Your colleague in the adjacent cubicle took credit for you big sale; she blackmailed the receptionist and got her fired; she sweet-talks the boss every day and he falls for it. She feels no remorse for all the trouble she causes. She has no conscience. Her empathy seems fake. She causes trouble in the office but she keeps getting rewarded for it. Upper management loves her. You think to yourself, "What a psychopath." Actually, you may be right. Psychopathy in the workplace is alive and kicking.

We all know people like this in our workplace - our colleagues, our co-workers, our boss, upper management, the salespeople - but few of us even considered that these people may, in fact, actually be psychopaths.

The clinical definition of psychopath is: A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

Dr. Robert Hare, a professor of psychology, estimates that 1 out of every 100 people is a "subclinical psychopath," someone who leaves a path of destruction and pain without a single pang of conscience. Further, psychopaths are attracted to positions of power and there are some researchers that believe that 1 in 10 corporate executives are psychopaths.

Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Paul Babiak recently wrote a book about corporate pyscopaths called "Snakes In Suits." The book explains how corporate psychopaths climb the corporate latter by being deceitful, stealing other people's ideas, taking credit for other peoples work, yet doing this in a smooth manner.

So, psychopaths may naturally be attracted to the business world. Often, their personality is seen as appropriate; they exhibit traits such as aggressiveness and assertiveness which is often the characteristics of a good leader.

Psycopathy in the workplace may be a problem that most people have not even considered. If Dr. Hare and Dr. Babiak are correct in their assumptions it at least begins to explain some of the white collar crime that is taking place in Corporate America embezzlement, extortion, fraud, bribery, corporate scandals. Perhaps recognizing the problem is the first step in avoiding another type of Enron situation?