8 Signs Your Boss Is a Sociopath

It’s hard to deal with bad bosses, incompetent bosses, and lazy bosses, but dealing with a sociopathic boss is on a different level of misfortune. 

In many cases, sociopaths are not unintelligent. In fact, they use their wit, cunning, and shrewdness to oppress subordinates and manipulate people. 

According to the non-profit media organization National Public Radio (npr.org), sociopaths can be dangerous, are usually hungry for power, and don't feel guilt or remorse. They have zero empathy for people, and are talented liars. 

The following are signs of a sociopath boss. 

Your boss keeps lying. 

Whether for personal gain or for shielding their reputation, your boss would regularly lie to your face. Sociopaths typically hate transparency at work and would prevent employees and talents from accessing information, such as their contracts, payslips, tax returns, or social security deposits. 

But of the many motives for lying, a sociopath is likely to lie for personal gain. For example, they might say “Oh, your yearly bonuses will be deposited next week,” they would say for the umpteenth time. 

But you have been waiting for months. And you discover your boss has been mysteriously splurging on hotels and gallivanting despite being told the company is cost-cutting. 

Your boss shouts or screams when angry. 

According to Forbes, a sociopath boss tends to be a hothead who is prone to shouting or screaming when angry. They are also prone to fits of anger and impulsiveness. If you are on the receiving end of this anger, it is not unusual for your boss to embarrass or shame you in front of others. They will not hesitate to yell at you in front of colleagues or other bosses.  “They’ll call you out in front of your colleagues and bite your head off for minor mistakes,” writes Jack Kelly. 

Your boss gaslights you. 

Possibly the most dangerous trait of sociopath bosses is their highly manipulative behavior. Gaslighting is a hallmark of a sociopathic boss, who would use this tactic to scare you, make you lose confidence, and make you doubt the trustworthiness of the people around you. 

Your boss might say, “Everyone kept telling me that keeping you in the team was a stupid idea.” This is a classic gaslighting and manipulation tactic to make you feel invalid, useless, and stupid, at the same time deflating your confidence around people at work.  Apart from this, your boss will also label you as lazy, incompetent, or untrustworthy. 

Gaslighting also involves stating the opposite of what actually happened, resulting in you questioning yourself, your memory, or reality.  

Your boss always blames you for failures. 

If your boss is a sociopath or psychopath, then they would tend to shirk away from responsibilities, including taking the blame for something they are responsible for. They will feel no regret making a scapegoat of you or the team. 

“The psychopath will speak of himself in grandiose terms while blaming others and taking no responsibility for his actions," writes Lillian Glass in her book The Body Language of Liars. 

Your boss blames upper management. 

When things are not going smoothly as expected, your boss also tends to blame those above them when they start to explain things. “They still haven’t signed the documents!” All negative news is credited to upper management’s seeming incompetence. 

Your boss has absolutely no empathy. 

While his team was losing in a make-or-break match against a formidable opponent, one boss decided to feast with his girlfriend at the VIP lounge of the match venue. His team lost but instead of consoling the players, the boss told them, “I don’t like this feeling.”

While the players were brokenhearted and on the verge of crying, this boss decided to make a pep talk about himself. Sociopaths are the same. They have no capacity to feel the emotions of others. 

“They’ll pretend that they’re interested in you, but they really don’t know what it's like to be in someone else’s shoes,” writes Jack Kelly. 

But they can also pretend to care about you when they need to. 

“They’re skilled actors who feign interest to manipulate you for their own personal gains and corporate advancement,” Kelly adds. 

There’s a spy among you.

Or spies. Your sociopath boss likes to keep one or two “allies” in the team who serve as their eyes and ears among the subordinates. Beware of these “teacher’s pets” who will rat you out for insignificant things. This is how your sociopath boss seems to know every little thing happening in the workplace.

You must also be careful if your boss attempts to “recruit” you as one of these “pets,” because if you refuse, you will likely be on the receiving end of your boss’s anger for a very long time. But if you participate, bear in mind that you are treated like a disposable tool that can easily be replaced.

Your boss loves to send messages to the members of the team separately. 

If your boss has a penchant for sending individual messages to the team when these could be more efficiently communicated using group conversations, consider that a red flag. 

It’s a possible sign that your boss is compartmentalizing the team so each member is blindsided to each other or is pitted against each other. This strategy also works well for sociopaths who hate transparency, honesty, and openness in their dealings with people because these things limit their ability to manipulate their victims.