Communication and Behavioral Models for Predatory Leadership
Matt Kramer
Walden University
Communication for Social Change
Dr. Dorcas Francisco
April 21, 2013

The persistence of poverty can often lead to upheaval – Pradip Thomas

The persistence of the poor to overcome systemic forces that sustain poverty will lead to upheaval – Matt Kramer (with gratitude to Pradip Thomas)

Predatory Leadership (PL) is the working title for a phenomenon describing a set of anti-social behaviors and how the actors displaying these behaviors have been able, over the course of thousands of years, to disproportionately manipulate and distort the evolution of civilization into a paradigm in which the worst aberrations of human behavior, including war, poverty, famine, slavery, economic exploitation, corruption in government and industry, and other forms of social injustice are considered by many to be normal and unavoidable expressions of human behavior. A critical factor enabling predatory leaders to out-compete potential leaders of compassionate and collaborative leadership styles is based upon the premise that few people recognize signs of psychopathic behavioral symptoms early enough to make appropriate and timely choices protecting themselves from exploitation and abuse, or protecting positions of ultimate power and control from being occupied by the most toxic and malevolent of personalities. To provide some perspective on the nature and consequences of PL, consider a metaphorical comparison of the awareness of PL by today’s general population to the nature of public and professional awareness of the causes of disease in the twelfth century. Lacking evidence indicating the existence of viruses and bacteria or their link to disease, even the most learned of doctors were unwitting enablers as they themselves contributed to the spread of disease (Nuland, 2004). With the invention of the microscope, new information became available that enabled doctors and the general public opportunities for greater success in managing many kinds of diseases. Educated insights into the emotional nature and mental functioning of the types of people who become predatory leaders have the potential to serve as a microscope of sorts, revealing the formerly invisible relationship between psychopathic behavior and humanity’s greatest problems. A premise of the hypothesis describing PL considers that when the general public recognizes the early signs of potential toxic leaders as easily as they recognize early signs of a cold or flu, people will be able to be more effectively proactive at mitigating the possibilities for psychopathic personalities to do substantive harm in all arenas from domestic to international (Kramer, 2012). To date, as a neophyte leader in the arena of social activism, I have had minor success at getting the message of PL into public dialogue. In speaking publically to small audiences I have received mostly positive and enthusiastic responses; academics in leadership have reviewed the hypothesis and pronounced it worthy of more research, and, until it was taken down by YouTube for unexplained reasons, a nine minute video of me describing PL received over thirteen thousand views. Like musicians who work on their albums for years and never deem them ready for release, I continue to research and fine tune the message, unsure whether it is yet sufficiently developed in a way that will not only be easily accessible and comprehensible by the general public but will also motivate and inspire people to get involved and help start a movement to eliminate PL from the human experience. To date, my vision for establishing the anti-PL movement involves the following steps: 1. Develop the message and package it into all forms of media including books, comic books, e-books, public lectures, websites, blogs and other relevant forms of social media. 2. Set up a non-profit organization (or operate under the umbrella of an appropriate non-profit) to accept funding to continue research, publish and distribute media, establish speakers’ bureaus and brainstorming circles, and generate additional ways for the general public to support and participate in the process of defining goals and actions to attain those goals, and establishing and growing the anti-PL movement. 3. Review ideas and solutions from the brainstorming circles and from specialists with expertise in relevant fields, such as political science, psychology, history, sociology, etc., to create action plans to be incorporated into the movement. 4. Begin taking action and supporting actions by others when appropriate and doable.
