Of Psychopaths and CEOs

Bloomberg Businessweek recently ran an article discussing a book by Jon Ronson titled The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. The book is based upon the research of Robert Hare, a psychologist who authored the psychopath test known as the PCL-R. Apparently, as a result of Hare's research findings and Ronson's extrapolation of data, there are quite a few psychopaths in the CEO echelon. What attracted my eye in the article was this paragraph:

 "Agonized intellectuals full of sympathy for the common man aren't meant for the corner office. Such persons would be useless making repetitive decisions about whom to fire and whom to give raises and how much to spend on marketing to children. Human resource executives have known this for a long time..."

Can that be true - meaning both the indication that to make a good CEO one must have a singular focus on what is best for the organization without regard for the affects on the human resources of the organization and of human resources, that human resource professionals of worth know this (and, dare I say) support this?

According to Academy of Chief Executives (whose title also includes the amusing statement "Meet the board you could never afford") blog contributor Joe Adams, CEO of Adams & Associates and director of the Executive Association of Great Britain and one of the chairmen of the Academy for Chief Executives, the ingredients for a good CEO include:

Inspirational Leadership

Recognition and Reward

Personality

Mentors

From the concise list above I am not reading psychopath. In fact, much of what I see in the ingredients lead to a CEO who is aware that it takes a strong team to make anything happen in an organization. How do you make strong teams that work cohesively? You ensure they have the tools needed, coach/mentor (another ingredient), build in check points for projects, recognize and reward (yet another ingredient). Not sounding like a ruthless CEO here either. It makes you wonder how would CEOs you are in contact with do on the PCL-R?