Working With Smart Sociopaths? Here’s How You Can Thrive
3 min readNov 4, 2022
How To Handle Smart Sociopaths at Work
As far as I can recall, there have always been at least a couple of sociopaths I had to deal with at any point in my corporate career.
The most severe cases didn’t last long, but I got challenged with more subtle forms. You know, the kind of person who seems to fit in most of the time but who will have sociopath episodes that can be very damaging.
I call them the smart sociopaths, and here are some of their key traits:
- They’re obsessed with power and the selfish validation of their ideas.
- Being self-centered, they significantly lack empathy and have high-conflict personalities.
- They manipulate other people’s emotions and can be either charming or overly aggressive to reach their goals.
- They repeatedly lie with arrogance and show no remorse when caught, likely blaming others for their mistakes.
Interestingly, most CEOs I’ve encountered were the opposite of a sociopath. These good CEOs were ambitious, knew how to sell and convince, and demonstrated empathy. They knew how to engage talent.
The smart sociopaths I have encountered typically gravitated around senior executive roles. Still…
