How to Recognize Bad Intentions

Issue 176, September 5, 2024

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So, is the road to paradise paved by bad intentions? As absurd as that may sound, being aware of any bad intentions (as opposed to assuming good intentions) may pave a better way forward. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, emotionally, psychologically and in the case of business, strategically.

Organizations are complex interconnecting systems. The human system within an organization remains the most influential in?achieving change and transformation. We define the human system as the “workers” and “leaders” inside the organization, as well as those who sit on the edge of the organization as partners, providers and supporters. Each individual in the system has a?role to play, motivations (good and/or bad) and intentions (good and/or bad).

Good Intentions

But first a word about the ambiguity of good intentions. Good intentions are generally understood as holding?optimistic thoughts?that everything comes out as it should leading to a good ending.

Here’s a real-life example. A B2B editor inherited an outsourced marketing firm when his media brand was acquired by a consulting organization. In an early exchange with the owner of the marketing firm, she asked the editor to send her all the contact information for his pool of reporters. True to his natural instinct and training as an editor, he asked why.? Instead of a simple explanation, the editor received a vitriolic email accusing him of not trusting her, and unequivocally said if he was asked to deliver on a request, he was to do so without question. The marketing CEO reiterated that the editor clearly had trust issues.

Needless to say, this was not only a surprise, but it was also an unprofessional, personal attack from a virtual stranger. Sticking to the chain of command, the editor reached out to his new owner registering shock and dismay.? The owner said to work with the new team believing there was always good intent in mind behind any request.

We think even the most?optimistic professional?would hear such a sweeping explanation without apology as good intention gone amuck. As the working relationship evolved, it became clear to the editor that the marketing CEO was an overbearing control freak, possibly bipolar, intimidated by the editor, out of her depth marketing a media brand, and basically an insecure individual.? Of course, it took time for all those dynamics to reveal themselves.? But the damage that was done in that first exchange tainted the relationship going forward and it never progressed to mutual respect or authentic collaboration.

The editor was always on guard, second-guessing the marketing CEO. And the CEO was always on the aggressive trying to prove her competence and intelligence to the editor, failing at every turn. If the editor were to take his owner’s advice, good intentions would definitely pave the road to a dead end. When the editor was able to understand the true bad intentions, he was better able to work with the marketing CEO knowing the hidden agendas.

As much as possible, the editor surreptitiously moved the communications and relationship in a direction that he felt he had the upper hand.? Ultimately, it was destined to fail because the relationship was an utter charade, and each person continued to work at cross purposes. The consequences of the situation ultimately challenged the brand and the business.

It’s Personal

Granted, developing new professional relationships takes time. The journey can be full of landmines: plotting to get credit for achieving a goal, manipulating a situation for personal gain, and controlling the relationship are the negatives. On the flip side, tolerance, putting oneself in another’s shoes (we know, this one is super hard), and approaching the new relationship with an open mind takes time, effort and energy.

Relationships are challenging. Humans are just that, human. We can optimistically assume everyone has the best intentions professionally as well as personally, but that may be a pipe dream that isn’t real. We can relish, admire and embrace humanity for all its good intentions and what it has accomplished but we also need to recognize that for a variety of reasons, not everyone operates with good intentions.

Being pragmatic is often a necessity and a tool to help an individual or team navigate what many describe as “office politics.”? Pragmatism also recognizes that the dynamics at play are very human-oriented, and good intentions may not always be the case for humans.

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Bad Intentions

Our natural instincts are invariably on the mark. When we feel someone is?untrustworthy, chances are they are. When we feel threatened, chances are someone else has tapped into our insecurity, loss of control, or personal safety.? When we feel intuitively (not think) someone else has bad intentions, it’s probably true. And often these bad intentions are twisted into some form of good intention.

The so-called good intentions demonstrated in our case study were covers for defensiveness and the attempt to hide the lack of capability and knowledge. So, good intentions shifted to bad intentions can be motivated by the desire to manipulate a situation to a desired outcome by attempting to take a position of power. And we all know that power plays are propelled by the desire to gain as much power as possible in order to feel better about oneself.

Another example. An ambitious video producer was working for an association as a freelance consultant.? She had insinuated her way into the team through her longstanding friendship with the CEO, convincing him that he needed to expand his voice to attract new, younger members. She also planted the seed that he needed to implement more discipline within the executive team.? He was by temperament a non-confrontational person, so he acquiesced right away and made her his director of strategy. He figured she would be able to fix the situation to ensure his goals were realized.

She went full force into her new role, requiring each member of the executive team to sit through monthly accountability meetings, reviewing endless pages of Excel spreadsheets to review tasks and have each justify his or her work and accomplishments.

The new strategic leader noticed ongoing resistance on the part of the COO who was barely able to sit through his monthly updates without visible disdain, implying that the meetings were a colossal waste of time and had nothing to do with strategic planning but were simply task-oriented reviews. He had no interest in reporting to a part-time freelancer who didn’t even understand the association business, its products or its customer base.

