George sat very still, withholding comment on what Trish had just said. She sipped her coffee and waited patiently for the idea to sink in. Trish knew that he would have difficulty accepting that the people in his organization didn't trust each other, and that they didn't trust him. And she knew that he wouldn't run away from the truth. So she waited.
George now sipped his coffee. He set the cup down, laced his fingers together, looked at his hands for a while, and sighed. Then he turned to Trish.
"I think I understand," he began. "People CC me on so many emails because they're trying to write a 'transcript' of their activities, so nobody can attack them later for not doing the job. Right?"
"Almost," said Trish. "Some expect you to defend them later, on the basis of the 'transcript.'"
"Right," said George, wincing because he'd forgotten that part.
Trish continued, "And some believe that since you saw the messages, you're now responsible, too, if they've made some bad calls."
"Right." George winced again. "And it doesn't matter that I get so many messages that I can't read them?"
"Right," said Trish. "It's a cultural problem. It's about Trust. But it's the same in International. It's no different in my patch."
Low-trust cultures have
lower productivity,
more defective products,
more rework and
more toxic politicsTrish and George are dealing with a common problem — a low-trust organizational culture. On the surface, things look OK, but the consequences of low trust include toxic politics, low productivity, lost sales, defective products, and still lower levels of trust.
Addressing the problem begins with understanding how people cope.
- Preemptive defense
- The preemptive defense, or "CYA," entails creating explanations or excuses intended to defuse any possible later attack from a colleague. Usually it takes a verbal form — a statement, a memo, or an email message — and serves no productive purpose.
- The costs of preemptive defenses include not only the effort required to create them, but also the time and effort required to read or hear them. In meetings, the preemptive defense can be very expensive, wasting time for all who attend.
- Preemptive attack
- The preemptive attack is intended to head off perceived threats from those we distrust. By limiting their ability to harm, we hope to defend against whatever we fear.
- This tactic leads to lower productivity for both the attacked and the attacker, and sometimes for bystanders, in two ways. Through the distraction and harm it causes, it interferes with getting work done. And attacks can actually disable those attacked, limiting their ability to exercise influence, even for legitimate purposes.
These are just two coping strategies for low-trust environments. We'll look at some more coping strategies next time. Next in this series Top Next Issue
Is every other day a tense, anxious, angry misery as you watch people around you, who couldn't even think their way through a game of Jacks, win at workplace politics and steal the credit and glory for just about everyone's best work including yours? Read 303 Secrets of Workplace Politics, filled with tips and techniques for succeeding in workplace politics. More info
For more about Trust, see "Creating Trust," Point Lookout for January 21, 2009, "TINOs: Teams in Name Only," Point Lookout for March 19, 2008, and "Express Your Appreciation and Trust," Point Lookout for January 16, 2002.
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- When You're the Least of the Best: I
- The path to the pinnacle of many professions leads through an initiate or intern stage in which the
new professional plays a role designed to facilitate learning, especially from those more experienced.
For some, this role is frustrating and difficult. Comfort in the role makes learning its lessons easier.
- Management Debt: I
- Management debt, like technical debt, arises when we choose paths — usually the lowest-cost paths
— that lead to recurring costs that are typically higher than alternatives. Why do we take on
management debt? How can we pay it down?
- Yet More Obstacles to Finding the Reasons Why
- Part III of our catalog of obstacles encountered in retrospectives, when we try to uncover why we succeeded
— or failed.
- Virtual Interviews: II
- The pandemic has made face-to-face job interviews less important. And so we must now also master virtual
interviews, and that requires understanding the effects of the attendance list, video presence, and
the technologies of staging, lighting, and makeup.
- Surviving Incompetence: II
- When your organization undertakes a misguided effort that will certainly fail, you have options. One
is to head for the exit. To search for a new position in such circumstances requires some care. Example:
an internal transfer might not really be an exit.
See also Workplace Politics and Conflict Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming March 20: Top Ten Ways to Make Meetings More Effective
- Meetings are just about everybody's least favorite part of working in organizations. We can do much better if only we take a few simple steps to improve them. The big one: publish the agenda in advance. Here are nine other steps to improve meetings. Available here and by RSS on March 20.
- And on March 27: Allocating Action Items
- From time to time in meetings we discover tasks that need doing. We call them "action items." And we use our list of open action items as a guide for tracking the work of the group. How we decide who gets what action item can sometimes affect our success. Available here and by RSS on March 27.
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Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group