Is your boss a psycho? (1 in 5 leaders are)
Some of the biggest names in business employ Dr Tara Swart to keep their dark sides in check, she tells Joe Shute
No sooner have I sat down for an interview with Dr Tara Swart than she produces an iphone and urges me to take a test to determine whether or not I am a psychopath. The questions range from: do I believe cheating on my partner is OK so long as I don’t get caught (for the record, I answered “no”) to does it bother me to see an animal in pain (“yes”), and am I good at getting other people to do what I want (“sometimes”).
My end score is “average psychopathy”. This is clearly not enough to impress the British neuroscientist, academic and leadership coach, who has made it her business to plumb the depths of the sharpest and most savage minds in the corporate world. Dr Swart has become a prominent voice in the field of neuroscience, and currently runs her own leadership programme at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as being a visiting professor at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.
The 43-year-old Londoner worked for seven years in psychiatric medicine after graduating from Oxford University, but around the time of the financial crash decided to change careers to focus on understanding the vagaries of the executive mind – in particular, exploring an apparent connection between psychopathy and those who rise to the top. There is a spectrum of psychopathic personality disorder and, according to Dr Swart, it is one that we are all on. Traits such as charisma, fearlessness, ruthlessness, narcissism, persuasiveness and lack of conscience are exhibited by all of us to some extent, although normally they are restricted or countered by empathy. With a true psychopath, there is no such barrier.
Dr Swart counts among her clients some of the biggest names in business: banks, hedge funds, FTSE 100 companies, magic circle law firms and one major media company (although she will not say which), coaching those in leadership positions to better manage any psychopathic tendencies, and foster a more benevolent workplace culture. “One of my first lines to boards when I come into a business is to tell them: ‘I’ve worked with psychotic and psychopathic murderers and rapists’,” she says. ‘So I’m not scared of you’.”
The figures for corporate psychopathy are understandably vague as, unlike the criminally insane, their condition remains by and large undiagnosed and, in many cases, handsomely rewarded. But a study of 261 corporate executives in the US, published in the European Journal of Psychology and Educational Studies last year, found that 21 per cent of those who took part displayed clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. This translates to one in five – the rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in 100.
The margins are fine between criminal and visionary. The same characteristics that can lead people to a high-security prison cell in Broadmoor could propel others to the C-suite. “Some of these traits can either lead to being the judge or the criminal; the surgeon or the killer,” says Dr Swart. “Part of being a psychopath is you thrive in chaos but other people don’t.”
We meet at lunchtime in the lobby of the Corinthia Hotel, near Westminster, where Dr Swart is giving a talk this Thursday entitled, The Dark Side of Leadership. In person, she is a diminutive yet formidable figure, immaculately dressed and with a keen eye on the behaviour of all those around her.
She points me to a recent study of the top 10 jobs that attract the most psychopaths, compiled by Oxford academic and psychologist Kevin Dutton. CEOS come out on top, followed by lawyers, broadcast media, sales and – perhaps worryingly for those going under the knife – surgeons. Print journalists, police officers, chefs and clergy also all make the cut.
Outside of work, Dr Swart is a vegetarian, mindfulness guru and obsessive about sleep patterns. She
‘Some of these traits can either lead to being judge or criminal; surgeon or killer’
‘Psychopathic traits, such as fearlessness, can be really useful’
orders a powdered Japanese green tea, which arrives in a bowl and is stirred about by the waiter with something that resembles a bamboo shaving brush. “It’s powdered with a high level of antioxidants and ECGCS, which help your brain to actually make more connections,” she says, by way of explanation. My flat white, when it comes, elicits a withering look: “You’ve nearly gone beyond your 2pm ban on caffeine,” she says sternly. “Nobody who knows me would even dare to order coffee beyond 2pm.”
She is getting married in October – he works in oil, not one of the red flag psychopath professions – and I wonder whether she and her betrothed ever treat themselves to a takeaway? “No,” she shakes her head. “The people close to me can see that I have such high standards for what I eat and drink. It wouldn’t be compatible to be with someone who is really unhealthy.”
All this is relevant because these are the tricks Dr Swart uses to assist executives in overriding their natural psychopathic tendencies, and improve the emotional architecture lacking in their own brains. Under her tutelage, out are the lunchtime bottles of claret and blood-rare steaks; in are lunchtime yoga sessions and chomping on carrots in place of cigars. “The way we look at psychopathic traits is like turning up the heat on the hob,” she says. “If you
turn some of them up – like fearlessness – you can see how they would be really useful.”
Dr Swart espouses the connection between brain and body and argues that “neuroplasticity” allows us to train our minds to operate in a different way. “There needs to be a focus on unlearning and overwriting some of those behaviours,” she says. “I prefer the phrase soft-wired to hard-wired. You might have a default or tendency to behave in some way but you can work on that.”
She often sends managerial clients home to practise being more empathetic, patient and understanding – all characteristics devoid in true psychopaths – on their children before going back into the workplace. “They come back to me and say it’s had a real impact not just on workflow but also their relationships with their children,” she says.
It is not difficult to equate a rise among psychopaths in the boardroom with the rocket-charged corporate culture of the neo-liberal Eighties that still defines our own times. Ruthless ambition has long been lauded, from
The Wolf of Wall Street to Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho; not to mention our own low-rent versions on The
Apprentice, where smartly dressed contestants sharpen their elbows and brag about their willingness to do one another over to secure the top job.
According to Dr Swart, the fact that more companies are enlisting her services proves that the reign of the psychopaths may now be coming to an end. With the advent of artificial intelligence in the workplace, she feels that the ability to display “emotional intelligence” will be an ever more precious commodity in the digital age.
“We’re already at the point where there is less room for people who aren’t team players and cannot be empathetic,” she says. “It’s going to be more difficult for people who cannot do that to thrive. It’s not enough anymore to just be good at your job.”
Even so, she admits that shareholders will, no doubt, still continue to fall for the charms of a psychopath. “We have a very strong need for this sense of belonging,” she says. “When times are tough, when you’re not feeling that resourceful or resilient, it’s easy to turn to a charismatic person and think, ‘they can do this better’.”
Perhaps the concept that “herds crave shepherds” raises even deeper questions. Never mind why do so many with dysfunctional brains wield such power over our lives; but why have the rest of us let them?