What working with psychopaths taught me about leadership | Nashater Deu Solheim | TEDxStavanger

I don't want to scare you all when I say this, but none of us here are authentic, we're all a little fake, we're not 100% authentic, pinch yourself just to check if it's real, but I. I'm going to talk about a different type of authenticity, the type of authenticity that is about how we show our true selves to other people and

what

I'm going to do today is share with you

what

I learned about being authentic from

working

with

psychopaths

and how I do it. I use it in my work with leaders later, psychological research backs up what I'm about to tell you, which is that being less than 100 authentic is probably a good thing and might even save your life.

Let me tell you about a time that probably saved your life. mine, so imagine this, I'm sitting in a room and it's actually a prison cell to be precise, it's a maximum security prison cell with bars on the windows, big heavy iron doors. The room is quite empty and I wear a belt with keys that allow me to enter and exit this room quite freely. I am sitting in this room with a man in his 50s who is a psychopath and has been incarcerated for many years. many years for killing three people, two were his girlfriends and one was his closest friend.

Now it's safe to say that he had problems with relationships and particularly when they didn't go his way, so back to me sitting in the room with this psychopath and me. I am there because I am a clinical and forensic psychologist and I am there to carry out a risk assessment. I need to determine the probability that he will kill again and to do that I need information from him. I needed to know how well he had done. He planned these murders whether they were caused by revenge, power, hate or control and how would we know now, you can imagine he wasn't very motivated to share that information with me, I mean he was locked up and I had all the power with the keys. literally to his freedom and I was not going to be able to trick him or manipulate him into giving me that information because

psychopaths

by nature are very good at manipulating and he would have seen it coming, so in reality I was going to have to motivate him to give me that information I was going to to having to build rapport build trust be authentic encourage him to share the details of what he had done now to do that I did three things the first I did was stay within the role I was there and their permissions and what that means is I was there as a psychologist to do a job, I was not there as a friend, I was not there as a judge or jury to criticize or punish, and so I made the expectations very clear on my part about my role in the work I needed to do and I stayed within of those limits.

The second thing I did was I was prepared. I did my research. It's a very good idea if you're going into a room with a psychopath to be prepared and know who you're about to face, so before I went in I checked what kind of day he was having, did he have any bad news, was he bad? mood and how he felt when speaking. I told a psychologist about all the things I had done, the most important thing: I checked where the exit was in the room so I could leave quickly if I needed to. The third thing I did was stay curious even when challenged or felt. challenged, I mean I was a pretty unpleasant person, so you can imagine some of the thoughts that were going through my mind, but it wouldn't have been wise of me to start saying some of those things that were on my mind like, oh my God, as.

Could you do such terrible things and what happens to the poor victims? Oh, that sounds scary, so I was curious. I phrased my questions and answers carefully to test hypotheses and make sure I wasn't sharing assumptions to gather the information I needed. Was it authentic? Yes. What kind of no if being authentic means you are 100% honest at all times? I mean, I had to think about what I was wearing, where I sat, what questions to ask, how to not give away all the thoughts I was having in my facial expressions. of my body language, so if being authentic is being one hundred percent honest or brutally honest, no, it wasn't, then what I had to do was think about what being brutally honest would have done if I had shared all those things that I had in mind.

I mean, let's face it, his brutal honesty had resulted in the deaths of three people. I didn't particularly want to provoke that and if I had been brutally honest, it probably would have killed a conversation and shut down the things I needed him to do. share with me and what I did was be authentic but empathetic and what that meant was put myself in their shoes and think about what it must be like to sit with someone and have to share the details of your past and what you had done and I was curious. while showing empathy, but let me be clear, showing empathy does not mean you agree with what has been done.

