Sometimes, the boss really is a psycho

When I have a nice boss, I am motivated to work hard for them. When I have a mean boss, I have to force myself to accomplish anything.

http://www.today.com/money/sometimes-boss-really-psycho-6C10732488

Allison Linn
July 25, 2013

The bully, the narcissist, the know-it-all, even the psychopath.

We may not like them, or want our children to be like them. But chances are, almost everyone who has worked long enough has a horror story about a superior who generally behaved like Homer Simpson’s boss, Mr. Charles Montgomery "Monty" Burns.

A growing number of researchers are looking into what makes a real-life Mr. Burns, and what they are finding isn’t always pretty.

“There are whole climates and cultures of abuse in the workplace,” said Darren Treadway, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo School of Management. His recent research looks at why bullies are able to persist, and sometimes even thrive, at work.

He said many people have either seen or experienced bullying at work because some bullies are skilled enough to figure out who they can abuse to get ahead, and who they can charm to get away with it.

“The successful ones are very, very socially skilled,” he said. “They’re capable of disguising their behavior.”

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Very few companies will admit that they want a bad boss in their corporate ranks. But experts say that bad bosses do have some aspects of American corporate culture working in their favor. That includes the results-at-all-costs mentality that pervades many publicly held companies and the stereotype that a good boss should be aggressive and bold.

When Babiak presents the first part of his research on corporate professional who are psychopaths, he said he often hears from senior leaders who wonder why psychopaths are so bad. That’s because they would actually like to have a manager who comes across as strong, decisive and aggressive.

The allure is often short-lived.

“Usually by lunchtime they realize … that you can’t pick and choose the traits that you want,” he said. “If you are hiring a psychopath you will get pathological lying. You will get grandiose sense of self.”

By contrast, he said the initial response he usually gets from lower level workers is, “Oh my God, you’re describing my boss.”

Of course, most bosses aren’t horrendous enough to deserve an actual diagnosis of psychopathy.

“At first, the tendency is to see (a bad) boss as a psychopath,” said Sigrid Gustafson, an industrial organizational psychologist who runs the consulting firm Success Exceleration. “There are a lot of ways to be a jerk, and there are a lot of ways to be a bad boss.”

Babiak said about 4 percent of the 203 executives he studied were diagnosable psychopaths, compared to about 1 percent of the broader population. A person is considered a psychopath if they score very high on an evaluation that looks at four factors and finds that they are particularly manipulative, without remorse or empathy, live a deviant lifestyle and are antisocial.

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In general, Timothy Judge, a management professor at the University of Notre Dame, said his research has shown that agreeable people – those who are cooperative, nice and gentle - are less likely to emerge as leaders than disagreeable people. That’s even though agreeable leaders tend to do just as good a job as disagreeable people, he said.

More generally, Judge’s data also has shown that being agreeable can harm many aspects of career success, including salary negotiations, occupational prestige and career attainment.

“We have this quality that we say we really want in people, and yet if you look at the labor market it really punishes that,” Judge said.