Dealing with psychopaths during Agile change

What do we do with psychopathic people during a business change? 

Many Agile consultants believe that coaching works with most people. But this is not the case if the candidate is a psychopath. Because change professionals don’t know about these individuals, they don’t know how to deal with them either. 

If you’re still reading, it’s because you want to know what a psychopath is.

They are a long way from what you see in movies about serial killers, and they are surely part of your day-to-day life.

As you’ll see, they have more impact on the speed of change in your company than any framework or practice you’re thinking of implementing. 

What is a toxic psychopathic person?

Toxic psychopathic people are individuals who have a personality disorder (usually not recoverable) that does not allow them to feel empathy, guilt, or remorse. 

Ultimately, they don’t have emotions like you—assuming you’re not apsychopath! Most of the emotions you see on these people are simulated to manipulate you and those around you. They always see others as objects that help them to achieve their personal goal.

In my experience working in companies in different parts of the world, I have come across and can now recognize many of them. On several occasions, I have had to distance myself from these organizations because of the unhealthy influence of this personality type. 

Psychopaths can usually be recognized by the following patterns:

• They lack empathy, guilt, conscience, or remojes. Their feelings and emotions are superficial, and they switch quickly between often-contradictory emotions when they observe that the current emotion does not get the expected benefit.
• They are impulsive and try to defer gratification toward others to create an emotional dependence on them. 
• They have a superficial charm—especially the first time you meet them! 
• They generally do not accept responsibility for their actions. 
• They have high self-esteem.
• Psychopaths have different patterns of brain activity than nonpsychopathic individuals. Specifically, they exhibit less activity in the amygdala (where fear is processed) and in the frontal orbital cortex (or regions where decisions are made). 

Psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the population and are usually men. Studies indicate that in managerial or executive positions psychopaths can account for up to 20 percent. In my experience dealing with managers and CIOs, I find this number quite reasonable. 

Psychopaths also prefer companies where they can accumulate more power or money, so there are more in financial, insurance, and other such companies.

Because the market of Agile transformation is also highly lucrative, I have seen many managers changing careers and “adapting” their résumés to Agile consulting. The result is that we now have several psychopathic individuals executing business transformations or change.

Several of the companies I have helped had psychopathic people in charge of executing their business transformation strategy. This was so because they are usually excellent executors of strategy. But, in reality, they manage to execute almost anything—at the cost of destroying, in the medium term, the health of the people or teams around them.

In my career, I’ve run into a lot of them. On one occasion, one psychopath tried to coerce me into giving Scrum courses even when the employees refused to attend. 

From an organizational point of view, psychopathics are excellent professionals, because they perform almost any task successfully. This helps the company to always mark all the “ticks” necessary to increase Agile maturity, helps managers get their bonuses, and helps the psychopathic to obtain greater prestige. 

Over the years, experience has helped me to detect psychopathic managers or consultants. Signs that give them away include lower visibility, excessive intimidation, conflict, stress, staff turnover, and absenteeism. 

In general, they are also embroiled in constant conflict, and conflict management techniques seem not to work with them.

Agility requires execution with purpose and visions and goals that involve feelings and inspire people to move forward. In companies where organizational change is taking place and there is a psychopathic leader or consultant in charge, the focus is placed on processes or structures.

The first “smell” you’ll detect is that it is all very mechanical and empty in purpose. Perhaps it is one of the reasons why many banks or other financial institutions create big transformations with an excessively mechanical state of agility.

Since there is a lack of knowledge about what toxic psychopathic people are, many agile professionals try to coach them. However, the psychopathic person normally ends up learning the coach’s tools and manipulating him or her for his own purpose. This obviously aggravates the problem. 

Coaching a psychopath is as dangerous as giving a loaded weapon to an orangutan. 

It’s also very dangerous to include a psychopath as part of a retrospective meeting. In a company I helped in London, the psychopath controlled the emotions of others during those meetings—where individuals were most vulnerable—to serve his personal interests. Unfortunately, all the members of the team ended up resigning in the medium term.

Perhaps a good option would’ve been to add the following line to the Agile manifesto: 

“Non psychopathic People OVER Psychopathic People”

In general, they are very good at reading the interviewer’s feelings and needs during a job interview, and because of this, they notch high scores during the selection process. That is why I always suggest to human resources, or whoever is in charge of hiring new roles, to do the following:

1. Screen all new candidates for management positions (or internal consultants) by a professional (psychologist or psychiatrist specialized in psychopathic personalities).
2. Evaluate the current management positions with which the new candidate will work.

You must bear in mind that even specialized professionals can have difficulty detecting them. In other situations, a psychopathic person might slip through because human resources has no experience, or the psychopathic person has earned the interviewer’s trust by appearing to be an excellent executor of business strategies. 

Any organization that has a high number of toxic psychopathic people will find it difficult or impossible to build a healthy culture, increase business agility in a sustainable way, or create a responsive company. 

It is better to invest time and money in reducing the number of toxic psychopathic people at the beginning of any business change than it is to implement a new framework or scale the current products.

Several techniques (such as, for example, the psychopathic decompression technique) can help the consultant to manage or detect this type of individual. As much as possible, limit your dealings with these people or place strict limits.

Once the company is able to remove toxic psychopathic people from its staff, it should work with the remaining employees on the use of explicit values to allow them to regain confidence. I also recommend techniques that increase the neuroplasticity (mental agility) of the remaining individuals to help them reduce the biases produced by the psychopathic person. 

In short, the company must know how to take one of the following actions (with the support of a health professional such as a psychologist or psychiatrist): 

1. Identify the psychopathic person during the job interview (or any other process in the company) and decide if they want them to be part of the organization or what to do.
2. Identify psychopathic employees and understand how to place limits on them.
3. Use decompression techniques.
4. Never coach a psychopathic individual.
5. Negotiate with them to leave the company.
6. Know how to work with affected people.

I must admit that I’ve wanted to write this article for well over a year, and I debated including it in the second edition of my bestselling book on enterprise agility and change management: Leading Exponential Change.

I could, however, fit only so much into the book, and I’m happy to share these thoughts with you now. If you found it useful, I hope you share it! 

Thanks for listening,

Erich.