5 Ways To Stop A Psychopath From Entering The C-Suite...

Can your board identify C-suite candidates with psychopathic tendencies?

If not, they should.

After all, a surprisingly large fraction of corporate leaders have clinically elevated levels of what psychologists term the Dark Triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Each of these personality traits contributes to making such candidates potentially disastrous choices, even though those same traits often attract them to—and help them attain—positions of power.

In choosing a CEO, then, one of a board’s most important goals should be to ensure the person they choose (ideally) lacks these traits entirely or, if he or she does have them, also has other overriding strengths so significant they make up for the risks they pose.

Fortunately, the rigorous scrutiny involved in traditional insider succession provides a degree of protection against these undesirable traits. Years of close observation allow boards to develop a deeper understanding of an insider's character, making it more difficult for manipulative individuals to maintain a fa?ade. While the baseline rate of psychopathy among CEOs is concerningly high, the extended evaluation period inherent in insider succession offers a greater chance to identify and weed out problematic candidates.

For external candidates, though, detecting these traits is no easy task. People with elevated levels of psychopathy in particular are often supremely skilled at hiding their tendencies—so much so that Hervey M. Cleckley’s classic book on psychopaths, which still shapes our understanding of the condition more than 80 years after it was written, was titled The Mask of Sanity. (All of the characteristics described here are true of both clinical and subclinical psychopaths, just at a lower level for subclinical ones, so I’m using “psychopath” as a descriptor for both categories.)

So how can boards make sure that the outsider CEO they pick—a choice that large companies are opting for with increasing frequency—is not masking the Dark Triad?

Nothing is foolproof, but boards can take these five steps to uncover potential psychopathic tendencies:

1. Check everything.

People with elevated psychopathic traits lie—constantly, intentionally, with great skill, and without compunction. And because it’s easier to lie about extraordinary accomplishments than to have them, checking everything is essential.

Did they claim to graduate from a prestigious school? Get the transcript—and get it directly from the school, not from them.

Do they have a resume free of failures? Make sure all the start and end dates match (Al Dunlap, for example, continued his disastrous career through the simple expedient of not listing the two companies that had fired him on his resume).

Do they claim spectacular successes at their previous companies? How solid is the accounting reporting those profits?

I am constantly amazed by how many companies functionally take the word of a candidate for major parts of their resume. As soon as you find the first deception—even a seemingly minor one—you need to redouble your scrutiny of every line in the resume and every story in the interview.

2. Look for extended relationships.

It is virtually impossible to get to know someone’s true personality in a short period of time. It takes years to get through the fa?ade and understand a person’s true desires, capabilities, and tendencies. If you’re looking at a candidate who has spent most of their career moving from company to company after 2-3 years, it’s important to know why. Find people at those previous companies and get their take on what prompted the candidate’s short tenures.

3. See how they did in structured environments.

Dark Triad traits in general (and psychopathic traits in particular) are most effective in unstructured environments. More rigid and bureaucratic workplaces, however, are far less susceptible to manipulation. CEOs with military backgrounds, for example, are 60% less likely to oversee accounting fraud than those without them (N.B.: Elite Special Forces units like the Navy SEALs are far less bureaucratic than the rest of the military. Being part of one of those units says many extraordinary things about a person, but it does not tell us much about their ability to flourish in a bureaucracy).

4. Get honest feedback from former subordinates.

To truly understand a candidate, seek candid feedback from those they’ve managed. Dark Triad personalities often "kiss up and kick down," pursuing self-interest through flattery and manipulation. While it can be hard to get honest evaluations from people outside (or even inside) an organization, such feedback is perhaps the single most useful tool in understanding someone’s true character.

5. Have an expert spend extensive time with them in a variety of settings.

Even laypeople’s “gut instinct” about psychopaths can be surprisingly accurate, and experts who have significant experience with them are likely to do even better. (On a personal level, six times in my life I’ve had that instinct go off. The three times I listened, I was glad I did. And the three times that I didn’t, I wish I had.) Sadly, this instinct goes both ways—psychopaths are similarly able to read others, most notably vulnerable targets. All the more reason, then, to bring in a leadership expert as part of the hiring process. Someone who knows what to look for and is completely independent (that is, who works directly for the board and has no incentive to foster a relationship with a future CEO) has a better chance of detecting a candidate’s true self.

Picking a new CEO is the single most important task faced by any Board of Directors. If you get it wrong, your company might never recover. And though every CEO succession is a roll of the dice, leveraging these five strategies can help to improve your odds.

by Gautam Mukunda

Republished by Greg Herrera: Silicon Valley CEO Group; Helping leaders benefit their companies, families and society...