as narcissism when we see it or self-confidence. They also con and manipulate people in their lives, be it their spouses, family friends or in business, it could be their boss or co-workers. Many have noted that they are pathological liars. They lie so much to the degree that they lie about inconsequential things that you and I wouldn't find worth lying about.
The affective or emotional domain tends to get a lot of press when you are dealing with criminal psychopaths. They lack the basic human emotions, such as remorse for things they do that harm people or empathy for the feelings of others. They also don't take responsibility for their own actions, blaming others for the things that might go wrong. In the business world this would include making excuses for not achieving their goals or objectives.
As far as the lifestyle, which is how they interact with the people in society, they tend to be very irresponsible, for example failing to make payments on their credit cards, defaulting on loans, or not making child support payments. While most of us are goal directed, in fact I would say all of us are to get where we are in life, psychopaths are not. In fact they are opportunistic. They lack any serious life plan. They also tend to do things impulsivelyrather than based upon serious study or planning.
In the antisocial domain, this is the behavior that tends to make the headlines and what most people think about when they hear the word psychopath. Now you and I have internal, psychological mechanisms, which keep us from breaking the laws, stepping across that line. Psychopaths don't have these controls so sometime they surprise us with their behaviors. In the business setting this might be someone we describe as a loose cannon.
DC: And many of these characteristics, we see to some extent in everybody.
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David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research and a well-known writer, research and speaker on critical issues in human capital management. David’s previous work includes Chief of Content and Research for HR.com, in addition to working as a management consultant in Canada and Malaysia, most notably with the Hay Group.
David holds an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and has also taught Rewards and Performance Measures at the University of Malaya executive MBA program. David’s clients include think tanks, consultants, academics and organizations from around the globe. His current focus, in collaboration with Dave Ulrich, is on what organizations should report about human capital intangibles to the financial markets (see www.rbl.net "What the Fortune 50 Tells Wall Street").
David Creelman can be reached by email at creelmanresearch[at]gmail.com |
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October 30, 2006
1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
Duane Boyce on Resolving Conflicts In the Workplace From the Inside Out
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