Jeremy Johnson, 34, had never traveled to Haiti before. But when the 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti, the founder of iWorks, a rapidly growing Internet marketing firm based in St. George, Utah, decided to stage his own rescue mission. Piloting his private aircraft, the six feet tall man with unruly red hair and a toothy grin began to evacuate injured children from the area and deliver 110-pound bags of beans and rice to outskirts of Port-au-Prince. His heroic act came at little surprise to his friends and family who were used to Johnson’s impulsive acts of generosity. “When I think of Jeremy Johnson, I think of the most generous person I ever met,” a bank employee in Provo, Utah was quoted in the New York Times. “Whatever he had, he would give and give and give.” Another local resident who befriended ohnson when they were both Boy Scouts described him as “one of the most Christ-like people I have ever come to know.” A year later, Johnson was facing 86 criminal charges, including money laundering, fraud and the theft of $275 million from unwitting customers through fraudulent credit card charges. He served a 87-month prison sentence and was released in April 2022. It is not publicly known whether Johnson took a psychopath test in custody but his impulsiveness, propensity to risk-taking, his gambling addiction (at one time loosing USD 1.3 million at the Bellagio in Las Vegas) and his complete lack of remorse speak for themselves.
Psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon at the University of Surrey interviewed and handed personality tests to 39 male British managers in senior leadership positions. They were on average 36 years old, and the researchers compared their profiles with those of 1085 psychopathic criminals of a similar average age. The corporate leaders were even more likely to be superficially charming, egocentric, insincere, and manipulative, and just as likely to be grandiose, exploitative, and lacking in empathy. Board and Fritzon concluded that the businesspeople they studied might be called “successful psychopaths.” The late American behavioral geneticist David Lykken referred to psychopaths and heroes as “twigs from the same branch” and speculated that the fearlessness associated with psychopathy can predispose to success in politics and perhaps other domains. ‘Fake it until you make it’, the ex-post vindication of glorified entrepreneurs or top executives is a popular mantra of our times. It brought us charismatic con artists such as Lex Grensill, Jan Marsalek, or Elizabeth Holmes condoned and promoted as a means to justify commercial ends. Psychopathic organizations act as ‘rational profit optimizers’ at the expense of people and planet.
Forensic psychologists and behavioral scientists have of late become more broadly interested in the phenomenon of ‘successful ‘psychopaths. If toxic leadership is an oxymoron (toxic leaders are in truth manipulatory bullies, not leaders), the notion of ‘successful psychopaths’ takes a paradox even further. ‘Successful psychopaths’ are defined as individuals exhibiting the core traits of psychopathy who engage in “successful behaviors,” achieving wealth, influence, and power despite their psychopathic traits.
Organizations must stop to think of psychopathy as a character issue which can be addressed by coaches and psychologists. Psychiatry lists it a pathology, and an incurable one: for one, psychopaths’ neuroanatomy cannot be changed, and equally important, psychopaths believe they are smart, not sick. The key to understanding psychopathy and the societal challenge of organizations attracting or tolerating psychopaths is that successful psychopaths, and to a lesser degree sociopaths, don’t recognize their condition. They will not be struck with remorse and collapse under the weight of their conscience. Their health will not suffer but to the contrary benefit from the satisfaction derived from successfully manipulating and deceiving others whose health is much more likely to suffer. Psychopaths don’t have any genuine feelings for others, hence the challenge of successful psychopaths in organizations must be addressed clinically and unemotionally.
Organizations are not helpless; they could reliably detect psychopathy among their staff. Unfortunately, interdisciplinarity is lacking in many fields, including organizational psychology: the medical research results that show how pathological toxicity can be spotted has remined confined to psychiatry. Readers of my book learn about this research and how it can be applied across organizations.