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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

Consider the piranha.

According to Smithsonian.com, “A typical piranha diet consists of insects, fish, crustaceans, worms, carrion, seeds and other plant material. A red-bellied piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri), for example, eats about 2.46 grams per day—about one-eighth of its average body mass.”

But in our KJR Bestiary we’re embracing post-factualism. We don’t care about what piranhas really eat, and how much of it. The Piranha of our bestiary is the one the locals conned Teddy Roosevelt into believing in. The one Hollywood makes movies about. The one that, hunting in large, vicious schools, can eat a human alive in a couple of minutes.

Piranhas

Do you work with Piranhas?

I was tempted to call these colleagues ducks, as in “pecked to death by ducks,” but somehow even the most intimidating mallards just don’t seem to inspire the proper level of fear and revulsion.

So Piranhas it is — those colleagues who individually lack even the force of character to backstab their unlucky victims, but who in large groups can shred a fellow employee’s reputation and self-esteem, one small bite at a time.

Office Piranhas receive no obvious benefit from their nastiness. Benefit, though, isn’t really the point.

Unlike Howler Monkeys and quite a few other species too, Piranhas don’t see their world as a pecking order into which they have to establish their level, where the higher up they are the more benefit flows their way.

Piranhas, along with no shortage of other beasts, have a simpler ranking system: their world consists of friends and enemies, with no one in between.

The difference between Piranhas and those other friends-and-enemies beasts is the difference between I and we.

If you’re my enemy it’s singular. Whether I simply see you as someone who’s standing in my way or I see you as a bad person who must be stopped for the greater good, you’re my enemy.

Not so for Piranhas. Piranha-ism is all about group identity. So far as I can tell, Piranhas see themselves as MOS’s … Members of School, just like their aqueous namesakes.

That is, they divide the world into us and them. And if you’re them you’re the enemy, deserving everything bad we can dish out.

Piranhas also understand just how small they are compared to their enemies, which is why they hide in dark water and only attack when their prey is at its most vulnerable.

All of this is also why Piranhas prize loyalty above all other virtues. “Be true to your school” is what matters most (I couldn’t help myself). It’s a zero-sum game, which means helping anyone who isn’t an MOS is, in the end, doing us harm.

As mentioned before, Piranhas’ targets are self-esteem and reputation. Dealing with the self-esteem part isn’t at all hard. This is mostly a matter of the Piranhas trying to establish themselves as the Cool Kids Club, and all you have to do to avoid taking damage is to want, as urgently, desperately, and visibly as possible, to never be a member or to be mistaken for one.

When interacting with Piranhas at this level, eye rolls and sour smiles are, unlike the scaly ones, your friend.

The reputation part is a harder nut to crack because there’s nothing for you to sink your teeth into, unlike the Piranhas, who can sink theirs into you. That is, since no single action on the Piranhas part even rises to the hard-to-counter level of backstabbing, there’s little you can do to address each of their little nibbles.

What you can do is recognize that metaphors won’t help you solve this. As with backstabbing, your best recourse when others are trying to harm your reputation is to have a strong personal network — a wide range of associates who recognize your integrity, competence, and value, and who, on top of that, consider you to be part of their we.

Piranhas who try to overcome a barrier this strong will find themselves left high and dry.

* * *

The invitation is still open: Send me your species and join the KJR Cool Kids Club. What I’d like from you are:

  • Species: A type of bad leader or manager, associated with an unpleasant creature, whether alive, extinct, or mythical. I’ll also consider unpleasant ecosystems if you come up with a nasty organization type instead.
  • Root Cause: What you think leads to the character flaws you’re describing.
  • Solution: What, in your personal experience, works to help an employee survive unscathed and without being mutated in the process.
  • Permission: This includes permission to give you credit for the idea, if you’d like that, or instructions not to. It also includes permission to use your ideas intact, or to modify both your thoughts and your writing as I see fit. Please don’t take offense if I do. Even if I like your writing that doesn’t mean it fits KJR. And if I disagree with your thinking … well, my name will be on the final result. I’ll do my best to give proper credit without burdening your good name with my opinions.
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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

The early days of 2017 seem like a perfect time to talk about bad leaders and ways to survive them. I’m not exactly sure why this thought came to me, but what the heck — somehow it just feels appropriate.

