Dr. Paul Babiak is an industrial and organizational psychologist specializing in helping executives deal with possible psychopaths hiding within their organizations. His clients have included executives in business, academia, law enforcement, government, insurance, medicine, finance, and intelligence, and he speaks about the corporate psychopath at professional conferences and business meetings. He and his collaborators have conducted the most influential original research on corporate psychopathy, focusing on their traits and characteristics, manipulation techniques, and the impact they can have on organizational performance and employee job satisfaction. He is the author of Snakes in Suits, Revised Edition: Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office, with Dr. Robert D. Hare, as well as several scientific papers and book chapters. Dr. Babiak has been a guest on many radio and television talk shows, including the Today Show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Kudlow and Cramer, and Dateline NBC.
- How did you get involved in the area of psychopathy research?
I met my first psychopath over thirty years ago but didn’t know it at the time. I was conducting a teambuilding intervention for a large company that had a once high-performing team, which had degraded into chaos. I used the traditional industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology approach, which was to assess each team member in person and then have each member assess teammates via a paper-and-pencil assessment instrument. I would then participate in their meetings as an observer, offering consulting advice to the leader or the group itself as was appropriate in real time.
In this case, the data showed that there was one person who was at the root of the conflict but strangely, rather than being lopsided, the discrepant views formed an even split between supporters and detractors: half thought he was an ideal participant (a “savior”) while the other half felt he was the devil incarnate (a “snake”). He had a reputation for being disruptive, attacking the team leader publically and privately, not being prepared for meetings and often leaving early because he had something “more important” to do. My personal interactions with him were actually quite positive, although I came to suspect over time that he was acting one way when I was present and a totally different way when I was not there. My plan was to coach him and the leader to try to find common ground and improve the working relationship. Unfortunately, the team was eventually disbanded by top management; the problematic individual was promoted into his boss’ job, and his boss was sidelined.
I thought about this for years afterwards, trying to figure out what had happened and eventually, having a hunch about his personality, I reached out to Dr. Robert Hare, who graciously offered me his newly developed Psychopathy Checklist. I worked through the items and then with Bob’s help came to the conclusion….my subject was a psychopath!
Since then I have been captivated by the idea that psychopathic individuals could actually work in organizations, having been taught that they often are in prison or at least lead lives on “a downward spiral.”
- Are there any misconceptions about psychopathy in the corporate world?
Yes, I believe there are. First, there is the feeling amongst many people that their boss is a psychopath and that the ranks of management are filled with them. Clearly, not all “bad” managers are high in psychopathic traits; most are just unschooled in effective management techniques, use dysfunctional personal styles which are not well received by those they manage, or are in their positions for political reasons. Some, of course, are bullies and others are prone to harassment due to personal issues that they may have, but not necessarily psychopathy.
Second, there is also some field research suggesting that some psychopaths actually display good leadership traits (often referred to as successful psychopaths). I question these interpretations for several reasons. I think their “successes” — assuming they are truly psychopaths (who are not that easy to assess in the corporate world, actually) — are red herrings — it’s all smoke and mirrors. In my research, I have found that, as psychopathic individuals establish their influence network in the organization, they use impression management techniques to hijack the performance management, succession planning, communication and other systems that are designed to track the actual performance record of employees. As a result of their stellar manipulation skills, they convince those who manage and rely on these systems that their track records are far better than reality — their “mask” in the form of a corporate reputation (which in so many words reads “I am the ideal employee” or “I am the perfect leader”) is what they rely on for positive evaluations. The psychopathic employee spends a lot of time and energy creating and maintaining this psychopathic fiction. Once this fictional picture of their competence and loyalty is established throughout the organization, they are often put onto the corporate succession plan, promoted, given substantial raises, etc. — all signs of success in the business world which end up in our research databases.
Their fictional persona overshadows the reality of their behavior as they move up the ranks. Sadly, it is often only after the employee with psychopathy leaves the job or the company that the damage they have inflicted comes to light. The emotional and psychological human toll, which is evident to the victims in real time, is often never revealed. Sometimes outright fraud is uncovered as well.
