Is your company Passive Aggressive?

We’ve all done it. The snide comment, delivered with skill - so as to inflict some damage, but not really address an issue face-on and in full.

 We also know when it’s being sent our way – but because of its skillful packaging, it is equally as hard to address from the other side of things. So we don’t take action, refute, or address… we stew, become defensive, and base our opinions solely on conjecture.

 So things just go on – seemingly as they were before, but actually deteriorating - ineffective, accepting of sub-standard, and with all parties operating from a place of scarcity and assumptions.

 It doesn’t feel very good does it?

 What if your company is Passive Aggressive? What if your company’s culture allowed this behavior as a norm? What if everyone “Used indirect expression of hostility, such as through procrastination, stubbornness, sullen behavior, or deliberate or repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible”?

 If that’s happening, what does it really feel like? Is there a cost to your organizational effectiveness? Can you overcome it? Is it worth it?

 If you’ve been part of a team, where ideas are met with sarcasm, instant overbearing opposition (naysayers), silence, or worse, complete consensus agreement – you may very well be witnessing Passive Aggressive behaviors. Liane Davey, cofounder of 3COze Inc. and author the recent HBR Post on decreasing Passive Aggressiveness (https://hbr.org/2016/01/reduce-passive-aggressive-behavior-on-your-team) articulates that, “Team members resort to passive-aggressive behavior when they perceive the discomfort of addressing an issue directly to be greater than the discomfort of addressing it indirectly — or not addressing it at all.” This can also be viewed as how team members might be coping with a lack of trust in their team dynamic resulting in fear of direct conflict.

 This coping behavior is normal. But when it perpetuates and becomes the culture, it is highly dysfunctional and downright paralyzing to teams and companies. Just as a dog that has been trained with a heavy hand may flinch as you reach out to greet her, employees that have been continually opposed, cut off, called-out, and not included may find at least some power in the safer, more ambiguous lashing-out or checking-out positions of Passive Aggressiveness.

 When this dynamic persists, it can have great impacts on team, and subsequently organization effectiveness. As employees resort to Passive Aggressiveness to survive managers or team members that are overtly aggressive, they in essence tend to check out. Because they’ve been burned before, criticized for collaboration, or devalued as competent, they see no reason to contribute. This is when we see teams and business units become paralyzed with avoidance, extreme approval and dependence on others to move forward, and over compliance to rules and process that might actually be holding the organization back.

No one challenges the status quo. No one grows. The market passes you by.

Ask yourself this. How many people leave meetings or interactions in your company cleanly? With everything having been left on the table, with nothing more to prove or explain. With shared understanding and alignment? We didn’t say agreement – but alignment, and with no side conversations from the office curmudgeon or toxic clique? 

What would that feel like?

 As you likely know from our other pieces of content, Ephektiv is a world leader in the use of Human Synergistic International’s suite of cultural behavior assessment tools. We often look to this proven database tool to help us see when, and how Passive and Aggressive behaviors are at play in an organization and the impact they may be having.

We actually work with a number of clients that qualify as predominantly “Passive Defensive” in the expected behaviors that have dominated their culture. These high expectations for avoidance, dependence, compliance and approval are often prevalent because of existing or past management styles that were “Aggressive Defensive," - behaviors of opposition, competition, perfection, and power, that have been leveraged beyond their effective levels and have resulted in an organization operating in Fear and Distrust.

 The HSI tools are not temperament measures like MBTI or DISC. While effective for self -awareness, and personal interaction, the HSI tools help us measure the behaviors that are expected within an organization, teams, and even leaders and employees. This is advantageous in that we can work to address behavioral change much more readily that we can our personal hardwiring.

I’ll lean on Ms. Davey again as she presents some great approaches for overcoming Passive Aggressiveness when it is a norm within a team.  Liane presents great examples that all work toward building a team environment where members feel safe to contribute and go home feeling heard and included. This doesn't mean that everyone is right, but it does mean everyone gets input and feels heard. As a leader, this will require some diligent work to make real-time, Socratic challenging of ideas comfortable for team members, but it can be done.  Facilitating collaboration so that transparency is the predominant theme, and the water cooler second guessing is eradicated – addressed proactively by working toward understanding and alignment is the path to what is called “Constructive” behaviors. And this is where success is forged.

As a team and company understand and see the detriment of Passive and Aggressive Defensive behaviors, they also learn how to help themselves transition to preferring “Constructive” behaviors as the predominant expectation. These are behaviors rooted in high achievement of challenging but realistic and clear goals, the pursuit and application of continuous learning and openness to change and diversity, a true value for one another as human beings that have capacity to achieve, and the leverage of solving problems through collaboration and strong relationships.

Take our word for it; there is in fact data that shows that Constructive organizations have higher ROI, higher Revenue, and better safety than those that don't. But what we’re seeing as even more important in today’s business landscape is the value of Constructive cultures impact on innovation and agility.  So many industries are facing “disruptive” change and have to completely redefine who they are and how they’ll remain viable, even when the future state is not yet clear. 

If your organization is or was dominated by Aggressive management styles, and has become Passive in nature and paralyzed, how well will your company do in the face of exponential change, generational and global diversity, Black Swans, and Unicorn competitors?

Scary? Maybe.

Solvable? If you’re willing to work hard.

Upside? Absolutely!

When everyone is all in and engaged, bringing their best to the table, an organization can be agile in the face of change and innovate to remain competitive. Not to mention, its a whole lot more fun.

IMAGE CREDIT: https://iamthedarthvader.deviantart.com/art/Storm-Troopers-See-no-Evil-217690641