As I read this week’s Learning Resources, I realized that my approach to constructing and communicating the message of PL has attributes of the modernization communication model in which social changes that are presumed to be healthy by a dominant or wealthy society are delivered, without a two way dialogue, to a culture deemed less developed by the dominant culture (Servaes, 2008). I had failed to consider how, from culture to culture, behavioral characteristics unique to each culture will impact how an anti-PL movement may be received or rejected by those cultures. Additionally it became apparent that it is important to choose an appropriate pairing of a communications model and a behavioral theory model to determine guidelines for developing a communications program that reflects the interests of the delivering agency in a form that also includes a two way dialogue with the recipient culture. Important in the dialogue is that information is contributed from the recipient culture and is considered relevant to the meaning and substance of the communication (Servaes & Malikhao, 2002). For example, without such a dialogue, the contributors of information will not know if their message is relevant to the needs of the recipient culture from their point of view. I chose the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) as a behavioral theory model because it addresses multiple factors affecting how people influence each other through reciprocal interactions (Servaes, 2008) and how those interactions could inspire tangible interest in making behavioral and procedural changes to render PL untenable in participating cultures. Lack of awareness of PL can contribute to barriers that slow or resist adoption of anti-PL considerations. SCT invites the initiators to learn about dynamics involving environmental and personal factors interacting with human behaviors and to integrate those dynamics into their strategies to share their information and collaborate with the community in designing goals and coordinating campaigns relevant to both the information and the needs of the community (Rimer & Glanz, 2005). Factors in SCT relevant to behavioral changes include self efficacy - the degree of confidence by participants that they can make a difference (Figueroa, Kincaid, Rani & Lewis, 2002); outcome expectations – the degree to which participants expect changes due to changes in behavior; and goals (desired results that help motivate changes in behavior.) Engaging members of a target audience to participate in learning under the SCT model suggests more promising results when paired with a participatory communication model rather than a modernization model. In a participatory communication model, an interactive style of information exchange contributes to a democratic decision making process in which the audience is engaged, motivated and decisively involved in the outcome of the dialogues (Servaes & Malikhao, 2002, p. 169). While my initial vision for getting the PL message out into the world involved mostly a modernistic approach, inadvertently I also included an element employing the participatory model. The ways in which PL impacts and influences all aspects of civilization are too numerous for any single person to address. The estimate that psychopaths comprise one percent of the population (Hare, 1999) implies that throughout the world, seventy million psychopaths are wreaking havoc in at least seventy million ways (Brewer, 2012). To address this situation, I proposed that the anti-PL movement incorporate a program to set up as many speaking circles as possible in each participating region to brainstorm ways to counteract the consequences of the global infestation of predatory leaders. In each community that participates in the movement, facilitators can provide training information and examples of PL relevant to those communities. I have faith in the ingeniousness of humanity, that these speaking circles will be the source of thousands of brilliant ideas for disempowering predatory leaders and transforming their societies into cultures devoid of humanity’s greatest problems. The process will involve complex, long term plans including educating youth to help prepare for a PL free future and a process for protecting positions of leadership from being co-opted by toxic personalities. Challenges will include addressing moral and ethical issues regarding the rights and opportunities of citizens regardless of their potential for psychopathic behavior. At the very least I envision a public education relevant to psychopathic behavior to contribute to a reduction and eventual elimination of bullying in schools, child abuse and domestic violence. At best, living on a planet free from war and the other ills of humanity, we will enjoy a world in which governments and corporations no longer manipulate people into serving their needs; instead, they will function to serve the needs of people in ways determined by those people.

References Brewer, J. (2012). How Will the 99% Deal with 70 million Psychopaths? Retrieved from: http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/blog/2012/07/24/how-will-the-99-deal-with-70-million-psychopaths/ Figueroa, M., Kincaid, D., Rani, M. & Lewis, G. (2002). Communication for Social Change: An Integrated Model for Measuring the Process and Its Outcomes. New York, NY: The Rockefeller Foundation.
Hare, R. (1999). Without Conscience:The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Nuland, S. (2004). The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company
Rimer, B. & Glanz, K. (2005). Theory at a Glance: A Guide For Health Promotion Practice (Second Edition). NIH Publication No. 05-3896
Servaes, J. (2008). Communication for development and social change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
SERVAES, J. & MALIKHAO, P. (2002). Chapter 7. Development Communication Approaches in an International Perspective. Retrieved from: http://www.unesco.kz/publications/ci/hq/Approaches%20Development%20Communication/CHP7.PDF