Here’s a scary fact about the prevalence of sociopaths, also called psychopaths: Dr. Robert Hare, the psychologist who developed the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), says that approximately 1% of the general population meets his definition of a psychopath. But in a study of 200 high-potential executives, he found that 3.5% of them fit the profile of a psychopath. That means there are 3.5 times a many psychopaths in corporate offices as there are on the streets.
One of them, in my opinion, is Carl R. Greene, former executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA). I’ve posted several articles about him since he was fired from the agency that he ran for 12 years in August 2010.
Why was he fired? Well, there were the six sexual harassment complaints filed against him. Greene directed the agency’s lawyers and insurance company to settle three of them, for over $1 million, without informing the board of directors.
Then there was the hostile work environment Greene created. His rage was legendary. Anyone who stood up to him was fired, demoted, or relocated to some outpost in a crime-ridden neighborhood.
Then there was the “unapproved abandonment of his duties.” When the media reported that Greene’s luxury condominium was in foreclosure after he failed to pay the mortgage for five months, he stopped showing up for work. Greene disappeared for a week—no one knew where he was.
Looked the other way
The PHA board of directors apparently knew Greene was an abusive executive—after all, one employee, after being berated by him, went home and dropped dead. They may also have known about his inappropriate spending of agency funds, such as handing out $800 Tumi duffel bags to 20 staffers who attended an annual PHA conference. But they seemed to be willing to look the other way, because Greene got results.
Greene improved living conditions for thousands of Philadelphia residents. He demolished drug and crime infested high-rises and built low-rise housing that turned into stable neighborhoods. He rehabilitated many low-income homes owned by the agency. He created senior centers and job training programs.
As long as the job was being done, the board was not interested in “personnel matters.”
Lawsuit
When he was fired, Greene retaliated by hiring one of the toughest lawyers in Philadelphia to file a wrongful termination lawsuit. He originally demanded $4 million. The board of directors didn’t want to pay him anything.
The civil trial began at the end of January. It included acrimonious testimony from John Street, the former chairman of the PHA board and former Philadelphia mayor.
On Friday, February 23, the interim director of the PHA announced that a settlement had been reached. The agency would pay Carl Greene $625,000.
John Street did not support the settlement, saying it sent the “wrong message to every potential victim of sexual harassment as well as every potential perpetrator.”
So what happened? First, PHA had already spent $1 million defending itself from Greene’s lawsuit, and had exhausted the coverage provided by its insurer.
More importantly, the PHA board had itself given Carl Greene an iron-clad employment contract. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “It wasn’t enough for the agency to show that commissioners had reason to fire him. It had to also show that his behavior caused ‘demonstrable, material injury and damage to PHA.'” If the agency couldn’t prove the damage, it would have to pay the remaining years on the contract.
Read To ‘turn a page,’ PHA settled, on Philly.com.
Do not do business with a sociopath
Two years ago, I attended the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy conference. Paul Babiak, a noted industrial and organizational psychology researcher, talked about explaining the PCL-R to corporate executives. One question they often asked, Babiak said, was at what score would employees be cutthroat competitors but not steal from the company?
The audience burst into laughter. People who know sociopaths know that they can never be trusted.
Just as they are in personal relationships, sociopaths in business are aggressive, hostile, manipulative, deceitful and ethically challenged. Their infatuation with risk could drive them to bet the company—and lose. This is what happened with Enron, Worldcom, HealthSouth. Or their seemingly sterling results can be completely fabricated, as in the case of Bernie Madoff.
Do not believe you can do business with a sociopath and come out on top. Do not believe that you can work for a sociopath and emerge unscathed. Even if there is no overt wrongdoing, you’ll likely suffer from unbelievable stress.
As in personal relationships, the only sane thing to do in a business relationship with a sociopath is get out of it.
YEA, DONNA!!!!!! For sure! My husband’s company in the 1970s was destroyed by psychopaths. He “won” iin court when he sued them, but all he got back was the NAME of the company, the ASSETS were ALL gone!