“Survive,” by the way, doesn’t mean beating bad leaders at their own games. That just turns you into one of them. Survive means maintaining your dignity and professionalism while also succeeding … or at least not failing … in the environment bad leaders create.

As my graduate training was in evolutionary biology, we’ll make this a bestiary — a catalog of unfortunate critters. We’ll start off with …

Howler Monkeys

Howler monkeys are managers who holler a lot. There are two subspecies, Toddlers and Actors.

Toddlers throw tantrums whenever something doesn’t go their way. Why? Because … drumroll … it works. They bellow, and everyone in the vicinity scurries around, doing whatever they can to stop the screaming.

Toddlers learned tantrums work at about the same age they learned to speak. Nothing since then caused them to unlearn the behavior. Actors, in contrast, only pretend to lose their tempers. They learned how well screaming works by watching Toddlers in action, concluding that, as the philosopher said, ’tis better to give than to receive.

Howlers have three goals: To deflect responsibility for whatever happens to have gone wrong; to provoke behavior they can use against you later; and to establish their position in the organizational pecking order … the unofficial organizational chart that describes who kisses who, in what order, and where.

When dealing with a Howler, your worst course of action is to lose your own temper in return. Do this and you lose, because yelling is like the Highlander — there can be only one, and the Howler got there first.

Instead, calmly and deliberately walk away. As you gather your papers and stand up to depart, say something like, “Let me know when you’re ready to have a businesslike conversation and we’ll continue this discussion.”

Unless, that is, you report to the Howler. If you do:

  • Master the art of blandness. That is, ignore the Howler’s volume, tone, and pulsing forehead artery, and pay attention only to the content. Control your own body language, repeating to yourself, over and over, “I’m relaxed, professional, and unimpressed.”

To help you keep your cool, take notes ostentatiously, which emphasizes the close attention you’re paying to the serious issues the Howler is raising with such force and sincerity.

  • Take control at the optimal moment. What follows is for group situations. You’ll need equivalent tactics when you find yourself on the receiving end of one-on-one screaming. To take control:

When, and not until the Howler starts to repeat the same serious and important issues, raise your hand … not in the manner of a child who wants the teacher’s attention, but palm forward, like a crossing guard who needs the pedestrian on the other side of the intersection to stop.

When you have the Howler’s attention, apologize for interrupting, then say something like, “If I understand correctly, we have three issues that need our immediate attention.” Stand up, move to the whiteboard, and write them down from your notes as you list them.

Then continue, “I have suggestions for the first two (if you do) — I think we should xxx. For the last, does anyone else have any thoughts on how we should deal with this?”

  • Document every episode as thoroughly as you can. Don’t plan on doing anything with it. But Howlers are often pretty good at scapegoating too, so you might need documentation if you find yourself on the receiving end of an unearned disciplinary action.
  • Speaking of which, redirect any and all attempts to assign blame by overtly taking it: “What’s our goal right now? If we need someone to take the blame, I’m happy to do this. Now … what do we need to do fix the problem and prevent it from recurring?”

But mostly, leave. Focus your energy on finding a different job with a better manager. Life, not to mention your career, is too short. The longer you live around Howler Monkeys, the more being howled at becomes your normal — you’ll turn into the sort of employee you wouldn’t hire; dispirited, unmotivated, apathetic, and with an ingrained habit of keeping your head down in the Whac-A-Mole game of organizational dynamics.

Or, even worse, you’ll become an Actor — you’ll have learned to lose your temper for fun and profit.

* * *

If this week is an indicator, it appears I’ll need a whole week’s worth of space for each bad leadership critter.

You’re invited to contribute. What I’d like from you are:

  • Species: A type of bad leader or manager, associated with an unpleasant creature, whether alive, extinct, or mythical. I’ll also consider unpleasant ecosystems if you come up with a nasty organization type instead.
  • Root Cause: What you think leads to the character flaws you’re describing.
  • Solution: What, in your personal experience, works to help an employee survive unscathed and without being mutated in the process.
  • Permission: This includes permission to give you credit for the idea, if you’d like that, or instructions not to. It also includes permission to use your ideas intact, or to modify both your thoughts and your writing as I see fit. Please don’t take offense if I do. Even if I like your writing that doesn’t mean it fits KJR. And if I disagree with your thinking … well, my name will be on the final result. I’ll do my best to give proper credit without burdening your good name with my opinions.
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