WEAPONIZED INCOMPETENCE, CAN YOU RECOGNIZE IT?

By Javier Palenque

Miami October 8, 2023

Weaponized incompetence, also called strategic incompetence, is a concept in popular psychology related to an individual using feigned or deliberate incompetence to avoid unwanted responsibility, like growing the game.

In popular psychology

The term was coined by Jared Sandberg in a 2007 article for The Wall Street Journal, in which he described the phenomenon of strategic incompetence as one in which employees intentionally demonstrate a lack of competence in the workplace to avoid performing unwanted responsibilities. Once others begin to perceive the individual as incompetent, they stop delegating tasks to them, like growing the game, they all believe they do, yet when questioned, it is clear they know they do not and yet pretend they do. This is what the CEO of the USTA sees daily and still does nothing about it. People need to be fired, Mr. CEO.

Weaponized incompetence is often described as a form of manipulation. The defining trait of weaponized incompetence is that it is deliberate. An individual intentionally performs a task poorly and refuses to learn how to do so correctly because they want someone else to see their incompetence and assume responsibility for the task. Other individuals might agree to take on the responsibility out of frustration that they are not being performed well.

This is done by USTA’s head office with the sections every day. They feel they are above the daily grind of tennis and want to do the work with Madison Avenue, Tiffany’s, and the others and want to have occasions to display a Rolex, and let us not forget the free lunches or dinners at fancy restaurants, all meaningless for the game and meaningful for the two-week Wall Street show for people who do not even play the sport. If you doubt me ?all you have to do is ask the following question to those making over $100K at the USTA:

?When was the last time you gave your time to teach tennis, donate to the foundation to help tennis, and walk around a tennis court in your neighborhood to help those less fortunate than you?

You will find their answers laughable starting with the CEOs' who has never played tennis in his life, has courts within walking distance, and has people working for him calling me telling me he never is around while being there. Pathetic, yet the board approves of this behavior and looks the other way when questioned. Can you imagine being the CEO of Cadillac and not knowing anything about cars? I can not, what about being the CEO of Emirates and not knowing anything about airplanes?

If we take the USTA’s leadership stance on growing the game and ask, is it weaponized incompetence? What do you think? ?this is the deliberate choice the board takes by willingly diverting the responsibility to the sections and then controlling the funds that they receive and pretending they did their work just by funding the sections. Of course, this is all absurd as the sections use 98% of the grant money in salaries for everyone except coaches and the money they get from leagues is so little that they can’t do much other than wait for the welfare from the next year. Anyone with a sense of urgency and a little bit of smarts would sense this is a dead-end job if you are at the section, and yes the board is responsible for that as well, it is called leadership.

This is the vicious circle of incompetence that the board approves, the CEO loves (he keeps his job while doing nothing) and the sport slowly but surely disappears as I have shown in multiple articles and videos.

It is almost like a collection of “dumb and dumber characters” running the world’s best-funded sports not-for-profit. Below is an extract from an article published in Harvard Business Review by Scott Gregory published in 2018 . I edited the article for easier comprehension and length.

The most common kind of incompetent leader is the “absentee leader”?— those in leadership roles who are psychologically absent from them. These people were promoted into management, and enjoy the privileges and rewards of a leadership role, but avoid meaningful involvement with their teams (hard to show understanding if you never played tennis, right? Mr. CEO??Absentee leaders kill engagement and productivity. Research shows that being ignored by one’s boss is more alienating than being treated poorly and that the impact of absentee leadership on job satisfaction outlasts the impact of both constructive and more overtly destructive forms of leadership. The chances are good, however, that the USTA is unaware of its absentee leaders because they specialize in flying under the radar by not doing anything that attracts attention, this is the invisible sign at the USTA that is bigger than the building itself, that they all pretend does not exist.?Nonetheless, the adhesiveness of their negative impact is slowly and silently killing the sport and the organization. This is called the nefarious status quo.

Absentee leadership rarely comes up in today’s leadership or business literature, but research shows that it is the most common form of incompetent leadership.

Absentee leaders are people in leadership roles who are psychologically absent from them. They were promoted into management and enjoy the privileges and rewards of a leadership role but avoid meaningful involvement with their teams. Absentee leadership resembles the concept of rent-seeking in economics?— taking value out of an organization without putting value in (welfare people). As such, they represent a special case of laissez-faire leadership , but one that is distinguished by its destructiveness.

