The Victorian government announced plans this week to introduce a jail term of up to 10 years for workplace bullying. But until it becomes law – and probably afterwards, too – terror at the hands of the workplace psychopath will continue for many victims. Apparently, they can’t be stopped. Or cured.
John Clarke is the author of Working with Monsters, which provides readers with information on how to protect themselves. I asked him whether workplace psychopaths are aware they’re psychopathic.
“They wouldn’t recognise themselves as a psychopath but the behaviour is always conscious and intentional,” he says. “Some of the ones I’ve spoken to don’t really see why it’s such a big issue because they see it more as a strategy they need to use to survive. It’s survival of the fittest.”
What makes this condition even more twisted is that workplace psychopaths consider themselves to be smarter than everyone else precisely because of their crafty techniques. As Dr Clarke implies, their mentality goes something like this: ‘If other people were as smart as me, they’d be doing the same thing’.
![Workplace bullying victim ... Brodie Panlock.](/web/20170222152001im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/1/d/7/1/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.1d687.png/1302502073717.jpg)
And that ‘same thing’ is psychological harm inflicted upon colleagues deliberately. When the victim publicly suffers, the psychopath derives enjoyment from seeing evidence they’re able to hurt and conquer another person.
Dr Clarke adds: “There’s an absolute lack of conscience, lack of remorse, and lack of guilt. They’re manipulative, superficially charming, and pathological liars. They like conning people and there’s a grandiose sense of self-importance.”
The office is the perfect breeding ground for workplace psychopaths to prosper, and their key tactic is this: win the important people over first.
“People actually like them,” he says. “They use their excellent verbal abilities to create this false persona and people find them exciting, dynamic and engaging, and they use that to camouflage the torture they’re inflicting on their co-workers.”
Their victims experience anxiety, stress, depression, suicidal thoughts, and in some cases – such as Brodie Panlock – they commit suicide. But what can be done about it? Not much. According to Dr Clarke, there are only three options, and the first two are redundant.
Option 1: Change the psychopath’s behaviours, “which you can’t do because rehabilitation makes them worse.”
Rehabilitation makes them worse? Yes: “They can’t be cured. Rehabilitation programs teach them better social skills, and the psychopath then uses those better social skills to target victims more effectively.”
Option 2: Change the corporate system, “but the corporation backs the psychopath because people in the organisation have been conned and they see the victim as the problem”.
When the victim publicly suffers, the psychopath derives enjoyment from seeing evidence they’re able to hurt and conquer another person.
Option 3: “The only thing you can change is yourself and where you work, and so quite often people leave. Or people don’t leave when they should and they become more and more traumatised.”
The psychopath’s predilection for causing distress stems from childhood. At some stage they would have observed or experienced a certain level of power or control over someone. It made them feel good, and they’ve since carried this feeling with them into adulthood and the workplace, constantly craving it, always needing it.
“The ultimate form of power and control is to destroy people, and that’s the motivation for their behaviours, and that’s why it’ll never change,” says Dr Clarke. “The core driver is not money, it’s not promotion. It’s increased power over a greater number of people so they can eventually have more access to victims. The money is simply a bonus.”
Another expert in this field is Dr Anne Wyatt. She’s written a book with her colleague, Dr Carlo Caponecchia, titled Preventing Workplace Bullying. They’re opposed to the term psychopath and see it as “problematic”.
Dr Wyatt tells me “there is no scientific evidence at all of the incidence of psychopathy in the workplace. In any case, the incidence would be extremely low. Even if people were accurately diagnosed as psychopathic by their non-qualified peers, and of course they cannot be, the pathology is rare.”
She believes the term is overused in relation to the workplace and, at best, it’s simplistic. It seeks to blame the individual rather than the system. She adds: “The 'psychopath' model can cause more harm than good. It can vilify and defame innocent people. It is a 'blame the other person' model, which is naïve.”
I asked Dr Clarke how a workplace psychopath would react if he or she happened to be reading this article. His response: “They would read your article and say ‘yes, that sounds like me’. They would see no need to change their behaviour because society rewards them for it. They get promotions and more money for what they do.”
Here’s hoping a jail term works.
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