Corporate Psychopath

Understanding & Managing the Corporate Psychopath

The term “Psychopath” is often used (and at times overused) in organisations to describe senior managers. In some cases, the term is used by staff unfairly to describe a manager who is asking them to do their job. However, Corporate Psychopaths do exist and where they do, bullying nearly doubles and staff turnover increases. Many of these individuals are skilled social manipulators, which presents a problem for organisations confronting the task of managing such workplace behaviour.

The concept of the “Corporate Psychopath” marries the terms ‘psychopath’ from the psychological literature with the term ‘corporate’ from the area of business to denote a psychopath who works and operates in the organisational area. Although they may look smooth, charming, sophisticated, and successful, Corporate Psychopaths should theoretically be almost wholly destructive to the organisations that they work for. Researchers report that such malevolent leaders are callously disregarding of the needs and wishes of others, prepared to lie, bully and cheat and to disregard or cause harm to the welfare of others. Corporate Psychopaths are also poorly organized managers who adversely affect productivity and have a negative impact on many different areas of organisational effectiveness.

Utilising years of experience and research from working with criminal and corporate psychopaths, Luke Broomhall will provide an insight to the Psychopathic mind and basic strategies for organisations seeking to manage destructive behaviour in the workplace.