This is the current leadership of the USTA. You read the term “welfare in a suit” before, now do you understand what I mean? The research is behind me.

Research shows that being ignored by one’s boss is more alienating than being treated poorly. The impact of absentee leadership on job satisfaction outlasts the impact of both constructive and overtly destructive forms of leadership.

Constructive leadership immediately improves job satisfaction, but the effects dwindle quickly. Destructive leadership immediately degrades job satisfaction, but the effects dissipate after about six months. In contrast, the impact of absentee leadership takes longer to appear, but it degrades subordinates’ job satisfaction for at least two years. It also is related to many other negative outcomes for employees, like role ambiguity , health complaints , and increased bullying from team members. Absentee leadership creates employee stress, which can lead to poor employee health outcomes and talent drain, which then impact an organization’s bottom line, and the sport's impact on society. Of course, at the USTA since the wrong people are there they just become lifers, and suck the resources out of the sport and the board approves this level of stupidity.

If absentee leadership is so destructive, why don’t we read more about it in the business literature? Consider a story I recently heard about the dean of a well-known law school: Two senior, well-regarded faculty members called the provost to complain about their dean because, they said, he wouldn’t do anything. The provost responded by saying that he had a dean who was a drunk, a dean who was accused of sexual harassment, and a dean who was accused of misusing funds, but the law school dean never caused him any problems. So, the provost said, the faculty members would just have to deal with their dean. Status quo?

Like the provost in this example, many organizations don’t confront absentee leaders because they have other managers whose behavior is more overtly destructive. Because absentee leaders don’t actively make trouble, their negative impact on organizations can be difficult to detect, and when it is detected, it is often considered a low-priority problem. Thus, absentee leaders are often silent organization killers. Left unchecked, absentee leaders clog an organization’s succession arteries, blocking potentially more effective people from moving into important roles while adding little to productivity. Absentee leaders rarely engage in unforgivable bouts of bad behavior and are rarely the subject of ethics investigations resulting from employee hotline calls. As a result, their negative effect on organizations accumulates over time, largely unchecked. This is what I call, the culture poison of the USTA. This you see in the recent articles in the NYT about sexual harassment and intimidation by USTA’s employees. Where is the leader in that particular case? nowhere to be found.

Remember that the USTA leadership blocked my email and therefore censored its employees from complaining about their poor leadership. This article is most appropriate for them, yet they will never read it. Imagine the CEO of Ford forbidding its employees from complaining about things not working or faults in vehicles. USTA's CEO thinks it's perfectly OK, this is irresponsible if you ask me. Remember this Absentee leadership also produces predictable organizational outcomes: Constructive leadership creates high engagement and productivity, while destructive leadership kills engagement and productivity. The chances are good, however, that the USTA is unaware of its absentee leaders because they specialize in flying under the radar by not doing anything that attracts attention. Nonetheless, the adhesiveness of their negative impact may be slowly?harming the false not-for-profit while destroying the sport. If you are short on examples, here are a few, click and read the facts:

-????????? Cheating NYC for rent money. Who ordered this?

-????????? Cheating Orlando of school taxes . Who pushed for this?

-????????? Sexual harassment lawsuits yearly. Who approves of this?

-????????? Race discrimination lawsuits yearly. Who looks the other way?

-????????? Directors’ malfeasance making NYT headlines. Who hides behind this?

-????????? Lying about participation. Who promotes this?

-????????? Failing to have fair hiring practices. Who shields the USTA in this topic?

The war for leadership talent is real, and smart organizations with the best leaders will always win, the USTA is losing on both fronts:

-????????? Leadership

-????????? Growing the game

I find the current executive team useless. Doing nothing about absentee leaders while promoting them and protecting them is a crime to the sport. Just ask any absentee leader what happened with the latest front-page news on the sexual harassment case going on today , they all will pretend not to know.

Mr. CEO and Chairman of the Board and President of the USTA, please RESIGN.

I say NO to ineptitude and YES to Growing the game.

I can be reached at [email protected]

PS. The status quo is the cancerous tumor of the sport, it needs to be extirpated like a malignant tumor in a body. This is why I want them to RESIGN, and so should you. Enough, the proof is for you to see, just open your eyes or don't but I hate to say that I am unequivocally correct.