Later, we ended up in business wiith one after he and I married…I had been warned by a friend, but the guy had love bombed us to the point at that time that we didn’t listen…much to our regret.
I’ve worked for several in hospitals and clinics over the years, seen one destroy a large hospital which ended up broke and bankrupt because of her.
Business is not the ONLY environment in which there is a HIGHER THAN NORMAL in my opinion…how about politics? the military? the Police? Attorneys? (99% of attorneys give the other 1% a bad name! LOL 🙂 )
Sounds like Scousepath in so many ways. Thanks for this article, Donna. Great advice.
Excellent article,Donna!I wholeheartedly agree with your concluding statement:”as in personal relationships,the only sane thing to do in a business relationship with a sociopath is get out of it.”
I just got an e mail from a friend,, forwarded me a news article about her former boss who was president of a college….there is no doubt in my mind that this man is a card carrying 24 Karat gold plated psychopath—and I’ve waited 9 years to see his down fall, but he finally SHOT HIMSELF IN THE FOOT, almost literally.
Over Christmas break while we had snow on the ground here, a robber took off through the snow on foot, and the cops were chasiing him. The robber tried the knob at Mr. Prez’s house and found it open and rushed in, and went into the bathroom and hid. The cops came in and found Mr. Prez DRUNKER’N a skunk waving a gun around cursing and saying “I’m gonna kill that Farker myself!” Mr. Prez refused to give the cops the gun and he cursed them and said it is HIS house and they can go copulate each other. After the cops wrestled the gun away from him, and got the robber out of the bathroom, the story and the 21 page report made by the cops got into the newspaper and the NEXT DAY, by coincidence of course Mr. Prez resigned.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer or more deserving guy actually, and the State Police will be investigating him AND his concealed carry permit is HIS-TO-RY!!!!!
So a little HAPPY DANCE HERE for “another one bites the dust!” Take THAT Jerry Sandusky, OJ, Bernie Madoff, John Edwards, Tiger Woods, etc etc.
“Do not believe you can do business with a sociopath and come out on top. Do not believe that you can work for a sociopath and emerge unscathed. Even if there is no overt wrongdoing, you’ll likely suffer from unbelievable stress.
As in personal relationships, the only sane thing to do in a business relationship with a sociopath is get out of it.”
Absolutely true Donna, and thanks for raising this.
I lost everything and ended up with a lousy credit rating which I will never be free of due to my buisness dealings with a sociopath. one thing, even if these people are found out, they have such a lack of conscience that they will just carry on somewhere else with other people; I found out after I left that they managed to convince the spiritual organisation I am part of to pay for a flight ticket to a place where they were going to get medical treatment, on the basis that they would pay it back… and of course they never paid it back! This was even after I had given them the lowdown on what the sp was like, they are so convincing… in the end of course they found she didnt have the illness she was operated on for… surprise!
I even found accidentally just 2 weeks ago that they faked their address with the bank to an innocent persons address so that person is now getting calls from bailiffs for all the debts they owe. I decided to keep out of the situation, its not worth the personal hassle but it showed me that even 3 yrs after I left and exposed them, their behaviour is still the same.
How can we avoid doing business with sociopaths? How can we avoid dating sociopaths?
We are told every day in the media that we live in a Global Economy. Our kids are being told this every day at school. We are told that our markets and our competitors are all over the world. Signs of the application of religious and spiritual values and those that hold them seem to be harder to find.
Prayer is excluded from schools. The mainstream media is controlled by ammoral or immoral people – in my opinion. Look at the content of entertainment programming and the ‘news’. Everywhere is the glorification of instant gratification.
Which came first, the sociopaths or, the environment that fosters it?
“The meek shall inherit the earth.” Oh, really?
Think about the ‘Law of Natural Selection.’ if ruthless people are getting the jobs and making the money – chances are they will survive and procreate – at the expense of the ‘meek’. Sociopaths and other ruthless people – that have no use for ‘The Golden Rule’ will thus eventually populate the world.
