• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long Posts
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no HIERARCHY of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Safety Acronyms
    • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
    • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
    • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
    • Safety Slogans List
    • Road Safety Slogans
    • How to write your own safety slogans
    • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
    • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
    • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
    • Safety Slogans for Work
You are here: Home / Rob Sams / King of the World – Why is Sociopathy and Psychopathy so prevalent ‘at the top’?

King of the World – Why is Sociopathy and Psychopathy so prevalent ‘at the top’?

February 25, 2014 by Rob Sams 6 Comments

King of the World – Why is Sociopathy and Psychopathy so prevalent ‘at the top’?

Latest Guest Post By Robert Sams from www.dolphinsafetysolutions.com.au

The temptation of moneyPsychopaths will thrive in an organisation that is seeking to control their people. Where the culture of a workplace, or group, allow psychopaths to manipulate and denigrate others without consequence, they will succeed in achieving their own needs and goals without care at all for others involved.

The following story is taken from the book, Snakes in Suits[1]:

Helen was the perfect candidate for the job. She had a reputation for making things happen. Admittedly, some collateral damage occurred along the way, but that didn’t concern the management.

Gus was moved out of his position after Helen made arguments that implicated him in the original business letdown. She had clever ideas, tremendous energy, and persisted in pushing strongly for what she wanted. She constructed a plausible story about Gus’ mismanagement that solidly reinforced her business case. Helen was profoundly competitive and just loved to take center stage. Overall, she convinced them that she possessed all the leadership traits they needed.

Not everyone like Helen. She treated junior colleagues with disdain and a measure of contempt, often deriding their ideas and confidence. To those she found useful in her career, however, she was gracious, engaging and fun.

Helen insisted her direct reports follow the agreed-upon scripts. Histrionics were common during staff meetings, and participants often felt bruised, battered and humiliated at the end of meetings.

Helen hired her own group of people to replace many of her vocal opponents. She then fired most of her own appointments as she decided they were inadequate, incompetent or no longer needed. There was no concern about the harm she did to the careers and family lives of these people.

Helen seemed to get away with whatever she wanted, including the purchase of the latest extravagance; cars and corporate apartments. Questioning her behavior invoked intense reactions.

Eventually the authorities learned that Helen had siphoned off assets to her offshore account and she disappeared without a trace.

Helen demonstrates many traits of a psychopath.

To understand why psychopaths and sociopaths make it ‘at the top’ requires an understanding of what these terms mean and importantly how they relate to the idea of an Authoritarian Personality (TAP). It also requires a careful consideration of the social arrangements in which psychopaths exist and operate. Psychopaths can cause considerable devastation to both people and organisations if the social construct in place allows a psychopath to take control.

The term ‘Sociopath’ and ‘Psychopath’ are often used interchangeable (see – Definitions). What is common for both is an inability to perceive ‘other’. Psychopaths are neutral to the feelings of others, they don’t know that they don’t ‘feel’ (a-rational) and everything they do is for ‘self’.

Typically, Psychopaths will display the following traits:

· Charm

· Intelligence

· Ability to Manipulate

· Lack conscience and empathy (for ‘other’)

Psychopaths often make it ‘to the top’ by manipulating and charming their way to the position that suits their needs without a care for ‘others’ along the way. To really understand the impact psychopaths and sociopaths can have, requires us to consider and explore the social circumstances in which they best fit and prosper.

Psychopaths often adopt an authoritarian personality (TAP – see definition at http://www.simplypsychology.org/authoritarian-personality.html) style of leadership. They will focus on control, power, rules and details. They will not share, in adopting TAP they don’t need social interaction, they just need authority within their own ‘in-group’. (For further reading about this see Duckitt’s research – John Duckitt – Authoritarianism and Group Identification (1989).

Psychopaths will thrive in an organisation that is seeking to control their people. Where the culture of a workplace, or group, allow psychopaths to manipulate and denigrate others without consequence, they will succeed in achieving their own needs and goals without care at all for others involved. Couple this with an organisation that establishes a discourse of control and power through for example the goals that they set along with the language they use, and you have a recipe for the psychopath, using the idea of TAP, to flourish.

So is it any wonder, really, why there are so many Sociopaths and Psychopaths at ‘the top’, when so many organisations seek short term financial results, care less about the ‘how’ then the ‘what’ and spend so much time developing processes to ‘dehumanise’ the workforce. These are conditions where psychopaths will get straight to the top, knocking over anyone along the way.

