Sadism is not limited to sexual and criminal acts; it can show up in the workplace.

Everyday sadism is defined by researchers as experiencing pleasure from someone else's pain.

When receiving reports of bullying and abuse, leadership's awareness of sadism is vital.

When the general populace hears the term “sadism,” they may believe it applies to sexual and criminal acts. Few are trained to identify sadistic behaviour in the workplace. Leaders are rarely educated to recognize that repetitive cruelty—aggressive, demeaning, and degrading—as potentially sadistic.

Studying sadism in the workplace, researchers Jill Lobbestael, Ghislane Slaoui, and Mario Gollwitzer depict the core feature of sadistic personality disorder as a pervasive pattern of “cruel, demeaning, and aggressive behaviour, for the purpose of amusement or obtaining pleasure from the suffering of others.”

When untrained, leaders may minimize the harm being done, or believe the justifications from the perpetrator, such as “I was trying to motivate, light a fire, galvanize action.” Leaders may ignore the possibility that the perpetrator is actually sadistic and harms others not to motivate, but to devastate. They aren’t trying to light a fire; they’re extinguishing someone’s spark and getting a jolt of pleasure from doing it.

When reports about bullying or abuse come in, perpetrators often respond with denial: “It never happened.” The one answer leaders never hear is: “I hurt my targets because I take pleasure from inflicting social, psychological, and/or physical pain. In short, I am sadistic.”

Failure to identify everyday sadism

In their 2023 article “Sadism and Personality Disorders,” Lobbestael, Slaoui, and Gollwitzer are clear: “Sadistic pleasure—the enjoyment of harm-infliction to others—can have devastating interpersonal and societal consequences.” Devastating is an extremely strong word that leaders should remember when they are........

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