If the title of this post sounds a bit ambiguous, there's a good reason. This post is a step into one of the gray areas of workplace politics, where authority relationships are blurry, and where positive contributions are difficult to distinguish from sabotage. It's a place where the conventional rules governing workplace collaboration aren't clear. And even if the rules were clear, there are questions about whether those rules apply. Perhaps the grayest parts of these gray areas are the regions we enter when interpersonal trouble arises. And one situation that tends to lead to interpersonal trouble involves quasi-narcissistic quasi-subordinates.
Mandated collaborations
One structure that inherently produces quasi-subordinate relationships among collaborators might be termed a mandated collaboration. A mandated collaboration is formed when a piece of work requires the experience, knowledge, and effort of a combination of people who don't customarily collaborate; who have different organizational rank; who have varied and non-overlapping areas of experience and expertise; who have different levels of understanding of the goal of the collaboration; and at least some of whom believe that the object of the collaboration is unworthy of their effort.
Typically, mandated collaborations don't form spontaneously. Management appoints group members, though in some cases the appointing authority does seek volunteers. Lines of organizational authority rarely connect group members, because they're drawn from diverse units of the organization. And in some cases, the "Lead" — the person most responsible for the work — is of organizational rank less than or equal to some of the team members. The term quasi-subordinate describes the organizational relationship between the Lead and the other group members. The Lead has no formal organizational authority over the group members beyond the work of the collaboration.
Problematic group members
The second Mandated collaborations lie in a gray area of
workplace politics, where lines of authority
are blurry, and positive contributions are
difficult to distinguish from sabotageingredient that helps to produce interpersonal trouble is the problematic group member. These folks come in great variety, but the quasi-narcissist is of particular interest. Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is an actual medical diagnosis, but we all exhibit narcissistic traits from time to time. Narcissism is a spectrum; it's a condition that we find in degrees. I'll use the term quasi-narcissist to denote a level of the condition that's somewhat beyond what we find in most of us, but significantly milder than we find in NPD.
Consider the following example scenario illustrating problematic behavior in a mandated collaboration.
Paula has been designated Lead for a proof-of-concept study of a new product idea. David has been assigned to assist Paula with the many administrative tasks and "what-if" models that Sonya, the project sponsor, expects will be required during the six-month effort. David and Paula are of equal rank, but David is less experienced than Paula with this particular kind of work.
David enjoys the what-if parts of his assignment, because they involve guiding a small team in the use of a technology David wants to learn more about. But David doesn't enjoy the more administrative parts of his assignment. So he has adopted a pattern of foot-dragging with respect to the administrative work, while suggesting to Sonya many new ideas and experiments to perform.
David's conversations with Sonya are clearly out of bounds; he should offer his ideas to Paula and let her decide whether to take them to Sonya. But David feels that his talents are "wasted" in that role and he has decided to adjust the scope of his assignment to a configuration more to his liking.
This scenario clearly involves a mandated collaboration — one in which the lines of authority between Paula and David run contrary to their past experiences. With respect to this project, David is Paula's subordinate. But in the organization formally, he is not. He intentionally departs from the conventional communications customs by directly working with Sonya. And so in multiple ways, David is acting as a quasi-subordinate, enabled by the realities of the mandated collaboration.
Moreover, David has decided to adjust his own job responsibilities. He feels strongly enough about his own talents and importance that he can take action on his own to make adjustments, rather than expressing his desires to Paula to seek an accommodation that might work for them both. He has a personal goal regarding a new technology, and finds a way to motivate Sonya to help him achieve that goal, even though he knows that Sonya would be violating organizational norms in doing so. All of these actions are consistent with the definitions of narcissistic behavior, though the behaviors in question are far from adequate to make a diagnosis of NPD. Arrogant, yes. Self-serving, yes. But not NPD. I call them quasi-narcissistic.
A brief review of NPD in the workplace is available in a series of posts from 2018. Below is a list of the nine indicators of NPD-related behavior. They can serve as indicators of quasi-narcissistic behavior.
- Expresses exaggerated self-importance
- Preoccupied with superiority fantasies
- Believes that he or she is special
- Constantly demands attention and admiration from others
- Expects and demands favorable treatment
- Exploits others for personal ends
- Displays ruthless disregard for the feelings of others
- Envies others or believes that others envy him or her
- Is Off-the-charts arrogant
Last words
Mandated collaborations, with their poorly defined lines of authority, can be fertile ground for quasi-narcissistic behavior. To limit the risk of interpersonal trouble, limit the participation in mandated collaborations of those people most inclined to exhibit quasi-narcissistic behavior.
That seems obvious. Why, then, do we find so many mandated collaborations with quasi-narcissistic members among their people? One possibility is that the managers who create these collaborations are unaware of the risks. Another is that they don't know what else to do with the troublesome quasi-narcissists. Or perhaps they object to the mission of the collaboration, but can't find any other way to stop it. Possible explanations abound. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Conflict Management:
- Hostile Collaborations
- Sometimes collaboration with people we hold in low regard can be valuable. If we enter a hostile collaboration
without first accepting both the hostility and the value, we might sabotage it outside our awareness,
and that can render the effort worthless — or worse. What are the dynamics of hostile collaborations,
and how can we do them well?
- Ending Conversations
- At times, we need to end the current conversation. It's going nowhere, or we have something important
to do, or we just don't want to deal with the other person. Here are some suggestions for ending conversations.
- What Do You Need?
- When working issues jointly with others, especially with one other, we sometimes hear, "What do
you need to make this work?" Your answers can doom your effort — or make it a smashing success.
- How Workplace Bullies Use OODA: I
- Workplace bullies who succeed in carrying on their activities over a long period of time rely on more
than mere intimidation to escape prosecution. They proactively shape their environments to make them
safe for bullying. The OODA model gives us insights into how they accomplish this.
- How Targets of Bullies Can Use OODA: I
- Most targets of bullies just want the bullying to stop, but most bullies don't stop unless they fear
for their own welfare if they continue the bullying. To end the bullying, targets must turn the tables.
See also Conflict Management and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
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