Third, some have suggested that there may be jobs where having at least a little bit of psychopathy may be of benefit. This makes some sense on the surface (especially in movies about commandos and spies). But, in reality, you can’t pick and choose the traits and characteristics you want in your psychopathic new hire. You often get the whole package which, in my mind, always includes pathological lying, lack of conscience, and lack of loyalty to anything other than themselves. I have never met an executive who would knowingly hire someone who lied to them or was disloyal to the company or the mission. In fact, if you lie on even something as simple as your timecard, you would be fired by most organizations. You can’t build a cohesive, high-performing organization with people with these traits. It simply won’t work. You can train people in the skills needed to successfully perform these kinds of jobs but you can’t really train loyalty to the cause and humility to a psychopath.
In short, if you dig deeper into the data about the impact of psychopathic management on employees and organizations you will uncover many negative outcomes. Behind every corporate psychopath, regardless of how well they are regarded by their organizations, you will find a “trail of bodies.” They are all drama and destruction, never delivery.
- Are there any “red flags” to alert someone their boss or co-worker has psychopathic traits?
There are some signals that I look for: Inability to form a team; Inability to share (credit, information); Disparate treatment of staff (sucking up to higher-ups, abusing peers and subordinates); Inability to tell the truth; Inability to be modest; Inability to accept blame (even for clear mistakes and poor results); Inability to act consistently and predictably (a “loose cannon”); Inability to react calmly; and, Inability to act without aggression. While no one of these indicate psychopathy, the confluence of several of them certainly should raise a red flag and lead to a closer look at the individual of concern.
- Why are some individuals with psychopathic traits so successful at work?
It depends on how you define success. In some emerging research, and certainly in the long history of I/O literature, success is measured by salary level, organizational level, and the rate of rise in these indicators over the course of one’s career. In the case of corporate psychopaths, many of these outcomes are actually the result of years of subjective evaluations and effective impression management — the psychopathic fiction I mentioned. However, we found in our 2010 study, when you add in a 360-degree evaluation, that is, when peer and subordinate raters are included in the mix, actual performance indicators such as measurable business results and the ability to build teams are dismal, having been overshadowed by charisma and charm.
I do feel that some psychopaths are successful at work but not in the ways businesses typically measure success. I would describe psychopaths in the community as serial psychopaths; that is, they target an individual, manipulate him or her to get what they want, and then abandon their victim when their utility is spent. Corporate or organizational psychopaths are different: they may start with one target but then expand to include many individuals within the group [Affinity Fraud and Ponzi Schemes are good, real-life, examples]. Now, this takes considerable skill and their success depends on managing the discrepant views of many people — not an easy thing to do. So, in this way, they are “successful.” There are many examples in newspaper headlines of these types!
- Considering research is generally ahead of application in the field, what is one improvement in the field of psychopathy that you hope to see take place over the next five to ten years?
Conducting early organizational research was difficult at best. Psychopathy had a bad rap and companies didn’t want to be associated with anything to do with such a negative clinical, psychological concept; plus there were a lot of privacy concerns. It took years to build trust, plus some positive media coverage, that opened the door to more research. Although graduate students have long selected psychopathy as their topics of research, in recent years I have been contacted by a growing number of high school students interested in the topic. When I was in college, psychopathy was maybe a paragraph in an abnormal psychology textbook, but today it is a hot topic, probably due to the growing awareness that psychopathy is real, more prevalent than we think, and a fertile new area of study. I’m heartened by this new-found popularity – albeit, I still have concerns that sensationalism may overwhelm actual reporting of the facts.
It is important that researchers interested in corporate psychopathy learn a little bit about business operations (finance, manufacturing, marketing, human resources, etc.) so that they can communicate to their research sponsors that they understand the realities of the business world and can thereby gain their trust for research support. Time (and careful research design) will tell!
