AST Digital Magazine October 2017 Digital-Oct | Page 25

Volume 17
October 2017 Edition
However, while employee experience has been
discussed—especially in the context of innova-
tion and start-up initiatives—it has nevertheless
received far less relative attention. Employees who like what they are doing, and like
the people they are doing it with, are more likely
to be efficient and successful than less satisfied
employees.
This is curious because employee job satisfac-
tion is very low in some areas today. We feel this applies at all levels of peoples’ ca-
reers, but a recently published article challenges
this point-of-view.
For example, one of us has recently spoken with
ten different people at various stages of their
careers, from novice to executive, who have
changed jobs over the past twelve months.
Six of the ten job changes were driven by dis-
satisfaction with the work the people were do-
ing and/or the work environment; in other words,
sixty percent of this admittedly small and non-
random sample did not like the work they were
doing and/or the people they were working with
(the four other people left their jobs for purely
economic reasons).
In contrast, Lenny DePaul thought being a U.S.
Marshal was the best job in the world; in fact, he
loved it so much, he would have done the job for
free.
One reason for this was that he and his col-
leagues felt they were very much making a dif-
ference in people’s lives by bringing so many
dangerous fugitives to justice.
(Illustration courtesy of Doug Chayka, Institutional Investor)
That article is titled, “The Psychopath in the Cor-
ner Officer: The traits clinicians call psychopathic
can actually be an asset in the C-suite—up to a
point” (http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/arti-
cle/3720284/asset-management-macro/the-psy-
chopath-in-the-corner-office.html?#.WblGj2yW-
w2w).
It references a recent psychological study per-
taining to so-called “successful psychopaths,”
which is a term describing “high-flying profes-
sionals” with psychopathic traits such as insin-
cerity, a lack of empathy or remorse, egocentric-
ity, and superficiality.
Psychopaths, whether “successful” or not, are
not a personality-type the Marshals would hire.
(See the U.S. Marshals in Action. Courtesy of Justin Rotton
and YouTube)
Another reason was his colleagues, whom Len-
ny both liked and respected both professionally
and personally.
Candidly, we do not believe psychopaths
have a place in corporate management,
either.
For example, would you like to work for or with
someone who exhibits the traits of a psychopath;
that is, someone who is insincere, lacks empathy
or remorse, or is egocentric and superficial?
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