Editor’s note: A master’s student from Carleton University in Ottowa, Canada, is researching psychopaths in the workplace. She invited Lovefraud readers to participate in her research, and many of you did. Below are her preliminary findings.
Backstabbing bosses and callous co-workers: An examination of the experience of working with a psychopath.
Very little research has been conducted on the phenomenon of corporate psychopathy or victims of psychopaths. This study was one of the first to take a victimcentric approach to study how psychopaths behave in a workplace.
The purpose of the study was to better understand the effects (mental, physical, financial, social) of working with an individual who possesses psychopathic traits. We also wanted to determine how psychopaths interact with their peers in a work environment.
Several research questions were created prior to data collection to help understand the experience of working with a psychopathic colleague. Based on these questions, we found:
1) Emotional harm was the most common type of harm reported by participants, followed by physical consequences as a result of working with the psychopath, and financial harm.
2) The psychopath most often used relational manipulation to harm their colleagues. This refers to any social means used to undermine or control the victim and included behaviours such as: lying, manipulation, deceit, spreading rumours, public humiliation and turning colleagues against one another.
3) Most participants had a good first impression of the psychopath and described him or her as charismatic, outgoing, sociable, engaging, good looking, and articulate.
4) Most participants suspected they worked with a psychopath after witnessing the psychopath interact with others in the workplace. Others knew their colleague was a psychopath after being victimized or researching the behaviours they observed.
5) Most participants reported receiving support from their friends and family. Receiving support from work colleagues was the second most common source of support.
6) Emotional support was the most common type of support received and other types of support included: tangible support, informational support, spiritual support, and financial support.
7) Participants with psychopathic superiors have lower job satisfaction than participants with a psychopathic peer or subordinate.
8) High rates of workplace bullying, perpetrated by the psychopath, were reported by study participants.
The findings revealed that the experience of working with a psychopath is negative and has the potential to be very emotionally harmful to victims. These findings have important implications for human resource personnel as they emphasize the consequences of employing an individual with psychopathic traits. Almost all survivors reported some level of harm due to their relationship with the psychopath, however, coping and support helped to alleviate some of the effects. The results highlight the heterogeneity present in the experiences of victims of corporate psychopaths.
I would like to thank you again for your participation and for bravely sharing your story.
Wow, I just had an AHA! Moment!
I have been reading in this forum for some time now trying to wrap my head around my exspath and I never once thought about the possibility of this. As I read this it just clicked for me.
That one person on your team who targets victims and makes their work life hell. A superior who lies, manipulates, and exaggerates to make you look bad to managers and team mates. I have one of these in my life right now and I failed to see it. This one in particular targets people who have made her angry over something personal at some point in time. Over the last year and a half I watched as she did this to another coworker/old friend (and did the awful thing by sitting and letting it happen because I thought it was none of my business). This coworker has since moved on to another team because of this. Last February, I angered this person by not going to Vegas with her because I was 6 months pregnant. Since then, I have been her target.
Is there any advice for dealing with people like this in the workplace? I enjoy my job and wish to keep it, but I do have to deal with her regularly as she is more senior in the position than I am. I have been just keeping my head down and focusing on my work but I can definitely tell my relationship with my manager has changed because of what this person says about me. (This person and my manager are pretty close and they work out of the same office. I work in another office 1400km away as I moved 2 years ago)
I had a client company in Canada. The head of the organization was a lovely man, extremely polite and cordial. Probably too much so.
His right-hand man, second in command was a young guy, maybe 27 or so, who was by far one of the most underhanded people I have encountered at a workplace.
This kid had been trained by the worst in my field. His career mentors were the ones who took bribes, looked the other way, and did as little work as possible because why ruin a good thing? They were in the backroom having their coffee and shooting the bull. Women were certainly not welcomed, not unless they gave certain “benefits.”
They were the type that had given my field a very bad name years before I entered it. I thought they were creatures of the past, but in some locations, apparently, the old ways take a very long way to die.
I knew that I had a very tough situation on my hands.
