I started my business career with the naïve assumption that if I worked hard, kept my head down and contributed well as a team player, I would get noticed and promoted by upper management. You can imagine my shock when I realized that some of my peers chose means other than hard work and valid contribution to pursue recognition and promotion. These folks, ( let’s call them rat bastards), sought advancement via self-promotion, empire building, bandwagon jumping and good old fashioned back-stabbing. What I didn’t originally anticipate was how many rat bastards ( which is ultimately a term of affection) I would encounter along the way. I also underestimated their effectiveness. Nor did I have any tactics to handle them.
By the time I became a CEO, I was able to identify and remove rat bastards or at least shut down their activities. If you’re lucky enough to work in a company where political behavior is frowned upon, the culture will probably declaw these folks. If you’re not, you need to learn to cope with these folks and their maneuvers.
Now, a little self promotion or well-timed politicking may sometimes be a powerful additive to your work efforts. But if self promotion doesn’t come naturally to you, you need to counterbalance the rat bastards without sacrificing your integrity or becoming one of them.
So here is a quick view of some of the rat bastards (“R.B.’s”) and how to handle them. These are some practical yet relatively innocent counter-measures for some typical rat bastard behavior.
The Self Promoting R.B.
Who they are:
Barnum the Rat Bastard is adept at using all media and messaging available to amplify his or her successes, contributions and achievements. The level of achievement or degree of difficulty associated with any success isn’t a primary concern. The primary objective is the communication to a targeted audience for the purpose of inflating perceived value of the self promoting R.B. While you may be toiling away and hoping for mere recognition of meeting significant milestones, this isn’t part of the paradigm of the self promoter. The self promoting R.B. promotes often, loudly and without discernment.
How to deal with them:
As a practical matter, you can’t say or do anything contrary to R.B.’s self promoting messaging regardless of how overblown it is. Instead, you need to re-amplify the message as much as possible. If the self promoter sends out an email trumpeting a personal/organizational achievement, embellish the claims and expand the distribution by forwarding the email to a broader list. Don’t re-amplify every message mind you, but only those messages that are the most transparently self promotional. Yes, there is some downside risk in re-amplification but the upside is that the self promoting R.B.’s credibility typically suffers because anyone broadly understood to be a self promoter ends up with a credibility issue.
The Empire Building R.B.
Who they are:
Julius Rat Bastard, the grabber of headcount, budget and all manner of territory for means and to ends unclear even to himself. For this R.B., the only point that matters is building the kingdom. This R.B. operates with the presumption that more resources equates with more value and importance. There isn’t an evaluation on Julius’ part about making the sum greater than the total of the parts; Julius is just focused on making the sum as big as possible by acquiring more parts.
How to deal with them:
To slow Julius R.B. down in the long term, you need to be “helpful” in the short term. First, take all your marginal performers, known troublemakers and general pains-in-the-neck and get them into a single functional group. Then, task that group with something that either appears to or does overlap responsibilities with a group working within Julius’ organizational functions. This will prompt an irresistible temptation for Julius to petition upper management for the transfer of your troublemaker group into his domain. When the discussion inevitably arises, you agree to the transfer of this function and it’s associated group to Julius R.B. In one move you have reduced your management headaches while transferring them to a place where they can do you some good; and you appear to be a great team player. That can be the end of it. (On the other hand, you may choose to comment on how poorly the group is faring after the move and state that you never had any issues with the team. But that would be perilously close to rat bastard behavior.)
The Bandwagon Jumping R.B.
Who they are:
Like a newly converted 2010 Miami Heat fan, this R.B. will align himself with any obvious winner. Using revisionist history and creative story line gerrymandering, this R.B. can trace his role and contribution into every organization success. In order for him to do this, the Bandwagon jumping R.B. has to constantly monitor people’s perspectives on the status of many initiatives. In order to jump on the right bandwagon at the right time, he must always seek association with potential successful bandwagons.
Image via Wikipedia
How to deal with them:
Your mission is to simply tout the likelihood of successful outcomes for every initiative you’re aware of. Occupy the bandwagon jumping R.B.’s time by recommending initiatives and projects. Help this R.B. claim involvement or create tenuous relationships with many looming victories. The farther afield geographically, organizationally, or functionally the better, as the gravitational pull of any bandwagon is powerful to this rat bastard. And since there won’t be much intellectual honesty about the association or involvement, you can leverage the pull of many bandwagons across a broad array of activities.
The Back Stabbing R.B.
Who they are:
Richard Hatch of the original “Survivor” TV show comes to mind. Sure, you may not know who they are as you won’t hear their musings, statements and mistruths until after they’ve back-stabbed. In my experience most back stabbers are the toughest R.B.s to spot. Some will be your “friend”, most won’t bother with the charade. These are R.B.s who operate in the shadows, making private derogatory comments and accusations that can torpedo your credibility and success.
How to deal with them:
The only proactive method for dealing with these R.B.s is to spot them before they have the (next) chance to backstab. Spotting them is critical to diffusing their effect. Unfortunately, you will probably identify one only when a manager or someone trusted approaches you to validate one of the R.B.’s statements. However, if the R.B. has simply declared that you are an idiot, you won’t likely be provided with the opportunity to address the statement – and spot the back stabber R.B. As a manager, if someone (the prospective back stabber R.B.) tells you a colleague is an idiot, you can respond in one of two ways IF the accused “idiot” is on your team or under your management level First, ask “Does he know he is an idiot?”, and second, declare “If not, let’s get him in here and let him know – or at least let him know you think that. Let’s get this on the table.” Sure, there are real idiots out there. But it is better to deal with these things head on as a manager. This technique keeps you in the management role and “outs” the back stabbing R.B.
If the accused “idiot” is a superior. DO NOT ENGAGE. The Back stabber R.B. will take any conversation (even one-sided) about a superior and put your name on the statements that occur in the conversation.
Once the back stabber R.B. is identified you can call him out in a number of ways. If you hear anything suspect, you can make statements like “I can’t believe anyone would say that….” or “WHO did you hear that from?” or “Gosh, it sounds like you’ve been listening to “Back stabber R.B.” Make sure you circle back to Back stabber R.B. to make him aware of your comment. Back stabbers are a form of bully, just much less direct. And bullies and back stabbers don’t like folks who strike back or have their number.
Roundup
The presence of political behavior demonstrates the absence of management. If you are now or ever will be in a position to extinquish it within a group, there are few things as beneficial that you can do for your team’s well being. Until the day when you are in a position to vanquish this behavior, there’s no rationale, valor or redemption in accepting these behaviors or failing to handle these rat bastards.
Originally published on Business Insider's Strategy Section on 10/14/10.
LMAO - nice.
Posted by: Sean Bordner | October 25, 2010 at 10:17 PM