Is your fundraiser a psychopath?
Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 09:38AM 
Are you sure?
Who wouldn’t want their fundraiser to be fearless, confident, charismatic and focused? All four are key aspects of psychopathy. How about intelligent, attractive and socially skilled? Another three…
Kevin Dutton’s ‘Wisdom of Psychopaths’ has an intriguing thesis – that psychopaths have been and are genetically selected for. That, far from being monstrous, most are fully functioning members of society. In the final chapter there is a fascinating Venn diagram which succinctly separates the saints (or charity fundraisers?) from the killers. And in the middle of this diagram is a distillation of the characteristics you should perhaps be looking for in your next fundraiser (or sales director, chief schmoozer etc.). Some of those qualities are shown below.
Stoicism
Mental Toughness
Mindfulness
Fearlessness
Focused
Energy
Creativity
Perhaps the thing that struck me too was attitudinal – whilst the psychopath has an almost unbelievable ability to get to the nub of an issue, it isn’t always pure talent. There is work involved too.
Durrant quotes one of the top con-artists in the world in his chapter on psychopaths in Flipnosis his previous bestseller:
“I’ll find out everything I can about the person. From how they do business to what they do at the weekend. I gather information; start building up a picture of who I’m dealing with. The more you know about someone, the more the odds are stacked in your favour…
It’s what everyone should do if they’re serious about getting ahead. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but all those books people read about how to persuade and influence people are rubbish. You can talk all you want about psychology. But the trick is to do your homework.”
Mind you, if someone does come looking for a job who exhibits all the characteristics in the list above, it might be worth some additional screening…just in case.
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Reader Comments (4)
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