This “Mental Health Month,” It’s Time to Call Out “Dark Triad” Power

 Mary Beth West:

Around the globe, “May is Mental Health Month!” advocacy messages emblazon PR industry “resource” webpages, blog posts, social media feeds, and many leadership speeches and staff missives, urging the PR workforce to focus on their mental health.

Mental wellness stands as one of those “evergreen” issues of relevant concern, year-round.

In the PR industry, we must take stock of the fact that our workforces deal – to a far greater extent than most professional service sectors – with issues of psychology, emotion, human response, and even complex, uncomfortable areas such as mental trauma arising from injustice and negative life experiences.

All these areas factor into how we in PR advise our employers and clients, to develop ethical policies and communicate with human-centered care and empathy.

To that point, my own observation is that most people working in PR are good, kind, empathetic people, who are effective at their jobs for the very reason that a deep conscientiousness of authentic care for others is rooted in their core mindset.

However, I’ve also observed opposite mindsets and behaviors in our industry. Disturbingly, they often can be observed from those in positions of power.

I routinely marvel at the fact that the word “PoweR” begins and ends with two letters that, in fact, are “PR.”

It should constantly remind us all, that today, it’s critically important to confront – and call out – the PR industry’s “Dark Triad” problem, even though doing so is awkward and uncomfortable.

In psychology, the term “Dark Triad” was first coined in 2002 (not that long ago, when you think about it) by Canadian psychologists Kevin Williams and Delroy Paulhus. This manifestation of negative personality traits includes:

• Machiavellianism
• Narcissism
• Psychopathy

Reams of background materials can easily be found online about each of these differentiated and troubling personality traits.

One of my favorite publications that routinely discusses all three is Psychology Today.

In addition, countless YouTube videos feature experts who can help explain all the modes and manifestations of Dark Triad behaviors and harms. (One of my favorites is Dr. Ramani Suryakantham Durvasula – known as Dr. Ramani on YouTube. Her videos are tremendously insightful.)

On The #PRethics Community chats on LinkedIn, my colleagues Jared Meade, Melissa Carter, and I have hosted numerous discussions with experts on such topics as organizational gaslighting – which is a common domain where Dark-Triad leadership insidiously intersects public relations management.

For example, Dr. Shannon Bowen of the University of South Carolina and the Global Strategic Communication Consortium (GSCC) appeared on The #PRethics Community chat last year and also co-authored a paper that I sponsored recently, “Beyond Interpersonal Abuse: Conceptualizing Organizational Gaslighting as a Strategic Communication Risk.”

Another example: we hosted Dr. Jennifer Fraser recently, author of The Bullied Brain and The Gaslit Brain. She did a masterful job discussing the gaslighter’s playbook and how Dark Triad personalities manipulate people with twisted communication tactics. (Check out her recent article in Psychology Today, “Everyday Sadism in the Workplace.” It’s an eye-opener!)

I urge everyone in PR to self-educate on Dark Triad disorders, so that we all can better identify and navigate the utter chaos and devastation that they inflict.

PR practitioners need to study Dark Triad personality disorders, so that we can safeguard PR from being manipulated as a tool for disinformation and harm. Individuals who exhibit Dark Triad traits so often abuse their PoweR – and wildly misuse “PR” tactics, with horrific intent and outcomes for purposes of self-gain.

What’s most unnerving: people with Dark Triad personalities often are “Pied Pipers,” with vast charisma and effusive energy that tend to draw people into their vortex. That’s part of the reason why they so often are successful at rising to positions of authority quickly – particularly in our very “social” industry.

Dark-Triad leaders who capture the brass rings of CEO and c-suite slots and boardroom seats – will, with very few exceptions – render untold harms in their positions of PoweR. They often do or say things that appear nice and acceptable and PR-“friendly” on the surface, but it’s often with an intention to distract and mislead from their very real yet veiled intentions and misbehaviors also going on behind the curtain.

We must do a far better job in calling out this duplicity and – better yet – halting Dark Triad personalities from ascending to positions of PoweR in the first place. They indeed are the very reason PR has such a bad and misunderstood reputation in many circles.

Pretending that Dark-Triad issues in leadership don’t exist in order to save face for the PR industry does not exactly model Mental Health Month’s call-to-action for candor, in facing mental wellness in the workplace. Let’s get these conversations going.

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Based in the U.S., Mary Beth West is founder of The #PRethics Community on LinkedIn and has been a longtime whistleblower of misconduct in the PR industry. Her work has been recognized by the National Whistleblower Center in Washington, D.C.