Good people: We are shoveling against the tide.
Ayone out there worked or spent any other significant time overseas? You would probably see that many young ambitious educated people would love to ‘beat’ the USA – in sports, in business, in technology – in making money. Some would enjoy cutting our b @....... lls off.
How do we avoid doing business with the rest of the world where ruthless practices – whether they are caused by sociopathy or not – are the norm?
I have read stories of surveys that have been done – with results that indicate that more people – and particularly more women, are cheating on their spouses and significant others. Women and men see themselves as independent self-sustaining entities that do not need to rely upon a ‘breadwinner’ or even have a supporting partner. It has been postulated that women especially are becoming primary breadwinners and spending more time at work and apparently engaging in more affairs than ever before. My sociopathic ex-gf ‘joked’ about giving the president of the company a ‘peek’ if she could wear a low-cut blouse to work and get close enough to him during a conference and bend forward at the right moment. Being in a big fancy boardroom wit nice leather chairs does that to some people. Or, maybe she was always that kind of person. Either way, my opinion of the Christian Science religion is downgraded.
The trappings of power and money have a funny effect on people – be it in politics (LOADED with sociopaths.), or business.
truth1:
They never change. I left my job almost three years ago because of the spath and you would think that would have been enough for him to step back and say whoa, but it never phased him and now last week, he was fired apparently for doing the same old things. They just keep moving on until one day they crash and burn. I know even this will not stop him. Nothing will until he either gets sick or dies.
My at-work spath presented herself as a bona fide ‘born-again’ Christian (mentioned before in LoveFraud) but obviously her impact on me was phenomenal.
She was a dangerous person who thought nothing of showing up at work in an orange neon mini-dress just to draw attention away from me. My spouse worked at the same place and was enamored of her (all the guys were with the exception of two of them who still liked me).
When she could not get the attention from the guys who remained “in lust” with me…she went after my husband. She was married too…to an equally “Christian” guy.
While peddling religious material and reading the Bible to anyone who would listen (no one approached her about this illegal activity)…she kept her tenacious control on the situation by flaunting her body, hair, and face everywhere she could and even sat at the same table in the lunch room where my hubby and I sat with our select ‘group’. Everyone welcomed her, which is the right thing to do, but my throat contracted. I started staying in my office to eat my lunch and my husband got fed up and lambasted me from the hallway…”Come out and be sociable!”
She did not fool M.A., another female in our department. M.A. would have done me a huge favor if she had approached me at work to talk about this…she called me at home after I left the company and acknowledged she had witnessed much of the activity. She also told me that the spath had taken my old seat in the cafeteria…right across from my hubby.
Clearly…this girl was a bit disturbed and very insecure. I heard she married her boyfriend and that they had a daughter. I went to the church they attended with the intention of telling the pastor about her…I am a bit ashamed to admit that I left a note to him and to the parishioners telling them the truth about this girl (and I referred to her as a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’). I felt morally responsible for ‘reporting’ her behavior and felt a tinge of justification/revenge…never found out what happened.
Her behavior blindsided me and I felt helpless at work, to the point where my work deteriorated. Unfortunately I encountered this again at several other places. . .I was lucky to get a better job/closer to home after being in an even worse environment later on.
Babs:
Really sounds A LOT like the woman at my work also…a lot. Wow.
How can we not “do business” or “work with” Ps? It ain’t easy that’s for sure.
But look for the signs, the red flags….if you are picking a partner, know them well, check them out financially and morally….and LISTEN TO ANY WARNINGS FROM OTHERS
If you are thinking about going to work for Mr/Ms A…well check them out, and one of the best ways is talk to 1 or 2 of the people who work with or for them.
Watch out for love bombs with people you work with.
NEVER GIVE ANYONE YOUR TRUST….make them earn iit. If someone PURSUES YOU as a “friend” be careful.
Ps at work or in business just watch for the RED FLAGS OF FRAUD…they are the same for love or not.