Leadership

Is Your Boss a Psychopath?

By Jo Owen

Updated on: January 12, 2010 / 11:24 AM EST / MoneyWatch

I work a lot in prisons and a lot in board rooms, and find they have much in common. In particular, both places have more than their fair share of psychopaths, who represent one to three percent of the population at large. In prison they can't do too much harm. In the boardroom, they are lethal. My guess is that 20-30 percent of CEOs have psychopathic tendencies; investment banking seems to have an even higher proportion of psychopaths. Successful entrepreneurs all seem psychopathic. Or perhaps I just mix with the wrong sorts of people.

Here are the main traits of a psychopath -- see how your boss rates:

They are highly egocentric: the world exists only for their own benefit
They have superficial charm and are prepared to say anything to get their way, more or less regardless of the truth
They feel no guilt or shame about any of their actions: they really do not care what other people think or how they are affected
They take excessive risk and discount the risk of error, getting caught or causing damage to others
They either blame others or completely deny that there are any problems: they never take personal responsibility for setbacks
They can be highly manipulative

Psychopathic tendencies clearly help people climb the greasy pole of careers -- be charming and manipulative, lay the blame elsewhere and blow your own trumpet hard. Look at our top CEOs. In the last ten years, average pay of a FTSE 100 CEO has risen from 40 times to 80 times average male incomes.

At the same time, returns to shareholders have been negative. So CEOs have doubled their salaries for garbage performance. Shame? Guilt? Forget it - just give me a bigger bonus next year, or else I walk.

The way investment bankers have reacted to the Credit Crunch is consistent with being "institutionally psychopathic".

A short walk around the City of London is enough to see that nothing has changed. They really do not give a monkey's about what the rest of the world thinks. We can whinge and whine as long as we like about bankers, it won't make them change their behaviour.

They will take their record bonuses courtesy of the taxpayer and we can drop dead. That is classic psychopathic thinking: no guilt, no shame, total denial, me first, take wild risks and blame everyone else if something goes wrong.

Outside of prison, I have never seen so many deranged psychopaths in such a small space. And the main problem is that they get away with it.

Criminal psychopaths are 2.5 times more likely to gain early release from jail than ordinary criminals, and yet are more likely to re-offend. How long will it be before the psycopaths in banking, or at the top of other big businesses re-offend?

(Pic: darkpatator cc2.0)