Long story short, the producer/strategy lead called the COO asking about his resistance, overemphasizing that she had no interest in running the operations of the organization. She was happy as a freelancer and had no further ambition. She leaned heavily into her sincerity mode.

You probably already know the ending of this story. The COO became so fed up with her veiled ambition, having watched the CEO increasingly release the reins to her daily, that he quit and went to the competition.

The moral of the story: Be super cautious about taking good intentions at face value, the opposite may be true.?

Managing Expectations

The case for good intentions was dramatized by a recent report we read from Psychology Diary.? They identified five tipoffs that you may be prey to bad intentions.? We bring this up not to make anyone paranoid, but rather to be mindful of what goes on in the internal machinations of an organization and the natural, predictable tensions that can build up within a workforce when mutual respect is disintermediated by ambition, narcissism — or worse,?hubris.?

• You feel weird. As we said, trust your gut reactions.? Your body doesn’t deceive you because it is built on millennia of evolutionary advances. We subconsciously rely on non-verbal cues to identify the proverbial friend or foe. If you keep having these feelings (and it becomes a pattern), there’s a reason. Try to remove egos from the equation and analyze why you’re reacting the way you are and attempt to determine what is motivating the feeling. Then deal with it by breaking the pattern and reclaiming your agency in a positive, constructive way.

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• You feel manipulated. Someone else is trying to shape you into their own version of you. They say they have only good intentions to make you a better team player. This can happen in the workplace when an independent-thinking person is gently told to rein in his creativity and stick to the party line of the organization.? “Dress the part and be a team player,” he was warned. On the surface one might assume the advice was given with good intentions to help him fit in with the more mainstream workforce. But watch out. “Manipulators are generally the most harmful people we will meet in life when it comes to being abused mentally and verbally. They will not try to harm you physically, but they will erode your self-worth and confidence, because they seek to keep controlling the narrative and gaslighting you, and they want you to become dependent on them. They do not see you as a person but rather as a pawn in their game or, even worse, someone to use to achieve their ends.” (Psychology Diary)

In our modern workplace, there is a place and role for everyone, even the outliers and iconoclasts. Respecting inclusivity and diversity should help derail bad intentions based on desiring a cookie-cutter workplace where questioning the status quo is forbidden. A status quo culture is foundationally defensive. The outliers who rock the boat may be manipulated by others to conform, which ultimately leads to the recognition for the outliers that this professional environment is unhealthy and toxic. Our advice: Part with it for your own sanity and well-being.

• You feel they are lying to you. This happens in life, and it is never pleasant.?Trust?is the foundation that keeps societies, governments, institutions and families on course. In the workplace, the lack of trust is fatal. We have written about this topic over and over again as it has the greatest?influence on organizational success. Anecdotal examples include business development/sales reps who often exaggerate potential revenues couched in active optimism. They set themselves up mentally to work towards their goal and likely do not see the resulting bad intentions they are creating. Or more insidiously, they may want something from you and are seeking to manipulate you to their gain/end. Managers may not be fully forthcoming about chances for career advancement. On the plus side, they may not know.? Or they may be unclear in stating their expectations on how to succeed.? And then there are the few who demand excellent performance to make themselves look good to their superiors. Being untrustworthy is one of the telltale signs that someone has bad intentions with you or the organization at large. Trust needs to be established and supported from the top down and back up through the ranks.? Lying, even via omission, is a quick way to make any organization dysfunctional or irrelevant. Or both.

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• Your feelings don’t matter. What is the eventual outcome of a manager who ignores a direct report?? They rarely have conversations or contact. And when they do, it is impersonal and distant. As a result, the employee has learned not to share anything personal. But think about it. That level of neglect could have more insidious motivations. This could be a tactic of trying to gaslight and manipulate you, claiming no need to communicate. What is implicit is they want you to only focus on them because they don’t care about you. Keep an eye out for the signs that someone has bad intentions towards you because they will show it in subtle ways to undermine you.

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• You feel when they make “jokes,” they are actually insulting you. “Why are you so sensitive? It was just a joke!” If you have heard these words, it means that you have witnessed one of the signs that someone has bad intentions toward you. If you always end up being the butt of the joke and these jokes only serve to embarrass or humiliate you, then they are not jokes.” (Psychology Diary) This is a sign of bad intentions and the best way to deal with it is to confront it tactfully and don’t let these types of people control your life.

Flipping the Equation

Our focus on bad intentions is not to make anyone feel anxious or paranoid. Our ongoing advocacy of critical thinking and mindfulness is to provide our clients with the tools to achieve high performance and celebrate success. We know that a workplace can be filled with hidden agendas.? We know that bad intentions can permeate a workplace culture.? What is important is to identify these behaviors and face up to them. It’s not always so easy because bad intentions can often be subconscious, which makes them even more dangerous to the health and welfare of the larger group because they are not obvious. In an ongoing campaign for trust, fairness, and transparency in all organizations, we’ll take a stand that revealing bad intentions may be the first step on the road to a healthy, fully functioning organization.

There’s one other angle to intentions: unintended consequences.? That’s for another day.

Explore this issue and all past issues on 2040’s Website or via our Substack Newsletter.

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