According to the book, 'Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work", as many as one in 100 adults in the workplace is a psychopath.  Writers Robert D Hare, professor emeritus in psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and Paul Babiak, a New York based industrial organisational psychologist paint a scary picture that any of us could be working with a Workplace Psychopath.  But what does this actually mean and how can you spot one?
 
"Psychopaths know the difference between right and wrong, but they think it's amusing that you and I differentiate it," says Babiak. "They don't see a separation between what's mine and what's yours; what I own is theirs. They don't see my ownership of property or even my life as something valuable that they need to respect."
 
When people think of psychopaths, their minds often move towards more extreme examples, such as the characters shown in films such as 'Silence of the Lambs' or 'American Psycho'.  Whilst not all psychopathic tendencies tend to go to such extremes, there are some commonly shared traits between them and, in the workplace environment, it can wreck havoc on the organisations moral, culture, retention and reputation.
 
Psychopaths are characterised by failings in four main areas.  Common interpersonal values such as honesty, trustworthiness and modesty as generally not of importance to them and they fail on an affective level as they don't feel or understand emotions such as love, empathy and guilt.  Psychopaths are also impulsive, failing to adopt widely shared norms petaining to financial responsibility and safe conduct while they also lead an antisocial lifestyle, failing to obey the laws of society.
 
They actually have characteristics that can make them highly sought after in the business world because their lack of empathy and conscience can be seen as an ability to make tough decisions effortlessly as they don't appear to experience the stress that others would feel around it.
 
By now, you're probably wondering how you would recognise a workplace psychopath?
 
Some signs that your colleague or candidate might be a corporate psychopath include:
* they consistently present in a smooth, polished and charming way;
* they redirect conversations to focus around them;
* they discredit or put others down in an attempt to enhance their own status and reputation;
* they lie with ease to colleagues, clients and business associates;
* they demonstrate a lack of empathy or understanding of others' emotions; and
* they create internal power networks in the organisation and use them for personal gain.

Dr John Clarke is an expert in the criminal mind and recalled the day he suddenly realised that there could be psychopaths in the workplace after concluding a lecture which detailed a psychopath checklist only to have a woman come up to him at the end and tell him that he had just described her boss.  Clarke says there are two weapons we can use to protect ourselves from the workplace psycho: education and teamwork.

"If you educate yourself then you recognize why this person is doing these things to you. This stops the cycle of self-blame and isolation which victims feel.  The second thing is team-building and teamwork. You should talk to other people and tell them what is happening. If a psychopath can't isolate you, they can't destroy you."

If you employer fails to act on the situation, Clarke recommends that a change of job for the victim may be the way forward as you cannot change a psychopath and rehabilitation only seems to make them worse.  "They don't care. They don't think of themselves as psychopaths.  They don't think they are doing wrong. They just think they are smart and if everyone else had the same intelligence, they would do the same thing," says Clarke.
 
Sources: rawstory, bankrate, recruiter daily