Tanrı ile Larry Arasındaki Fark

I’ve spent the last week in Brussels at our international company’s usual annual conference. One of the sessions—because of the high demand—was psychopathological disorders seen in business world. At one point the instructor showed the disorders and asked “do you have any consultees that fall into this category?” Only a few shy hands rose. Then he asked, “Is there anyone who thinks their manager has one of these disorders?”. Nearly all the hands in the venue rose. That means lots of high rank managers think there’s something “off” about their managers.

Recent researches, published books point out that the highest ranks of the business world are very rewarding and attractive for some “personality disorders.” That means, in near future, the business world will have to enhance its knowledge about “abnormal behaviors”. Let’s start right now, than.

We can define personality disorder as extreme and/or exaggerated form of normal behavior. But it has grades and many categories. A mild form of it could be found in most people, especially under high pressure and stress it can advance. This alone, is a reason for higher percentage of personality disorders in business world than the normal population. Personality disorders in the population is expressed as 11%. If the stress of the business world increases this, consider the situation in a company with a thousand employees.

Robert Hare is a writer whose area of interest is psychopaths (anti-social personality disorder). In his last book he took an interest in the business world: “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work”. Anti-social personality disorder rate in the society is 1%. But Hare claims this rating is higher in the business world. He says, these people would find a position that they could control and manipulate others, very attractive.

Individuals with anti-social personality disorder:

-Has a superficial and artificial charm;

-Feel they’re more important, “grandiose”;

-Has a habit of lying;

-Manipulative;

-Don’t feel guilt or remorse,

-Don’t take responsibility for their mistakes and think it’s others’ fault.

And even a simple target like “gaining more money” can make them display these behaviors.  While the strong positions of the business world might be appealing to them, they’re not appealing for the business world and it always ends up with disappointment. Hare says in his book; “If Enron was a person he would be a psychopath.”

Another very common personality disorder in the business world, especially in the higher positions is “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”. In his “Narcissistic Leaders” article published in the Harvard Business, Micheal McCobby, quotes the words of an employee of the Oracle about the CEO Larry Ellison; “The difference between Larry and God is, God doesn’t believe in Larry.”

I’m sure you understood the essence. Narcissistic people think they’re more important than others and don’t empathize, they also expect others to treat themselves as special people; they’re arrogant enough to think they can only be understood by special people like themselves.

They need appreciation and approval more than others (that’s why it’s more important for them to climb up and they work harder for this goal). They love competition, can’t take criticism and usually are bad at listening. On the other hand, they’re very appealing for the business world for a short while because they have big and divine goals and dreams. They can easily drag the right people to this dream. They can see the big picture, make others see it and can make big changes.

The reason I said “it is for a short while” is, if things start to go bad and these people are disappointed in others, they can display an over hurting manner and harm others’ pride, so the mood in the corporation can be effected very badly.  Because unlike others they feel responsible for everything. If everything goes very well and that big goal is achieved, because of the same reasons it can become a “one-man show” and again, lots of people will feel unimportant and invaluable.

But we have to remember the grade of this is very important because people who don’t have narcissistic personality disorder but have some narcissistic tendencies and characteristics can balance it well and make their success long-lasting. Another very important information that can effect our thoughts about these people is, under this proud and arrogant masks there lies a very fragile self-esteem and it can be easily damaged. So the reason for not bearing any criticism is that they actually take every criticism very serious and feel very strong about it.

As long as we work on leadership we’ll continue talking about narcissism. For now, you can take a look at the people around you but don’t rush into naming them, because the information given here is not enough for that.