I was not sympathizing with him or condoning what he had done because empathy is not an agreement, it is about understanding and by showing empathy I was able to achieve an understanding and through several meetings over many months I managed to discover what had triggered those attacks to prevent them from happening again and he was able to openly share with me some of the experiences he had had and that had led to those actions that we call psychological safety as therapists when we sit down and create a safe space where someone can share openly without fear of criticism or judgments, we call that psychological safety and that was important in our relationship to achieve it. the job done and so after many months I completed my risk assessment and I was able to leave that room by closing the door behind me and I came out alive because I was authentic with empathy and I am

working

as a leader and as a

leadership

coach in business , now some of you might be thinking what working with psychopaths might have to do with

leadership

, although some of you might be thinking I know the answer to that.

Well, in leadership we talk a lot today about leaders needing to be authentic. They need to show their true selves They need to be more open They need to be more vulnerable Well, I have seen some leaders use being authentic and being themselves as an excuse to be what I call brutal, brutal honesty. I'll hear them say things like, you know Nashville, this is just me, this is me, you want it to be authentic, right, and there are essentially two types of leaders that I encountered in my work, those that were able to create the psychological safety that I had seen when I was working with psychopaths where they had teams that trusted each other and collaborated and shared and seemed to have fun and could even disagree and still move forward and the relationships stayed positive and intact and then there was a second group of leaders.

Those who did not manage to do that and it was noticeable because the teams, well, they whispered to each other behind closed doors, they did not have that trust among themselves, they did not like to share or collaborate and they were certainly afraid, perhaps even distrustful of being negative, criticized by the leader or among themselves, so In my work with this second group of leaders I asked them what impact they thought they were having in the way they approached their teams, and of course the first thing they usually heard was, you know? Nashville, it's not me, it's them.

If he had smarter people, he would be a much better leader, so I explored the types of conversations they were having with their team and made the same observations about this brutal honesty. I'm just being myself. but giving unfiltered criticism or yelling micromanaging maybe or even you know the red pen for the whole memo maybe ignoring your messages and emails behind computers when you talk, all of these behaviors were ways of being, in a way, brutal. in your feedback to your team members and what I shared with them was: you know what if that's being authentic, it doesn't work for your team?

Your brutal honesty is actually killing the team's motivation, their trust in you, and their cooperation, so I started thinking about some of the things I learned about being authentic with empathy instead of being brutal in my authenticity might be helpful to these. leaders, so I shared three things I encourage you to do. The first was knowing your role and staying within the boundaries of that. you are there as a leader you are not there as a friend you are not there to criticize or punish it is important that you are clear about your expectations and have a conversation with your team members about the limits of those expectations the second thing What I encouraged them to do was be Be prepared and do your research to get to know your team members much more than just the tasks and activities they participated in together.

What drives this person. What motivates them? What makes you want to work at this company or with. By doing so, you can connect with the other person's desire or motivation to do their job and get their job done. The third thing I encourage these leaders to do is to stay curious even when they felt challenged because they often said they felt challenged. They had people who were incompetent or who resisted change or went back on the agenda they had, sometimes they just didn't like their team members, so I suggested they stay curious instead of judging or criticizing, and that's why my opinion for these leaders were well-being being authentic is not an excuse to be brutal or careless you can be authentic but you can do it with empathy we all do it all the time take for example a friend who has a bad haircut and asks you what you think and probably have you heard yourself say yes, it's very "you like it".

I mean, you're not being 100 percent authentic and honest by telling them no, because you want to save their feelings. "You care about them, so." We are showing empathy so we can do it and in fact we do it all the time, so the message to leaders is that to be authentic you don't have to be 100% honest and brutal at all times, and what I learned from Working with psychopaths was that being authentic comes in many forms and we don't need to be brutal to be authentic. Brutal authenticity kills conversations, kills connections, kills motivation, and kills trust, while being authentic with empathy fosters openness, encourages conversation, and builds trust, etc.

My message to you today as you leave this room is: think about that, think about the connections you are building, think about the role you play within those connections and think about the impact you want to have. You can be authentic, but be authentic. with empathy it could save your relationships both at home and your reputation at work and one day it could even save your life, thank you.