Furthermore, there was an outside auditing group that was supposed to approve the company for its quality system every three years. This kid was tight with those people, too. Why? Because by exchanging the right kind of paper (cash,) they would certify a company after pushing a few documents around. The audit was all for show. They thought I was crazy because I had wanted to actually do the work.
I was trained at the other end of the spectrum. I used to work for the US Department of Defense. Trust me when I say that the US government has just about seen it all. After all, they encounter so many different situations and types. We had numerous training sessions on how to recognize fraud and the types of stunts Defense contractors will try to pull.
I walked in assuming the best and asking the right questions to do the job adequately and professionally.
The kid didn’t like it at all. I was getting much too close to the truth. What he began doing was ignoring my requests for information. I could have asked for information until the cows not only came home but went out again and I was never going to get it. Without the information, I couldn’t do my job. Like either of us was too stupid to realize that.
I was in a horrible position because my responsibility was to this company. The guy that I was dealing with was cheating the company blind, but to the head guy, his boss, he thought the kid was wonderful. Naturally, the kid said the right things to him and charmed almost everybody in sight.
I finally composed a letter that was probably the most politically careful thing that I have ever written. I couched the situation as nicely as I could, giving the kid the benefit of the doubt in every way possible when what I actually wanted to do was expose him for the back-stabbing, underhanded, lying, cheat that he was.
Don’t you know that his boss dismissed everything that I said? He thought I might not have had all the facts. He was satisfied with the kid and if we could put our differences aside, he was sure we would have a wonderful working relationship. There is none so blind as those who will not see.
Ultimately, it came down to a meeting that we were supposed to have with the auditor on the next day. The kid told me to go back to the US, the head guy was happy with what I did and I didn’t need to be there. He could handle it. They knew I was tired. (That was a red flag that I didn’t recognize at the time.) Very confused, I left. What was I going to do? Tell the kid that he was wrong?
I got read the riot act for leaving. Yes, I explained what the kid had said, but the top guy couldn’t believe it. He was mystified. He didn’t know which of us was telling the truth, but my story held water when the kid’s didn’t. Still, his emotional investment was in the kid so… Our relationship was essentially over at that point. I completed my contract, but it wasn’t renewed.
It was a lesson from the school of hard knocks.
Nope, I never would have believed that this kid would have been that vicious or deliberately sabotage the company and my contract, but after learning that I was supposed to be at that meeting and he said to go home, my picture of him came into clear focus.
You know how Gavin de Becker talks about your gut talking to you? My gut talked to me about this kid.
This business was located in St. Catherines in Canada. The kid took me on a tour of the city. He made a point of driving me past the house where Karla and what’s-his-face, her now ex-husband, had lured girls in, sexually abused, and then murdered them had occurred. I believe one of them had been Karla’s sister.
I didn’t know much about the story back then, but his story made a deep impression on me because he got unnaturally/weirdly excited when telling me what went on there. His reaction was definitely creepy.
It was one of those conversations that leave you with a “huh?” and haunts your mind even though you’d just as soon forget about it.
I lost that client and never, ever have I been happier to get away from somebody.
I used to think that my exspath had everyone at work duped (like he duped me at first) and that they all thought he was a great guy, but I learned over the years that they all hate and fear him. They finally figured him out, just like I did.
One lady who used to work with him told me that she had to “pray daily for the ability to cope with him.” God, that sounds a lot like how I survived being married to him.
A man who works with him told me that they all wish he’d drop dead or retire and the boss would love to fire him but he can’t because my ex has “covered his ass so well” that it would be nearly impossible to fire him without a tremendous battle.
This same man told me that he thinks the only reason the kids and I are still alive is that my ex knows what would happen to him in prison and he doesn’t want to be “abused” (I’ll leave out the graphic terminology he used) in prison for the rest of his life.
I’ve had folks in my life withdraw themselves abruptly from my life once they found out I was married to him.
People are afraid of him. They are wise.
