Psychopathy vs. Empathy

Which management trait holds the keys to success?

Welcome to my inaugural All Business Wednesday Post.

Everything today, thanks to the study of psychology, is on the spectrum. When analyzing human behavior, I can see their point. On a scale of 1 to 10, every morning I wake up with an ass ache on the lower end of the scale. But as my day progresses, often after perusing the morning headlines, my ass ache rises on the spectrum meter. When my ass ache hits level 10, I sit down and write a Substack post. Today's level 10 writing is regarding a recent article discussing psychopathy versus empathy in business leadership.

The article by David Adam, published in Knowable Magazine from Annual Reviews titled, The Psychopathy Path To Success, took my ass ache to eleven. In this article, Adam links boldness to positive business attributes. He quotes Christopher Patrick, A clinical psychologist at Florida State University,

“You can think of boldness as fearlessness expressed in the realm of interactions with other people where you’re not intimidated easily, you’re more assertive, even dominant with other people.” Adam asserts that the "boldness" of a low-level psychopath can be good for business management.

"A bold person is not necessarily a psychopath, of course. But add boldness to high degrees of meanness and disinhibition, Patrick says, and you could have a psychopath who’s more able to use their social confidence to mask the extremes of their behavior and so excel in leadership positions. In fact, it may be that the degree of boldness correlates closely with whether someone with traditionally psychopathic traits can make their life a success."

Other psychopathic traits can also benefit people in certain careers: Meanness, for example, often shows itself as a lack of empathy. “Within the corporate world, you want someone who can perform under pressure and make quick decisions, perhaps without displaying high levels of empathy, because they need to be able to make those cutthroat choices...”

According to the article, psychologists created a 54- question test to measure patients' psychopathy spectrum. To be sure, all people have some psychopathy traits. Like narcissistic traits, we are wired for self-preservation and healthy levels of both traits provide those safety features. But the internal check and balance of psychopathic and narcissistic traits is a moral campus. Sans that "weighing on a conscious restraint," even mild doses of psychopathy leads to toxic leadership.

Anyone who has spent time in business environments does not need a scale to assess the psychopathy of their leaders - it is innately obvious by the level of toxicity those leaders create in the workplace. I think far too many researchers, who never leave the confines of the university, have the stereotypical view of business leadership that successful leaders are cunning, ruthless, and outspoken. It is a condition I will call the "Gordon Complex." That is, they believe that to be successful in business, one must act as ruthlessly as Gordon Gekko in the boardroom and as heartlessly as Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen. Academics correlate those "Gordonesce" architypes of boldness and ruthlessness with great business leadership. In fact, Gordon Complex style leaders are in it for themselves, and they leave a trail of victimized employees scattered about their wake.

I find psychologists attempting to define what are positive business attributes for leadership about as disingenuous as politicians claiming to know what policy is best for business. Both "authoritative" opinions further the notion that those who cannot do, teach, or legislate. Because neither has any clue what real leadership, or business for that matter, looks like and would flop faster than a soufflé at a rock concert should they ever have to lead under pressure.

True leadership is about honesty and empathy. Those two attributes could not be further from the "burn the boats" follow me or die psychopathic business leader mentality. Because, by definition, the psychopath lacks empathy for those carrying the spear in front of them into battle. To them, the workers are mere means to greater glory for themselves.

Real leaders eat last. Simon Sinek succinctly states in this video, What Leaders Eat Last Means. Real leaders, when they walk into their work environment, no matter what pressing work is on their plate, make themselves available to their team first. They understand that putting their energy into the team’s success first moves projects along faster and builds trust. When the chips are down and short-term sacrifices are required to bring a project to completion, the team will follow the empathetic leader into the battle. Real leadership is exhausting because eating last also means the leader’s personal work comes last.

It went largely unnoticed and to some seemed trite, but during the Iraqi war, President George W. Bush stopped playing golf. As a leader, he was not going to enjoy a perk of his position and status while young men and women were put in harm's way by his decision to engage in the Middle East. Now, think way back to your favorite "lockdown" leader during the Covid crisis. Did they display the same "leaders eat last" trait? Certainly not Governor Newsom who locked down the State of California and then yukked it up with all his pals by eating first at French Laundry.

