Kevin Dutton is the author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths – What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.
According to Dutton, psychopaths are everywhere. There are a number of tells for which any serious psychopath-spotter should keep their eyes open in the office. Have you noticed any of these six traits in a cubicle close to you?
1. Emotional power play
Psychopaths are social chameleons and can change their psychological spots in the blink of an eye if they think they can benefit from doing so. Playing on sympathy is a favourite weapon of choice. Make no mistake: psychopaths are confident, outgoing and mentally resilient, hardly ever, in reality, feeling sorry for themselves. But they are also master manipulators and have no qualms whatsoever about tugging on our emotional heartstrings if it works to their advantage. Sympathy is a powerful motivator – a fact not lost on psychopaths even though they never feel it – and they are extremely adept at eliciting pity and compassion.
Warning light: Consistent poor behaviour with frequent appeals to mitigating circumstances and pleas for support and understanding is one of the psychopath’s most recognizable trademarks – in both the corporate realm and that of everyday life.
2. Control freak
Psychopaths are emotional chess players and a psychopathic boss sees his employees merely as pieces on an invisible psychological chessboard: disposable, dispensable, superfluous. Psychopaths love to pick people up, move people round, make people jump just for the sake of it – even if, sometimes, it’s not to their immediate benefit. Unnecessary rearrangements of workspace, the sudden imposition of unsocial working hours, and the promise of favours for dishing the dirt on colleagues are just a few psychopathic favourites.
Warning light: If you’re left scratching your head on yet another occasion as you try to figure out the rationale for your boss’s behaviour – then the answer might be simpler than you think.
3. Charming
Psychopaths are masters at making scintillating first impressions and possess an innate gift for making you feel as if you’re the only person in the room. They are brilliant psychologists. They know that, through evolution, our brains are programmed to put a lot of store in initial encounters and so they bank substantial emotional “capital” early in a new relationship by turning on the charm. One psychopath I interviewed put it like this: “Charm is the ability to roll out a red carpet for those you cannot stand in order to fast-track them, as smoothly and efficiently as possible, in the direction you want them to go.”
Warning light: If you suddenly find that the red carpet is rolled up and that the charm fades quickly during subsequent meetings with your boss leaving you feeling confused and vulnerable, you may well have a psychopath on your hands.
4. Parasitical
Irrespective of whether they play the charm, manipulation or sympathy cards, psychopaths are corporate vampires and are second to none in their ability to take you into their confidence and suck out valuable new ideas that may have been months in the planning. A typical ploy is the use of reciprocity – a powerful tool of influence. A psychopath might open the bidding and ”confide” in you some low-level idea of his own in order that you follow suit with something better. Once in the psychopath’s possession however, the idea is then ”confiscated” and, somewhere down the line, suddenly becomes theirs.
Warning light: If your boss has a habit of taking the credit for work done by others, it might be time to look for work elsewhere.
5. Deceitful
Psychopaths simply do not live by the same moral code as the rest of us, and experience little guilt or anxiety over telling lies – either to big themselves up, or to dump on others, or both. In fact, it’s their consummate lack of remorse for misrepresenting the facts that is the single biggest contributor to their inordinate capacity for fabrication. They appear plausible and reasonable and their webs of deceit frequently contain a modicum of truth which they rely on as a safety net should their spurious cover stories come under too close a scrutiny.
Warning light: If your relationship with your boss has been plagued by misunderstandings and false assumptions it might be time to face the real truth.
6. Narcissistic
Psychopaths are completely driven by their own hard-nosed self-interest. Though they may feign concern for others, appearing warm, considerate and even helpful, such interest is shallow and superficial and merely serves as the foreplay for future exploitation. For psychopath, read “ps-I-chopath”. Psychopathic relationship patterns – in both personal and corporate settings – are stormy and transient. “Friendships” are often terminated without warning, and ties mercilessly severed once an individual ceases to “be of any use”. Add to this an arrogant, grandiose and egocentric interpersonal style and you have on your hands a ruthless ambition machine with no “off “switch.
Warning light: If your boss has been known to fire people for no apparent reason, or has an ostentatious and extravagant profile out of keeping with a more objective assessment of their standing, or has a habit of stealing the limelight… it’s time to leave them to it.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
