David Gillespie - Taming Toxic People: The Science of Identifying and Dealing with Psychopaths at Work

I didnt know how to deal with poisonous and toxic people in my life or why they behaved the way they did, so I went looking for an answer. This book is what I found.

Bestselling author David Gillespie turns his attention to a phenomenon that damages businesses, seeds mental disease and discomfort and can bring civilisation to the brink of implosion the psychopath.

Psychopaths are often thought of as killers and criminals, but actually five to ten per cent of people are probably psychopathic without ever indulging in a single criminal act. These everyday psychopaths may be charming in the early stages of relationships or employment but, Gillespie argues, their presence in your life is at best disruptive, and at worst highly dangerous: they will leave you feeling cheated and humiliated, dominating and manipulating you to the point where you question your sanity. Worse, he cautions, at a societal level their tendency to gravitate towards positions of power can be disastrous.

Taming Toxic People is a practical guide to restraining that difficult person in your life, be it your boss, your spouse or a parent. But it is also a serious and meticulously researched warning: if we value a free and well-functioning society, we need to rebuild the sense of community that has historically kept the everyday psychopath in check, and we must understand and act to manage the psychopathic behaviour in our midst.

To Lizzie, Frank, Tony and Beth, who all do the right thing even when no-one is watching.

Imagine for a minute that you are carving your way, machete in hand, through impenetrable jungle in some terribly exotic place. You happen upon a clearing when suddenly you notice you are not alone. On the other edge of the glen, a stones throw from you, stands a tiger. He is staring intently at you. Assessing you. He doesnt care whether you love your mother, what your favourite colour is or even that tomorrow is your birthday. To him, you are one of just three things: a meal, entertainment or too nasty to bother with.

The tiger will test you. He will growl, bare his teeth, or make an imperceptible, but swift, movement in your direction. These are all tests. He is probing you. Monitoring you for signs of strength or weakness. He will use every faculty millions of years of adaptation have given him, to determine whether you are trouble, or lunch.

You cannot reason with him, you cannot threaten him, you cannot plead for mercy. Your only chance of survival is to convince him that you are more trouble than you are worth. If you manage that, he will turn and walk away without a backward glance. If you cant, your goose is cooked. Well, eaten.

The tigers cold assessment of your meal-worthiness is the same as the one your psychopathic boss, workmate, relative or lover performed on you within the first few seconds of meeting you. This is a book about convincing the tiger you are more trouble than youre worth. And if you are really brave, it is a book that can tell you how to catch and tame the tiger. After all, who wouldnt want a pet tiger?

Ive had the misfortune to encounter a large number of psychopaths. No, I dont work in a psychiatric unit or a prison. Ive run across these people in all manner of benign social and work settings. None of these people would satisfy a test for overt criminality. But many skate very close to the edge. Their skill is obtaining a benefit using criminal or at least, immoral, means without ever exposing themselves to the force of the law.

Ive been thinking about writing an easy to understand guide to dealing with psychopaths for a long time. Over the years, Ive spoken to hundreds of people about the ideas in this book. Every single one (and I mean Every. Single. One.) of those people, often complete strangers, knew exactly what I was talking about. Every single one of them had worked for, been related to, been taught by, been married to or been in a relationship with someone who they felt to be a psychopath. Every one of those people had been profoundly damaged by the experience and most wanted to share their stories as a warning to others and never speak of it again. I didnt seek out people affected by psychopaths. These were just people I chatted to after giving book talks or interviews, or people I ran into at the coffee shop. The truly amazing thing is that once I described how I believed a psychopath behaved, not a single person could say they had never experienced it. Many did not know that they were describing a psychopath, but believe me, if you have been, or are, a psychopaths victim, you are not alone.

One common theme emerged from those conversations: confusion. Psychopaths confuse the hell out of us normal people. They behave in bizarre and often highly unpredictable ways. And as soon as we are entangled with them, we spend more time worrying about how to deal with them than we do running our own lives. A psychopath ties us in knots for months, years or even decades. And while they are doing that they are causing us emotional and, often, financial harm. Harm that we are unlikely to ever recover from.

This is the book I wish Id had when I encountered my first (and my second and my third...) psychopath. In it I have dissected the evidence on what we know about these callous and parasitic humans. But, even more importantly, I have used that evidence to create a plan for dealing with them.

With this plan in hand you will recognise the difference between a psychopath and the rest of us (who I call empaths) and be able to spot them instantly. Once you know what youre dealing with you will be able to precisely predict how a psychopath will behave in any situation and use that knowledge to save yourself weeks, months and even years of emotional distress.

You will understand the science behind psychopathy and how it tells us YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE A PSYCHOPATH. So you wont waste your time and emotional energy trying.

You will also come to appreciate the role of empathy in human relations and how a psychopaths lack of empathy is the key to understanding why they are so dangerous.

Youll know why psychopaths gravitate towards certain industries and positions of power, and youll understand that they usually get them because psychopathic traits are often very close to what we look for in leaders.

Critically, you will understand how we have changed our society to be the perfect breeding ground for psychopaths. Over the past two centuries we have systematically destroyed the collective instincts and societal rules which so successfully held them in check before. By gravitating towards a society where the desires of the individual trump community values, where communal property is non-existent and where profit is much more important than how it was achieved, we have created psychopath heaven.

But best of all, you will know with absolute certainty how to use this knowledge to manage a psychopath in common situations and how your behaviour can help us to psychopath-proof our society.

If youre ready to tame tigers rather than cower before them (and hope they go away), then read on.

Ive always been a curious person. I was one of those irritating kids who always asked why? and didnt stop asking until the answer made logical sense. When I was about ten, my dad signed up to one of those buy this encyclopedia in 1000 weekly instalments deals for something called How it Works. This was well before the internet, so it was the only practical way to give detailed answers to a kid as annoying as me. Every week, Dad would drop by the newsagent and pick up the latest instalment.