Leadership requires a sacrifice of time. Effective leaders quite often put in longer hours because they delay personal projects for the sake of advancing team success. Winning coaches do not spend their days watching game tapes and devising strategies for their next win, they are on the field, providing first-hand instruction, rehearsing the fundamentals, and conditioning their team to win. Watching the game tapes starts, after the players have showered and gone home. Coach Andy Reid is not whiling away his days this week watching game tapes, he is on the field with the rest of the coaching staff, working on removing the embedded butter on receiver Kadarius Toney's fingertips.

Psychopathic leaders, by the very virtue of that definition, are only in the game for themselves. If the business objectives align with the psychopathic leader's, then, and only then, may they mutually benefit each other. But the moment they don't, the business suffers. The psychopathic leader will unempathetically jump ship and find another healthy "host" business to inflict their “Gordon” like boldness upon.

In a race to the finish line between an empathic and psychopathic leader, I will take the empathetic leader every time. Even if they come in second, that position is greater because the second-place achievement has a much better long-term return on investment (ROI.) Simply put, empathic leaders do not stack up a body count in the race for success, achieve greater employee retention and build better benches. Great empathetic leaders can leave their posts (retire) and the organization will continue to flourish because they have fostered an environment where honesty, blamelessness and empathy are embedded among their senior C-suite executives. Great leaders cheerfully export their psychopathy-prone executives to competitive firms and never hold an ounce of regret regarding the loss.

For situations where the opposite is true, where a dynamic, yet psychopathic leader remains, the top empathic executives see no pathway to improving their leadership knowledge within that organization. The psychopathic leader has, in a sense, sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Those empathetic managers leave psychopathic cultures and seek organizations built on EOS or other similar business modeling ventures. For organizations relying on the dynamic, yet psychopathic leader, succession becomes a difficult problem. Those companies that have come to rely on the toxic dysfunction to steer their businesses, become rudderless and adrift in the absence of their psychopathic leaders.

The new term for this phenomenon is called the “boomerang CEO.” As reported in a recent NPR morning news segment, "We've recently seen Bob Iger returning to Disney. Michael Dell is back at Dell, Inc. and Howard Schultz is leading Starbucks again. One reason is that these so-called boomerang CEOs are not planning for their own succession by bringing the rest of the C-suite management into an empathic leadership fold.”

There is not a better example of these two styles of leadership playing out on the national stage than that of Ronald Reagan vs. Donald Trump. President Reagan governed with empathy. He tapped into the sentiments of the American people, so much so, his landslide reelection received 525 (97.5%) of electoral votes, the largest victory in modern times. But more than that, Ronald Reagan was able to enact his vision in congress making his achievements long lasting (in political terms.) It took 12 years of progressive presidents to unravel the impact President Reagan had on the economy as well as his optimistic outlook for America and her people.

Juxtapose that with President Donald Trump. His strength and Achilles’ heel in leadership is his ego. When the will of the American people and the Republican party aligned with Donald Trump’s, he delivered success. But his actions were extremely polarizing and to many, extremely toxic. Through the power of his personality and the presidency, President Trump was able to chart some major victories. But he was only going to go as far as putting numbers on the board if those actions served him first. Whereas Reagan’s achievements were long-lasting, it took less than 12 minutes for President Joe Biden to undo most of President Trump’s accomplishments by simply rescinding his executive orders. President Trump had very little legislative success and as such, his legacy vanished quicker than a puff of smoke on a windy day.

Now, in boomerang fashion, President Trump is asking for a second term. I will address what I think about this politically in one of my upcoming Sundays op-eds posts. But for the purpose of understanding psychopathic vs. empathic leadership, I will let the legacies of each of these presidencies stand as examples of the staying power of each of these leadership traits.

I encourage all leaders to look at their organization’s management style. Is it fostering a purposeful strategy with an empathic work culture or is it relying on a strong psychopathic personality to drive success? Regarding succession planning, the former has far higher value on the market than the latter. The choice of leadership matters if one wishes to leave a lasting and purpose driven legacy. It also matters if one wishes to maximize the value of a succession plan.

It’s not that psychopathically run organization are not marketable, it’s just that an acquisition plan of a psychopathic-lead organization requires additional time and cost to install (meaning firing and hiring) replacement leadership teams and a building an open culture. Those types of transactions are far from turnkey and smart buyers will build those very real costs into a purchasing plan.