Backstabbers and Bullies

By: Adrian Furnham

Narrated by: Tim Bruce

Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

The idea of leadership failure and derailment has been brushed under the carpet for far too long, and only now are statistics appearing on the sheer numbers who fail. Backstabbers and Bullies provides the latest psychiatric and clinical perspectives on dark-side behavior, including: recognizing and coping with overconfident, narcissistic, and psychopathic leaders; causes of leadership derailment and failure; corrupt corporate cultures; and the criminal personality.

Fascinating listening for anyone who has worked alongside a corporate psychopath, business narcissist, or histrionic show-off, Backstabbers and Bullies goes beyond the science to explain how to better understand, manage, and prevent dark-side behavior and presents advice for reducing derailment potential for yourself, your colleagues, and your organization.

©2015 Adrian Furnham (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

How to identify and prevent bullying at work

If you have any interest in preventing the chaos and despair caused by bullies at work this is a must listen audiobook by one of the great researchers and writers in this field.

For organisations: If you are a leader, human resources professional, involved in selection or promotion and the development of others this book will give you valuable insight in to how bullying behaviour occurs and what you can do to prevent it.

For individuals: if you are remotely interested in leading others or have the desire for power this book will help you gain self-awareness of your own dark side tendencies and how you can avoid derailing. I'd especially recommend this audibook to those on graduate programmes or identified as rising stars. The seeds of later derailing are often found in early success.

Adrian Furnham has written a book that brings together the academic research on bullying with a precise guide for using that evidence in practice at work. The descriptions of how and when bullying occurs, the psychiatry and psychology of bullying, are covered in detail. What sets this book on the subject apart is the advice on how to identify, prevent and deal with the behaviour before this becomes problematic.

I would have liked a little more detail on the reason why people commit the internet based modern white collar crimes. I thought some of the descriptions here were more routine than the rest of the book. That could be because I've grown up with the technology generation so others may feel differently.

By far the most useful element of the book for me is the descriptions of each of the pathologies, from psychopaths to narcissists, and how positive personality and leadership traits can become overused and lead to bullying under the right set of organisational, social and individual conditions.

The later chapters are a useful step by step guide from selection to promotion and leadership positions that help organisations and individuals identify when they are most at risk of bullying behaviours coming to the fore. I hope that this book is read widely and organisations take the evidence based steps suggested and create healthier, more effective and happier workplaces free from the tyranny of bullying.

Too academic

Any additional comments?

The summary intrigued me but it is also misleading. "How to cope with ..." implies a practical guide but this is not the case at all. Be aware that the writing style is very academic. The narrator doesn't really have much to work with but doesn't really add anything to the material either. I thought the first chapter was a summary of the rest of the book, but the same academic writing continues throughout. I'm not opposed to academic writing per sé, but was annoyed at how the author quotes others when it doesn't really add anything to the narrative at all except to increase the reference list. The book also contains a lot of tables which is not really attractive to listen to. Not one to recommend unless this is really your cup of tea.

This is not a suitable book to read aloud

What would have made Backstabbers and Bullies better?

This is a text book. It is full of bullet points and tables, with whole sentences few and far between. Some of the content was interesting but it was very hard to discern from the fog of management-speak.

What will your next listen be?

Something light

How could the performance have been better?

By reading a book written in whole sentences

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Backstabbers and Bullies?

All the tables and all the lists