Robert Sams

Phone: +61 424 037 112

Email: robert@dolphinsafetysolutions.com

Web: www.dolphinsafetysolutions.com.au

Facebook: Dolphin Safety Facebook Page


[1] Babiak, Paul. Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work New York, Harper Collins, 2007

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Rob Sams

Rob Sams

Owner at Dolphyn
Rob Sams

Latest posts by Rob Sams (see all)

  • The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation - August 22, 2021
  • I’m just not that into safety anymore - June 1, 2020
  • Social ‘Resiliencing’ - January 7, 2020
  • Resiliencing….. (and other such ‘ings’…) - January 3, 2020
  • Our Social Being – and why it matters in Mental Health and Suicide - December 8, 2019
Rob Sams
Rob is an experienced safety and people professional, having worked in a broad range of industries and work environments, including manufacturing, professional services (building and facilities maintenance), healthcare, transport, automotive, sales and marketing. He is a passionate leader who enjoys supporting people and organizations through periods of change. Rob specializes in making the challenges of risk and safety more understandable in the workplace. He uses his substantial skills and formal training in leadership, social psychology of risk and coaching to help organizations understand how to better manage people, risk and performance. Rob builds relationships and "scaffolds" people development and change so that organizations can achieve the meaningful goals they set for themselves. While Rob has specialist knowledge in systems, his passion is in making systems useable for people and organizations. In many ways, Rob is a translator; he interprets the complex language of processes, regulations and legislation into meaningful and practical tasks. Rob uses his knowledge of social psychology to help people and organizations filter the many pressures they are made anxious about by regulators and various media. He is able to bring the many complexities of systems demands down to earth to a relevant and practical level.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Rob Sams, Safety Leadership, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: psychopath, safety culture, sociopath, workplace culture

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 24,027,106 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,426 other subscribers

NEW! Free Download

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Lynn Getzinger on Free Online Safety Training Courses
  • Rob Long on How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
  • Ndilimeke Shiwayu on How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
  • Mark Wayne Arboso on 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
  • Roel on Free Workplace Health and Safety Downloads
  • Rob Long on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • BRENT R CHARLTON on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • Rob Long on Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Rob Long on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • simon cassin on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Recent Posts

  • Culture Silences in Safety – Holism
  • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious
  • Culture Silences in Safety Artefacts
  • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism
  • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology
  • The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See
  • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages

What is Psychological Safety at Work?

Footer

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,426 other subscribers

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • After the goldrush
    • The Internationale
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • Psychological Core Stability for Wellbeing in Workers Comp
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • In it for The Long Haul – Making the most of the FIFO Lifestyle
    • Who is Responsible for This?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
    • Culture – Edgar Schein
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Professional Conferences Are A Sleazy Con
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
  • Admin
    • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages
    • Humanising Leadership in Risk, Shifting the Focus from Objects to Persons
  • Dr Rob Long
    • Culture Silences in Safety – Holism
    • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious
  • Rob Sams
    • The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Barry Spud
    • Things To Consider When Developing And Designing Your Company SWMS
    • Bad Safety Photos
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Simon Cassin
    • Safety values, ideas, behaviours and clothes
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

Most commented on

The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser

Forecasting Safety

The Banned Objects Index – A New Development in Safety Culture

Dumbs for Safety

The Real Barriers to Safety

Safety as Faith Healing

Who Said We Don’t Need Systems?

How to use signs, symbols and text effectively in communicating about risk

Why Safety Controls Don’t Always Work

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety

FEATURED POSTS

Bridging the Disciplines for Better Outcomes

Safety for Luddites

The Sully Effect

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Adverse Events: Eliminate or Anticipate?

I was just trying to Help

The 10 Behaviours of the Safety Sociopath

No Soft Skills in Safety

Safety Utopia as Abuse

Starting Points, Worldviews and Risk

The Mythic Symbology of Safety

Tackling the Reality of Harm

Coronavirus and the Dunny Paper Effect

Safety as Avoidance

Understanding Risk

Investigations and Heuristics

Holistic Ergonomics

The Visionary Imagination and Marion Mahoney Griffin

Paperwork and Usability in Tackling Risk

The Tension of Opposites and Binaries in Risk

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,426 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

 

How To Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

 

 

How to Make your own Covid-19 Face Mask

 

Covid-19 Returning To Work Safety, Transitioning, Start Up And Re Entry Plans

 

How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?

imageOne of the benefits of the Covid-19 epidemic is a total rethink about how we live and work (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/coronavirus-could-reshape-how-australians-work-forever/12097124 ).

Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging

One of the fascinating things about the Coronavirus pandemic is watching Safety morph into epidemiology expertise. I would like a dollar for every flyer, presentation, podcast, powerpoint, checklist template, toolbox talk and poster set that had jumped into my inbox… Read the rest

The Stress of Stasis

One of the challenging things about the Coronavirus crisis is stasis. For those without work and confined to home, for those in self-isolation, it’s like life is frozen in time. ‘Stay at home’ is the mantra. The trouble is, in… Read the rest

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.