Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (32 page)

Many companies start the process by identifying key management positions in their organization and then clarifying the criteria for success. Like the hiring process, formal succession planning is composed of several screens or hurdles through which potential future leaders must pass. In many companies, the person in charge of succession planning solicits recommendations from key managers
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about subordinates who have the potential for higher levels of responsibility, or more generally, the “right stuff.” The initial evaluations are based on information gleaned from their performance appraisals, record of accomplishments, and personal interactions with the manager making the preliminary recommendation.

Subsequently, formal assessments are done, often including psychological evaluations, a “360-degree” rating, and assessment center performance. Psychological assessments usually involve in-depth interviews with a psychologist as well as the administration of psychological tests. A report is then given to the candidate during a follow-up meeting with the psychologist, and the company often receives a summary as well. A 360-degree rating involves the completion of confidential surveys about the candidate by peers, current and former bosses, and subordinates. These typically include questions about the candidate’s performance, attitudes, and competencies considered important by the company. Assessment centers are well-structured training events designed to evaluate many candidates simultaneously during a simulated work setting. Participants are asked to “run a company” or solve some business issue while they are observed and rated by company personnel and business experts. At the conclusion of the exercise, feedback on how well the participants did and suggestions for improvement are then given to each candidate, and a summary is given the company as well.

All of this assessment information is reviewed by a management committee charged with running the succession plan. It is used to determine each candidate’s potential: specifically, how far along a management career path or how high up in the management ranks the candidate is reasonably expected to progress. Readiness level—

how long before a candidate can be considered ready to assume greater responsibility and authority—is also evaluated at this time.

Those with sufficient potential and acceptable readiness levels are assigned a personal mentor who is responsible for overseeing the company’s investment in this person. Together, they create an individual development plan that outlines the growth and improvement
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needs of the candidates, based on ratings of competencies, knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes, as well as personal information, such as aspirations, and any career constraints, including geographic preferences and family commitments. Recommendations for improvement often include training programs, rotational assignments, special projects, and regular meetings with a professional coach.

For those with high-level potential, job rotations through a variety of departments, such as finance, sales, marketing, research, human resources, and manufacturing, are often assigned to provide a broader understanding of the business. Many companies also require the completion of international assignments, which will give the candidates exposure to different cultures, languages, and sets of business problems.

As the reader can appreciate, formal succession planning provides multiple assessments from a variety of sources across a lengthy period of time, thus assuring that almost every aspect of the future leader’s behavior has been reviewed and cross-checked. If the reader feels that the process is quite bureaucratic, this is in fact the case, for succession planning systems were originally developed during the period when bureaucracy was the organization model in vogue. Succession planning was an attempt to improve the chances of making the right promotional choices while removing cronyism, nepotism, and other “old boy network” influences from the process. Formal succession planning is one of the few bureaucratic processes that transitional companies can benefit from and should retain.

Yet we would argue that there are still some risks involved, and holes in the process can be taken advantage of by manipulative employees. One problem is that the psychopathic employee has had a significant amount of time to establish a cadre of supporters, some of them patrons who, shielded from any negative information, advocate for the psychopath’s candidacy. The second problem is the disinformation spread by the psychopath, with the express purpose of disparaging rivals and enhancing themselves.

There are several approaches to counter these problems. First,
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the management committee should keep close tabs on all candidates, take every opportunity to interact with them personally, and solicit information from those who are in the best position to provide candid data. These sources include supervisors, especially those handling special projects and international assignments, and subordinates who have experienced the high-potential candidate firsthand. It is always possible that some misinformation will be included in even the most well-prepared plans, but by increasing the number of sources and balancing their perceptions, any perceived discrepancies should raise a red flag and prompt further review and validation.

Second, companies should avoid identifying for grooming only one person per position. This approach, called “crown prince/

princess” by experts, almost guarantees that once chosen, a candidate, psychopathic or not, will be given the higher-level job in time, without the added security of internal comparison. To avoid this, several candidates are identified for each important position (referred to as a talent pool), and no one person is guaranteed the promotion.

A third approach would be additional psychological assessments, including interviews and written tests designed to measure personality traits. Because of the special knowledge required to do this, companies often outsource it. It is important that the psychological assessment be considered just one source of data in the list of criteria used by the company to make its decision. In the end, it is the performance and observed behavior of the candidates that should be the deciding factors.

Guess What? Some People Lie

Personnel managers and psychologists rely heavily on self-report psychological tests or instruments in which the individual responds to a set of questions or items about his or her personality, attitudes, and habits: “I am a truthful person,” “I like to take chances,” “I care about the welfare of others.” Although most of
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these tests contain scales designed to detect faking and dissimulation, it is not difficult for anyone with even a modicum of smarts to beat them. A personnel manager who takes the results of such tests at face value or who relies heavily on them for making personnel decisions runs the risk of being conned by someone more test wise than the test administrator.

Even relatively uneducated prison inmates are able to slant the results of most psychological tests, appearing psychologically healthy or mentally disturbed, depending on the context.

