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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

“He stabbed me in the back and then threw me under the bus,” a colleague complained, once upon a time.

“Well, at least he got the sequence right,” I managed to keep myself from saying, recognizing that discretion is sometimes the right solution for even the best of straight lines. I was also was just smart enough to avoid offering just-too-late advice.

There will come a time, in your career as in mine, when you find yourself on the wrong side of backstabbing, under-the-bus throwing, or scapegoating, either separately or in some combination.

In case you are or might be vulnerable, here are some pointers.

The first: As is almost always the case, an ounce of prevention yields the usual utility, so be on the alert for warning signs. Some I’ve seen:

Your manager isolates you from key relationships. Backstabbers and scapegoaters rely on their ability to control what others hear about you. If you have positive working relationships with some people who matter and your manager lets you know he’ll be their liaison from here on in, to ensure everyone hears a consistent message or some such pretext … watch out. There’s a good chance the consistent message will be that you’re the source of whatever problems might be cropping up.

Your manager informs you that it’s important to control what his manager hears. There are a couple of variants of this:

Variant #1: “She won’t have the patience for the complexities of the situation.” She might not, unless it’s something that’s about to blow up. And as your manager probably doesn’t understand the problem to the level of depth you do either, and as it is about to blow up, guess who’s being set up to take the blame.

Variant #2: “Alarming her about the risks and issues we’re facing would be counterproductive. We need to handle this under the radar.” Same situation, different phony rationale. Especially in project situations, risk and issue management call for transparency, so everyone buys into the remediation plan.

If you’re told to conceal the facts, make sure you receive this work direction in writing, and make sure both your manager’s name and his manager’s name are on the documentation.

And if your manager accuses you of just trying to cover your posterior, your answer is, “You bet I am. If this blows up in all of our faces, I’m the one who will need the cover.”

Closely related: You decide to discuss a situation directly with your manager’s manager and she gives you air time but expresses no real interest in the situation or your recommendations.

It might be that you cry wolf a lot. If you do, stop. If you don’t, your manager might be setting you up to be a scapegoat later on when things do blow up.

You stop hearing from people you used to interact with frequently and casually. If this happens to you, it might be you’ve done something to cause it. Assume that is the case and take steps to fix whatever you broke.

Even if you didn’t break anything, use your concern as the entirely legitimate pretext for circumventing a backstabber’s attempts to warn people off when it comes to being your friend and ally.

And, it all blows up anyway. The fact of the matter is, it’s much easier to be on the wrong side of backstabbing, bus-throwing, and scapegoating than preventing them from happening. No matter how much you work to preserve and fortify your working relationships with the people who matter, backstabbers are what they are because they’ve learned how to succeed through these tactics.

They’re better at this game than you are.

If it happens to you, your manager will likely recommend that you not try to fight the outcome or dispute it.

Sometimes, that’s good advice: Fighting it keeps the subject alive, where moving on to something else can give you a clean start … so long as those whose image of you has been tarnished aren’t an important part of your future.

But don’t take your manager’s word for it. After all, his name is on your performance so he isn’t a disinterested advisor. More, if you decide to fight back your manager is left with two bad choices: (1) Back you, which means he expends political capital on your behalf, or, (2) participate in burning you instead.

For your manager it’s a no-win situation. For you it’s a tough, tough choice.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Show me the victim!

Insider trading is in the news, and is so often is the case, there are parallels to your day-to-day decisions and actions as a leader in the world of business, independent of the specific indictment. And so …

A common defense for insider traders is that it’s a victimless crime. That is, when the stock in question is from a publicly held company, it’s rarely possible to identify any individual who was directly harmed by the insider trading.

The usual counter is that the stock in question is priced wrong because the information in question is known only to insiders. Armed with that information, insider traders know when a stock is underpriced and they should buy, and when it’s overpriced and they should sell. Who do they buy from and sell to? To other investors who lack access to the key facts in question.

From KJR’s perspective this is interesting but not essential, included here for completeness. Here’s what is essential to you as a business leader.

Imagine that, instead of investing, we’re talking about the Minnesota State Lottery. Now imagine the headline story is that one player has been told the first 3 numbers of the winning entry.

If I’ve done my arithmetic right, this knowledge improves the odds of winning from 1 in  36,348,339,200 to 1 in 115,600. As payouts, based on the first number, are typically in the tens of millions and each ticket costs $2, an investment of $231,200 pretty much guarantees the player with insider knowledge a multi-million dollar profit.

Ignoring the debate over whether this is a crime with victims or not, we come to a more important matter: Everyone now knows it’s a rigged game.

This is an issue that matters to all business leaders, or at least it should: Many, without even thinking about it, rig the game of getting raises, bonuses, and promotions.

Take, for example, the very common situation of a mentor/protégé relationship. This is widely considered to be a positive thing — leaders should mentor promising employees as part of being a good corporate citizen.

And it is: the additional mentoring makes the protégé a better manager and leader; having a better manager and leader makes the company incrementally more effective; and as the protégé progresses through the management ranks, the mentor increases his or her influence in the corporation at large.

Also: Because the mentor/protégé relationship is warmer than that of boss to direct report, the mentor and protégé inevitably develop a personal friendship, the result of which is that the protégé has increasing influence with his/her mentor.

Which is also good, in that the mentor now gets a second pair of eyes on difficult decisions.

What’s not to like?

Everything is not to like if you aren’t the mentor or protégé, which, mathematically speaking, is everyone minus one. Because everyone (minus one if the protégé is oblivious) knows the game of raises, bonuses, and promotions is rigged in favor of the protégé.

Take, for example, one of the most basic leadership skills (and one of the eight tasks of leadership — see Leading IT: (Still) the Toughest Job in the World, 2nd Edition, by yours truly, IS Survivor Publishing, 2011. Leaders generally delegate to those they considered most qualified. As they mentor their protégé, the protégé is, in their eyes, more and more likely to be the most qualified, especially for high-visibility assignments.

Which gets the protégé the next high-visibility assignment.

It’s a virtuous cycle if you’re the protégé; a vicious one if you’re anyone else.

How, as a leader, do you solve this? It isn’t complicated: As a business leader you should think of yourself as mentor for all of your direct reports.

What’s easy is the concept. What’s hard is that you inevitably have better rapport with some of the men and women who report to you than you do with others.

My recommendation: Invest the time needed to develop rapport with the ones who are harder.

That’s the view as you consider your relationship with your direct reports. How about your relationship with your own manager, if your manager is less conscious of these dynamics?

The solution is as inescapable as it is unfortunate. It’s that the only thing worse than having to play a crooked game is losing one.

Be the protégé.

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