I have seen what Psychopaths can do to business partners, spouses, subordinates, and even their own bosses….chaos, pain and problems. I have at one time seen a mid level manager who “love bombed” an inexperienced CEO and bankrupted an entire hospital…destroyed it from the ground up. Created chaos during an acute nursing shortage in the mid 1980s and the ENTIRE nursing staff left except for one nurse who was the employee health nurse over a 6 month period of time. Since this was a very specialized hospital for spinal cord injuries, it destroyed it.
My late husband was targeted by a group of con men/psychopaths who ended up destroying a company he built from the ground up. I’ve had bosses and subordinates both who were very high in P traits.
There is NO telling how much the $$$ cost of the destruction the people like this cause in the work place, besides the dissatisfaction and emotional pain.
Bob Hare’s book “Snakes in Suits” says it all in the TITLE they are SNAKES and pretend to be human.
Fortunately, most of the time because I was working in a position that had many job openings, I was never without a job literally for more than a day or two, but I know other who have been forced to stay in jobs that were made miserable by people high in P traits just in order to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.
G1S:
What a story! UGGHH!!!
I know exactly who you are talking about with the Karla story. I saw that many times on the crime shows.
Are you familiar with the story of Shirley Turner and Andrew Bagby?
Oxy:
Me, too. Remember…I met mine at work! If I would list all he has done there, you wouldn’t even believe it and he has gotten away with all of it and not only gotten away with it, but got promoted! Isn’t that how it tends to work though?? Absolutely frustrating!!
It is frustrating when such people prosper in the atmosphere of evil that they seem to foster—I am no longer “shocked” at the stories I have heard…or the things I have seen with my own blue eyes. LOL I still shake my head at the destruction of the specialty hospital nursing staff…I stayed for 6 months thinking that “someone besides me and the few who got it besides me” would see what was happening, but I finally saw that no one was going to stop the madness. Shortly after I left, the CEO got fired….and it ended up not long after that the hospital went under. All from one CEO who was unsure of herself and a psychopath out for control that latched on to her.
Louise, no, I don’t know who Shirley Turner and Andrew Bagby are.
I can add one more detail to that Canadian business.
The kid had a manager, his second in command, who did everything that the kid told him to do. This guy was smart, but not assertive or proactive. We went out for lunch one time and he told us how his wife had joined a fundamentalist Christian church and she decided it was against the Bible to eat pork so he wasn’t going to eat ribs. He sounded totally dominated by his wife and was afraid of her even though he was out with us. He was probably in his mid-30s. He managed the plant, but it was the kid who was in control.
Definitely the dominant and subordinant pair. They reminded me of those two prep school boys from the early 20th century who murdered a classmate because they wanted to see what it felt like to kill someone. Loeb and Leopold, I think.
And you know, everything on the surface looked so normal.
Oxy:
I guess I have to say that I am no longer as shocked either by what happens in this world after I experienced it firsthand. It’s amazing the havoc they leave in their wake and how much damage they can do. And they just keep floating along like, Oh, did I bump into something…haha. Idiots. Pure empty idiots.
That is really a shame about the hospital you speak of. Do you know where the CEO and the psycho are now?
Oxy, I’ve been working in an environment that had been very badly managed. Not psychopathic, just no accountability.
They finally let the top guy go week before last and my boss was moved to another location last week. She left without any instructions about what would happen to me or her other report. The two of us don’t have supervisors right now and I’m not sure they even care. My old boss is still listed as my supervisor in the company’s HR system.
There has been so much anger in the place. People fill out the employee surveys and 100% of the employees say that they would not recommend the company as a place to work.
You would think that the powers-that-be would get it. They haven’t.
Two weeks now and only yesterday did they announce that the top guy is gone. I don’t have a supervisor and nobody has said boo to me. I’m sure my job isn’t a priority, but a general email to everybody like “we’re working on this and will be in touch” would be nice.
The rumors flying around that place are crazy.
When the inmates are rattling the cages and getting angry, don’t you think Management might notice and say something to calm the crowd? I’d like to think that Management might know how to prioritize and put out the worst fires first.
Maybe I’m being naive again. Sigh.