My Interview with Paul Babiak Garners Praise

My July 23 article in the AI-CPA Career Insider has received positive feedback, according to the editor, Sukanya Mitra.

Sukanya writes:

>"I have received several reader ratings today raving about your article in yesterday’s ENL. Here’s a reader comment that I thought you’d appreciate...Thank you again for the great articles."

>>"This article was amazing, I am a safety director, who has a manager of a department that fits so perfectly into this article. This will help me deal with him.

>>"Thanks."

The article begins:

>"Dr. Paul Babiak is president of HRBackOffice and co-author with Dr. Robert D. Hare of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, an important book about psychopaths in the workplace. Within the last ten years, two series of scandals have wracked American industry. In 2001, Enron, Arthur Andersen and a familiar, contemporaneous litany led to passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Only seven years later Wall Street has been immersed in wave of derivatives-related failures. Although the scandals and failures have several causes, ethical lapses that may be addressed through improved human resource management play a role.

I interviewed Dr. Babiak via telephone at his upstate New York office.

ML: Dr. Babiak, how do you define the term psychopath?

Babiak: When one first meets psychopaths they are likeable, verbally fluent and charming. They easily build rapport and people trust them. But, underneath this façade, they’re manipulative liars. They can create multiple masks or personas that they use to maintain relationships with their victims. They are opportunistic, parasitic predators. Their opportunism has a number of motivations: money, sex and power, for example.

Read the whole thing here.