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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

“John” was given to meetings. He liked to deliver bad news with witnesses.

I reported to John once upon a time. I was running a small account and had offered a position to the company receptionist, who had been planning to leave the company to find a better career opportunity.

The meeting consisted of John, two witlesses … uh, witnesses … and myself. I was on one side of the table, the other attendees on the other side, and the question to be addressed was how this violation of procedure had happened.

Since there were no other possible internal candidates and the receptionist had been planning to leave the company, there was no real issue that needed discussing. The point of the meeting, which I was deliberately too dense to understand, was that I should be afraid of John. Since I didn’t become afraid in that meeting, John held others periodically until I got the message.

Fear is a potent motivator, as mentioned before in this column. (See “The best and worst motivator,” Oct. 7, 1997.) When the situation calls for a sense of urgency, with dire consequences for inaction, scaring an employee can be exactly the right thing to do.

There’s a big difference, though, between scaring someone because of the situation they face (“Shark attack!”) and being a bully who rules through intimidation. The former helps people survive and get the job done. The latter helps nobody, including the bully.

Seem obvious? Maybe, but if it’s so obvious, why do so few bullies recognize themselves? For that matter, why are so many victims of bullying seemingly oblivious to their situation? And are you sure you’re neither bully nor victim yourself? Read on.

Bullies don’t lead employees, although they think they do. Fear of the bully leads the employees, and that’s different. When a person leads, that person sets direction. When fear leads, there is no direction. There is only scurrying around as everyone tries to avoid provoking the boss. Since the boss is a bully, though, the boss’s anger is a given, so attempts to avoid creating provocation are doomed before they start.

Bullies think they’re leaders, because their victims follow orders quickly and without argument, do things the “right way,” and always keep them in the loop so they always know what’s going on.

The bully/bosses are wrong, though. They aren’t leading. Their employees are victims who follow their sense of fear, not the leader. This has several unintended consequences:

  • Victims don’t make decisions if they can help it. Any decision is a potential provocation. Better to wait and ask the boss.
  • The decisions victims do make are usually bad ones, because decisions aren’t about helping the organization move forward. They’re about second-guessing whether the boss would want anyone else to make the decision and, if so, what the boss would do in this situation.
  • Bully/bosses and their victims end up forming an unhealthy, addictive symbiosis, in which the bully/boss depends on the victims to provide an outlet for their continuing need to feel dominant while their victims rely on having the boss’s temper as an excuse for every failure.

Are you still sure you neither are a bully nor report to one? That’s great if it’s true. Being a bully isn’t binary, though, so your management style may include elements of bullyhood without your ever being aware of it.

If your employees ever make decisions by asking, “What would John do in this situation?” you have some warning signs. If they ever say, “We’d better not do that because it would tick John off,” you’ve gone beyond warning signs to the display of active symptoms.

Your manner of interacting with your boss may include an element of victimhood as well. It’s easy to tell. If, in your interactions, you’re more worried about potential criticism than hopeful for potential praise, you’re the victim of a bullying boss.

What should you do?

If the answer isn’t obvious to you, that’s another clear warning sign, because the answer is obvious.

Leave.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Nearly two decades ago I presented an excruciatingly dull paper (“Quantitative Analysis of Electrical and Overt Behavior of the Electric Fish Brienomyrus niger,” if memory serves) at the Animal Behavior Society’s annual conference, held that year at Tulane University.

While there I met a researcher who claimed to have demonstrated rudimentary speech in parrots. Not “Polly want a cracker,” but real speech, with the parrot using rudimentary grammar and vocabulary.

I never heard anything more about the subject, so I guess nobody was able to repeat her results. It’s too bad. Given how much parroting some human beings do, finding parrots to be a bit more human would have been fun.

But parrot we do, as I found out while awash in e-mail following my proposal that we hold a National Boycott Stupidity Day (NBSD) and my suggestion that much of the concern over the use of foreign technical workers sounds suspiciously like bigotry. Quite a few readers parroted currently fashionable political rhetoric, equating neo-conservatism with intelligence, liberalism with stupidity, and my assertion of bigotry with “playing the race card.”

Parrots.

The response to NBSD was so overwhelming that I’m actually tempted to organize the event. We have an alternate name (Intellicom) and several volunteer projectionists (for our continuous showings of Forrest Gump, which we’re all going to not watch together).

We also have a program change. We will allow curling after all, since several readers persuaded me that this is a game of wit and strategy, not just sliding things on ice. My apologies to all you curlers. Instead, we’ll ban ice fishing, since I have to offend someone and sitting in a hut on the ice in winter, drinking beer, and waiting for a nibble seems a safe target.

Speaking of offending people, several of you took offense at my excluding Newt Gingrich from NBSD. Supposedly, he really does promote intelligence, despite his ethics violation, his insistence on buying a bunch of B1 bombers the Pentagon doesn’t want, and his pursuit of his own foreign policy. Oh, if only he hadn’t been named after an amphibian …

(I’d give equal time to offending Bill Clinton’s defenders, only there weren’t any. Sorry, Mr. President.)

NBSD was, of course, satire. Its point wasn’t that you should promote your opinion as “smart” and opposing views, for example liberalism, as “stupid.”

Now I personally think liberals see everyone except the wealthy as victims, while conservatives see no victims at all unless a criminal receives legal protection or Bill Clinton is involved. I think both fraudulently promote simplistic solutions to the complex issues we face as a nation. But that’s just my way of making unpleasant generalizations about groups I don’t like, an activity as American as wiener schnitzel and burritos.

If I actually held NBSD, those who disagree with me would be welcome. Those who parrot other people who disagree instead of troubling to formulate their own opinions wouldn’t make the cut, though, nor would people who equate disagreement with a lack of intelligence.

Take this thought about parrots into your office: I sometimes think there aren’t more than a dozen people in this industry who have actual ideas. A new thought ventures into the jungle, gets squawked back and forth, and eventually sounds like a trend. Actually, it’s just one person with chutzpah and a bunch of parrots. You hear the parrots and, mistaking them for authoritative sources, think something important is going on.

Take this thought, too: The glib, simplistic solutions for complex problems you so often hear parroted around rarely work, despite our collective preference for easily understood concepts. Both technology and public policy are complicated. While simplicity may reflect design elegance, below the surface a lot has to happen before anything works.

Take one last thought into your office and keep it there forever: That irritating employee with the cubicle you placed as far away from yours as possible because of how often he disagrees with you … is he really irritating, or are you wrong more often than you think?

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