All Aboard the OK Quadrant

Picture this scene. You're walking into the cabin of a senior manager (now, don't say "boss", they're already taking too much of flak here at LinkedIn on a daily basis!) with two of your colleagues whom you sort of know professionally for a joint meeting. This gent (a) first gestures you to sit down (b) then goes and shakes the hand of the colleague next to you and with a little more lilt in his voice, sits him down and (c) finally, when the third guy walks in, he walks up to the door, does a half-hug and backslapping routine with a deliriously thrilled voice and pulls a chair for him to sit down.

Now your conscious mind may not process all of this very well, but your subconscious does. I first bumped into the term micro-inequities nearly a decade back when reading an article about employees who were leaving organizations with a vague "I didn't feel like I belonged" or "I didn't feel comfortable there" and when pressed, couldn't really put a finger on any specifics. We're all only human, there are people whose wavelengths match with us better than others, but next time you are in a group setting, watch yourself, then catch yourself and finally stop yourself from that backslapping buddy-hood, even if you may feel an overwhelming urge to do so. The same goes for phubbing especially in a one-on-one meeting with the hapless recipient getting thoroughly disoriented (but of course, you wouldn't see that, you're busy devouring your daily quota of dopamine via your FB notification). Personally though, I don't know what's really worse in a corporate setting - being snubbed in a favor of a smartphone or another human being!

Since it takes all sorts to make this world, we get by in the corporate world via a variety of techniques, not all of them conscious. One that has always fascinated me has been the frequency of usage of the other party's name during conversations. Many behavioral psychologists recommend that we use the other person's name three times in a space of five minutes (or thereabouts) when meeting for the first time. It also happens to be a terrific tool to grab attention especially when the listener is clearly drifting. I do use the other person's name particularly in scenarios I feel I should go out of the way to make them comfortable (a nervous interview candidate, a much junior colleague I may be meeting occasionally, a first time meeting with a possible business partner etc.).

That said, I consciously make it a point NOT to use it with my seniors since I feel it's too needlessly fawning and obsequious (ha, talk about that anti-establishment male still in there somewhere!); but I see it being done all the time by many colleagues. Say, if Bala is an EVP in your firm and you speak to him like this - Bala, that's a good point Bala, but as you can see Bala, we had considered other options which we felt were a little more viable Bala, but if you feel otherwise Bala, we are good to re-look at it once again Bala - you have a problem. In some ways, this reminds me of Caramel, my Labrador Retriever who after doing something she's not supposed to have done and getting caught, would start air-pawing at me with her eyes closed, teeth bared, body balled up...at her servile best just to get back into my good books.

I had mentioned in my last article about how stereotyping, while unjustified especially when used to make judgments, is unconsciously deployed to simplify decision making. A productive way this happens is via 2X2 matrices; bucketing 200 data points that occur in a continuum into 4 boxes does make life a lot less complicated. When it comes to corporate gossip (or plain emotional venting), this 2X2 "matrix-ing" comes out in a fascinating way - everyone suddenly seems to be in the quadrant of "I'm OK, YOU are definitely NOT OK". When teams are distributed in terms of roles (eg: sales vs rest), geographies (eg: multi-location groupings) or timelines (eg: the projects world), this is even more acute. Since everyone is overloaded in many directions and have no time to really understand what's happening on the "other" side, the easiest way to self-aggrandize is to walk around with a messiah complex - its a big bad world and I am the only one who is doing something right.

Folks in the markets thus think that the folks in remote sites have it easy since they can hide out of sight while the ones in the remote locations think all the market-folks need to do is to talk shop to clients and go home at 5pm sharp while they remain the beasts of burden. I've heard software developers say they're the ones who do the "real work" while designers are just writing some "documentation" while designers on the other hand says the developers are doing some hack-jobs without having a clue of who's using the product and why, while they have to hold it all together. Net-net, I'm always OK and you never are!

So, is there a way out? In most cases, we are not dealing with unethical swines or unhinged jerks in office, but just some daily battles of perception and semantics. Even if you don't have the luxury of time to shadow someone to really get to know what they're up to, you can still start with the assumption that they're doing something meaningful. Let's give them the benefit of doubt predominantly when we don't have a first hand view of how their day or week is going. Secondly, watch out for any moments of micro-inequities in your interactions specifically the ones that come from you (as in, those you can control). Lastly, if nothing else works, just go with "Hey Bala, I know you're busy Bala, but Bala, if you look at this issue closely Bala..." and voila, there will be a little more love in your part of the world. If you see Bala's face slowly getting creeped out, it's time to turn that "name-calling" down a notch...