When applied to psychopaths, charisma is a superficial thing – the process of winning our admiration is a game for them that has no more meaning than brushing their teeth.
In these days of authentic leadership, leaders might want to at least study what makes psychopaths so irresistible. After all, military leaders need to be able to persuade their troops to walk into the face of death. The elite troops are those who can forensically hunt down and kill down our enemies.
Persuading followers to do what must be done requires charm, an ability to understand what motivates and drives individuals. Dutton describes a psychopathic school friend who tricked him out of school assignment, but who also persuaded Dutton’s mother to let the pair see in the New Year. “Mrs Dutton,” Johnny said with icy reason. “You don’t want us running around at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning while you’re lying in bed with a headache, do you?”
By the way, if you think your leader might be a real psychopath, rather than just sharing some of their attributes, most people report feeling extreme discomfort talking one on one with a true psychopath. Although they are brilliant at covering their complete lack of feeling, most normal people (more women than men) get an icy chill, – feelings of disgust or repulsion, or that “they might be lunch”.
Leaders need to be action oriented, but to also think a long way ahead of the game. In one gruelling experiment, Dutton reveals that psychopaths can pick out who would be a good “victim” just by the way they walk. The victim is part of the game without even knowing there is a game – an atrocious thought.
But the capacity to think so far ahead, to see opportunity that is invisible to others, to understand the secret desires of others (a market) sounds as much like a description of Steve Jobs as it does of the Yorkshire Ripper.
The best leaders are way ahead, not only able to see the best path, but to communicate their vision with clarity and passion, enlist the support of everyone around them, stay focused on the goal and thrive on making all the tough decisions needed to get there – just like Hannibal Lecter.
Why is the world inhabited by psychopaths? If Dutton is right, and we all possess such traits to some degree, it suggests that these attributes have been preserved through the evolutionary sieve. They are great survivors, the superlative hunters of the cave days, the corporate elite of today. And, since most psychopaths are men, they also have a breeding advantage: sleeping with many women, but not sticking around to be called “Daddy”, as Dutton explains.
As far away from our ideals as we think the psychopath is, Dutton points out that they share many traits with the most spiritual among us (and also have traits at the opposite end of the spectrum, of course). Stoicism, mindfulness, mental toughness, openness to experience, utilitarianism, focus, altered states of consciousness, energy, creativity, and non-attachment.
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