Is your boss a psychopath?

Our regular travel industry blogger Helena Beard reckons she once worked with a psychopath. Despite our best efforts, she wouldn’t reveal who, but read on and maybe you can work it out…

“Some time ago, I spoke to a psychologist friend about some issues I was having at work with a colleague. He asked me lots of questions and, at the end of it, he told me that he felt this man could be defined as a psychopath.

At the time I was rather taken aback. For me, the word ‘psychopath’ conjured up visions of Hannibal Lecter, Hitler, maybe Milosevic, but surely not someone with a high powered job, impressive track record and a humorous LinkedIn profile.

I started to look into this again more recently. There are a number of papers and books written on the subject of functioning psychopaths; people with psychopathic traits and characteristics living normal lives. In fact, the general consensus is that we need psychopaths; many of them perform important functions and can be extremely successful CEOs and managing directors or do well in jobs which require detachment, such as surgery, the military or the prison service.

So what is a psychopath? Derived from the Greek words ‘psyche’ – the soul or mind, and ‘pathos’ – suffering or disease, the literal meaning is vague; a psychopath is simply someone with a diseased mind. More specifically, psychologists describe a psychopath as someone who lacks empathy and feels neither guilt nor remorse. He or she does not connect with other people and experiences emotions only in a shallow way. That explains the connection between psychopathy and murder, particularly in the case of serial killers. A psychopathic murderer, such as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer is only able to conceive, act out, and continue his killing spree because he doesn’t experience any of the emotions that a ‘normal’ person would feel in relation to his acts.

So how does this apply in the work place? Presumably there isn’t anyone walking the corridors of our large corporates bumping off hapless marketing executives and feeling no remorse (although the opportunity for comparison is not lost on me). An expert in the field of psychopathy, criminal psychologist Professor Robert Hare, developed a test called the PCL-R. In this test, subjects are scored on various character traits which, individually, are actually very recognisable in many of our colleagues. These range from glibness and superficial charm, to tendency to boredom, to lack of remorse, and even sexual promiscuity and multiple marriages. But if you score highly in all fields, chances are, Professor Hare says, you are a psychopath. Chances are, I say, you work with someone who would score pretty highly in many of them.

There are a number of unscientific online tests you can take if you wish to find out if you are a psychopath. There is quite a fun one on on Kevin Dutton’s website http://kevindutton.co.uk which only takes a couple of minutes (and there are some scary faces to amuse you too). My psychologist friend also told me that functioning psychopaths often have nothing separating them from the gutter except their jobs. They rely on their jobs for their social lives, they don’t have good family relationships or close friends, they have few interests outside work. Sound like anyone you know? Sound like you?

If you discover that you are, in fact, a psychopath, all is not lost. It doesn’t necessarily make you dangerous to know. It does, however, probably make you quite difficult to work with. But, on the plus side, if it does turn out that you are a psychopath, you probably won’t care.”

Helena Beard is a marketing and brand specialist and co-owner of China Travel Outbound, a representation and PR agency working in the Chinese market.