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Pawns, Patrons, and Patsies
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On occasion, Chuck would explain away Dan’s temper as an expression
of his artistic, creative bent. What others saw as rudeness
and hostility, Chuck saw as Dan’s standing up for what he believed
in. In addition to defending him to the others, what made Chuck
particularly useful to Dan was the fact that Chuck was an acknowledged
expert at his own job (as well as the jobs of many others). As it
turned out, Chuck was the key to Dan’s success, working extra hours
to help his “friend” do his job. No one realized that he was actually
doing Dan’s work for him while Dan was out politicking and manipulating
others.
When trying to understand and explain their successful manipulation
in organizations, we first thought that the psychopaths were
merely ingratiating themselves with those at the top of the organization
and with the most power, while abusing peers and subordinates
at the lower levels. This is not an unusual tactic in organizations.
However, the more we learned about these individuals, the less our
observations could be explained by simple ingratiation techniques—
most executives and coworkers were too smart to fall for this approach
for very long. The relationships between our subjects and
their supporters turned out to be more complex than this.
Two factors were important: the extensive use of clever impression
management techniques, and the use of secrecy. Using a variety
of influence tactics, the psychopaths manipulated their network
of one-on-one personal bonds to gather information they could use
to advance their own careers, derail the careers of rivals, or enlist
technical support when the company made demands on them (to
actually do their jobs). Specifically, their game plans involved manipulating
communication networks to enhance their own reputation,
to disparage others, and to create conflicts and rivalries among organization
members, thereby keeping them from sharing information
that might uncover the deceit. They also spread disinformation in
the interest of protecting their scam and furthering their own careers.
Being exceedingly clever and secretive, they were able to
cloak their association with the disinformation, leading others to