❂ Offer specific individuals a way out, if you want to work with them. When Mallory attacks a project group he will often force out the nicer people first. Only those who can withstand the arguments and conflict remain.
Where is Mallory in a project group? We know his strategies for hiding and hunting. So we can predict where he will be in a project group, and how he will act:
❂ Mallory may be a founder, yet that is rare. If he is a founder, someone else did the hard work. Look for burned-out skeletons in the closet.
❂ Mallory is most often a new member. He may be surprising best friends with the founder and some of the organizers. He is quiet on public forums and in meetings. He prefers to do the heavy talking in private.
❂ Mallory has no verifiable track record. He may come with grand stories, yet only by his own word. He claims authority from his connections to important people. He does not bring his own knowledge and abilities.
❂ Mallory does little visible work in the group. He spends his time in the group manipulating people against each other. Or, he is absent on "important business."
❂ Mallory is always a VIP by some unspecified law that everyone accepts. His dominance is not earned, yet it is tangible. I’ve explained how he does this, with language and behavior.
❂ Mallory breaks the social conventions of the group. This is a dominance mask. Social humans feel fear and anxiety when they do this. Mallory gets a kick from how others respond to him when he does this.
❂ Mallory is immune to the general stress and anxiety infecting the group. He doesn’t see chaos as a bad thing. The worse it gets, the happier he seems to be.
❂ Mallory is a poor organizer, and depends on others to do that for him. He lacks the ability to plan events. He cannot orchestrate people, without empathy. He does not ask openly: he demands, bullies, and intimidates.
❂ Mallory cannot execute long term plans within the group. Everything is short term, and last-minute drama. As good as he is at one-on-one manipulation, he is incompetent at collective works.
It can be tempting to stick the label "psychopath" on anyone we don’t like. Be careful of that. It is not science to leap to conclusions. Remember that Mallory is a life-long expert in hiding from people like you and me. The right way to identify a possible psychopath in a group is to start with damage and pain. Then, rule out suspects until one person remains. In some rare cases you may see a coalition of psychopaths.
The prognosis for a project group infected by a psychopath is always bad. The real problem isn’t Mallory, it’s that unfixable culture. There are no cures, only various ways of dying.
So it is worth asking, "can we write rules that keep psychopaths away?" The answer is an emphatic "yes." I’ve spent the last decade developing, testing, and using such rules.
The rules must remove all scope for manipulation, secret agreements, and power structures. The details depend on the kind of work the group is doing. These are the essential pieces:
❂ Stay away from legal entities, and the power structures that form around them. Beware of board elections, general assemblies, votes, and such. Legal entities operate accounts, so clear the table. Find a way to work without funding.
❂ Aim for many small groups rather than one larger one. Encourage people to start their own groups, around projects. Groups can then live and die with their projects. This isolates any infection.
❂ Give people the right to create competing projects in any area. Give them the right to take over a troubled project’s work. This lets good actors in an infected project leave and continue their work.
❂ Put all discussions on the public record. This makes it harder for Mallory to troll, disrupt, and lie.
❂ Lower the barriers to entry. While this makes it easier for bad actors to join, it also makes it easier for good actors to join.
❂ Document the rules well and make them a charter for every small group. Allow the rules to evolve over time. Clear rules make Mallory pause and go elsewhere.
❂ Develop a process for identifying and expelling bad actors. Ensure this process exists in your rule book.
If the group produces music, photos, software, or designs, then licensing matters. Standard copyright rules make it easy for psychopaths to capture people. Capture a work, and you capture the authors and users. So use a license that lets people move, with their work. For photos and music, use a Creative Commons "share-alike" license. For software, the Mozilla Public License (v2) is a good choice.
In my software communities the rule book I use (called C4[68]) has this section on psychopaths:
Administrators SHOULD block or ban "bad actors" who cause stress and pain to others in the project. This should be done after public discussion, with a chance for all parties to speak. A bad actor is someone who repeatedly ignores the rules and culture of the project, who is needlessly argumentative or hostile, or who is offensive, and who is unable to self-correct their behavior when asked to do so by others.
The Workplace
In the workplace, people are there because it is their job. This makes a different dynamic than project groups. Flows of money always attract Mallory. Middle management in larger business can look like a parasitic class. Still, it’s hardly a walk-up-and-join situation. If Mallory wants to get her hands into the stream of profits, she must charm and deceive her way in.
Most businesses have units that mirror the family, and create some kind of stability. Mallory does not last long in stable structures. She prefers chaos, confusion, and a flow of fresh faces. Apart from getting bored with routine, she is unreliable. Her boss will get tired of her, unless she is sleeping with him. She moves up and sideways through the company structure.
The workplace often wraps a blanket of anxiety and stress around its staff. Few people expect their work to make them happy. Many businesses use mind-control techniques on their staff. These are the same techniques psychopaths use. All this disguises Mallory’s impact crater.
When Mallory enters a workplace, she is already thinking how to leave it. She has minimal interest in the people or the work. She’ll go through them and take what she can, as a matter of principle and practice. Yet her focus is on the person in charge, and the money and power above that.
If you suspect an impact crater, the best way to be sure is by getting other data. If the business has existed for some time, what was it like in previous years? Allow for a lot of distortion. We have selective memories. Economics go up and down and affect many firms. If the business is larger, what are other teams like? You may find that the data points to a specific problem in the workplace.
The symptoms are much like those in an infected project group. People seem too anxious about taking risks. It takes too long to come to consensus. There is too much argument over insignificant details. Staff spend more time justifying themselves than doing valuable work. The team feels stuck and lethargic, though individuals seem bright. People are leaving for unspecified reasons.
If you are stuck with Mallory in the same workplace then your feelings will evolve. You’ll have a long period of frustration and some anger. Then you will feel burnout. This is a sudden shift in mood from trying to make things work to disgust. You will want to avoid talking to anyone in the team. You often have to resign, or take extended leave. If you ever feel this, stop and think: where is Mallory?