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A brief biography about Matt Kramer:
Matt Kramer is parent-child mediation, mediator, photographer, entertainment entrepreneur, talent consultant and coordinator. He's based in Dallas and Austin Texas, doing business throughout Central and North Texas, and outside the area. He's also studying predatory leadership and how it affects our society. You can get more information about him on his website, mattkramer.com.
1. What is predatory leadership?
Predatory Leadership is the display, by one's actions, policies or agendas, of their mental, emotional and subconscious investment into attaining their goals, openly or covertly, by any means, with complete disregard or concern for the consequences of their efforts upon others.
2. How has predatory leadership affected the business and political worlds?
Predatory leadership is evident throughout almost all aspects of society. In the domestic arena, the behavior is identified in verbal and physical abuse in families. In regional municipalities it shows up in government corruption as in the City of Bell, a small town east of Los Angeles in which the city manager was paying himself over $800,000 a year and helping his cronies milk the local economy with comparably illegitimate salaries at the expense of the inhabitants of the city (Gottlieb & Knoll, 2011). It shows up in a corporate culture that replicates the evils associated with destructive forms of competition focused on increasing shareholder profits while ignoring pollution controls, quality control, employee safety, etc. It showed up in Bernie Madoff. One example is the corporate - political scandals in which city officials take or demand bribes, currying favors for vendors and suppliers whose products are not in the best interests of their constituents. It shows up in religious organizations protecting pedophiles at the expense of their victims. It showed up in Radio-Te´le´vision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) when its disc jockeys spent months exploiting racial prejudice and exhorting its listeners to prepare to reclaim their country via the extermination of their Tutsi neighbors (Li, 2004). It shows up when any dictator censors free press, imposes martial law and assassinates his opponents in order to maintain illegitimate control of the nation. Predatory leadership wreaks havoc upon humanity in myriad ways too numerous to include in this document. The proliferation of the psychological culture of predatory leadership is thousands of years old. The impact and consequences of this syndrome shows up throughout all levels of culture in ways that are invisible as well as visible. Conventional wisdom says that man is violent by nature, that war is inevitable. That a few bad apples make the organization look worse than it is. But maybe that's just a symptom of the pervasive nature of the predatory leader. There are pockets of humanity, small communities where leaders are not corrupt. There are idealists working hard to change systems that perpetuate destructive, harmful practices at all levels of government and throughout society. Countering their passionate efforts are powerful forces employing maximum effort to sustain the status quo in spite of the harm suffered by many people in the process.
3. What are the solutions to predatory leadership?
While I do not have all the answers, I believe the initial stage of any solution begins with verifiable information. Most people do not recognize the early warning signs of socipathic behavior. Our awareness of the nature of this pathology is akin to the status of medicine in the 16th century – physicians then did not know about bacteria and viruses; most of their theories about illness were wrong. Due to their ignorance, they didn't know they were spreading diseases among their patients. Teach everyone, especially children, to recognize the early symptoms of narcissism and sociopathy at a young age; they will have the opportunity to make better choices in whom they choose to follow, promote, elect or marry.
A second stage would be to develop opportunities for people to gather and brainstorm more solutions. By educating and involving the general population in generating solutions, ideas will surface that are workable within the resources of those involved.
4. Suppose someone tells you: "People who succeed in business/politics are in leadership positions because they worked harder than everyone else, not because they are sociopaths." How would you address this assertion?
Certainly there are successful business people and politicians who earned their success legitimately. While it may be difficult for the uninformed to identify "healthy" from "toxic" personalities, one concern is that in order to succeed, some of them had to replicate sociopathic behavior (the ends justify the means) in order to gain their success. For example, a top executive at Nestle's may have empathy and be concerned about the way Nestle's marketing techniques raise mortality rates for third world infants but in order to hold on to his position, he withholds his point of view and goes along with the company's policies (Breastfeeding.com, 2012).
5. Last question, and this one is quite the challenge. I would argue that some people in our world like to be prey; meaning they would like a predator for a leader. While normal individuals, like you and I, find this appalling, after working in social psychology, I studied people who desired to be abused (as disturbing as this phenomena is). How do we address people who want to be abused?
There are a number of reasons this may happen, and you are more correct than you may realize. On the domestic level, some who have low self esteem deny themselves the opportunity for healthy relationships; subconsciously they will "punish" themselves by getting into abusive relationships. On the larger social level, some people do gravitate to leaders they feel will carry out policies and agendas they themselves do not want to handle. Another reason is that those leaders provide a parental role – the followers want to believe their leaders know more than they do. The "toxic" follower will believe the lies of a toxic leader who promises lies they want to hear (like blaming a minority for their problems or pushing a false short term solution for a difficult problem), rather than accept a truth (such as a long term solution) they don't want to hear from someone else. (Lipman-Blumen, 2006). Hopefully those who are educated to this phenomenon will not fall prey to it.
Matt's Sources:
1. Breastfeeding.com (2012). The Nestle Boycott. Retrieved from: http://www.breastfeeding.com/advocacy/advocacy_boycott.html
2. Gottlieb, J. & Knoll, C. (2011). Robert Rizzo, aide accused of conspiracy in Bell corruption scandal. Retrieved from: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/31/local/la-me-0331-bell-indictment-20110331
3. Li, D. (2004) Journal of Genocide Research (2004), 6(1), March, 9–27 Carfax Publishing Blumen-Lipman, J. (2006). The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians – and How We can Survive Them. New York, NY: Oxford University Press