Some inmates even run their own testing service, providing advice to other inmates on how to respond to the items in a given test.

One psychopathic inmate studied by Hare ripped off some other inmates and, thinking his life was in danger, was able to produce a psychological test profile that indicated he was so disturbed that the psychologist recommended he be transferred to the psychiatric wing of the prison. After being in the psychiatric wing for a few months, and believing that things in the prison had cooled down, he took another psychological test, and this time appeared normal. He was sent back to the prison, where he soon got into trouble again. He took another test in order to get back into the psychiatric wing, but this time the psychologist had figured out what was going on, and the inmate’s ploy to be transferred again out of the prison was unsuccessful.

EXECUTIVE COMPETENCIES

It is critical that all human resources data be reviewed carefully and challenged repeatedly to ascertain their validity: Were the goals actually achieved? Were projects completed on time and within budget?

Did sales, revenues, or production quotas actually increase? Are the numbers correct? Following this, the human cost needs to be evaluated: did the candidate leave a trail of bodies in his or her wake, or inspire others to take on a challenge and come through with success?

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When considering management and executive candidates, performance in important competency areas often commands attention.

Some examples are:

• Business acumen: Does the candidate understand the business issues facing the organization? Does he or she understand regulatory, social, environmental, political, industry, scientific, and technical trends?

• Perspective: Does this person have a “big picture” view?

Can he or she see the forest (as well as the trees)?

• Thinking: Can the candidate think strategically, plan strategically, and implement a strategy?

• Communication: What is the candidate’s communication style? Does he or she communicate effectively?

• Presentations: How well does the candidate make presentations? Can he or she sell ideas effectively?

• Media relations: How does the candidate represent him- or herself and the company to the media?

• Relationship building: How effective is the candidate at building relationships with internal people (such as peers, supervisors, and subordinates) and external people (such as customers, members of the public, local government, and professional contacts)?

• Judgment: How effective is the candidate at problem solving and related decision making?

• Interpersonal style: What is the candidate’s interpersonal style? How does this person interact with others?

• Values: What are this person’s core values, personal motives, and drives? How do his or her values influence his or her decisions and behaviors?

• Career goals: What are the candidate’s career aspirations?

Are they realistic?

• Development: What are the candidate’s limitations or developmental needs?

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But these are only the basic requirements for an executive’s job.

There are some other very important competency areas relevant to the topic of this book that should be considered during every hiring program or succession planning assessments.

Handling Challenges to Organizational
Responsibility and Effectiveness

Executives are presented with challenges every day as a routine part of their job. Their ability to meet these challenges goes beyond whether they are good at specific technical competencies such as communication and interpersonal skills and decision making (among others). Broadly speaking, executives are expected to make organiza-tionally responsible choices, and they are judged by how effective these choices are in advancing the aims of the corporation. Over time, a pattern of responses to the expectations of organizational responsibility and effectiveness emerges, which can be used to define the “true” person. While individual lapses in judgment may garner attention in many cases, the ability of psychopaths to cover or explain away their individual decisions makes evidence of these lapses difficult to obtain. Rather, it is the long-term impact of their behaviors in a variety of situations and their dealings with a variety of people that can shed more light on who they really are. In this sense, it is the choices made in response to organizational challenges that provide a clear picture of the person as an executive.

SOME “RED FLAGS” TO CONSIDER

The following list is presented to give the reader a sense of some of the long-term consequences of psychopathic features that might be observed in a business setting. While no single consequence is necessarily indicative of psychopathy, all of them are problematic if not addressed in training and coaching sessions. At the very least, evi-Enemy at the Gates

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dence of these outcomes should send up the “red flag” and warrant further investigation and evaluation.

i n a b i l i t y t o f o r m a t e a m The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is an inability to form a workable team. Noted in narcissistic and Machiavellian businesspeople as well as psychopaths, the inability to form a team is a critical factor in career derailment. Psychopaths’ failure as leaders and managers is based on their unwillingness and inability to collaborate with others, especially those whom they see as adversaries. Being highly competitive, and in the name of the “good fight,” they withhold or distort information to the detri-ment of the team and ultimately the company. When placed on a team they will exhibit disruptive tactics and behaviors designed to either take over the team themselves or disturb the working of others.

Often, they will attempt to derail a team before the first meeting by challenging the need for the team itself, and will use typical organizational rationale (for example, “meetings are a waste of time”) to buttress their disruption, but crafted to sound as if they have the company’s best interest at heart. Or they may participate in a half-hearted manner, often showing up late and making a scene when entering, or leaving in the middle of the meeting to do tasks that are

“more important.” They disrupt the team’s progress by distracting it from its purpose, criticizing the team, its objectives, and individual teammates, including “bad-mouthing” to others when it suits their purpose. Being highly competitive and unwilling to listen to the directives of anyone whom they cannot value (i.e., those who do not have high utility for their career), they will attack the team, berate the members, and sabotage the leader. Recall that psychopaths believe they possess or are entitled to higher status than others and will treat coworkers like pawns in their drama. Predictably, they attack others who attempt to manage or evaluate them.