Have you ever felt as if you were being framed? Have you been accused falsely of organizational negligence or evil-doing by someone who knows well that the accusation is false? last time we explored how framers use communications to construct frames. Here are some other strategies framers use.
- Spin
- Using communication through multiple channels, framers ask about and report various incidents, slanting their reports to serve their aims. They might use face-to-face communication, telephone, and the entire array of electronic formats, but they prefer private and unrecorded channels, because of the risk of having their misrepresentations revealed. They portray their targets as intentional, hypocritical, or malicious; their allies as enthusiastic, honest, and public; and themselves as innocent, pure, and sympathetic.
- As the target, you can't control how the framer uses spin, but you can control what you say and do. When you have to speak about topics that are already in play, speak before multiple witnesses, on the record. Anticipate what might be spun, and explicitly close those opportunities. For instance, if you're accused of assassinating President Lincoln, you can say, "Yes, in the third grade, I did learn that Lincoln was assassinated 120 years before I was born. A sad day."
- Misled proxies
- Sometimes framers enlist proxies to construct frames. Some proxies have the same goals as the framer, but often they're simply misled by the framers' fabrications.
- Targets understandably tend to feel attacked and hurt when people repeat false accusations. Because some attackers are misled, targets fare better when they distinguish between the misled and the malevolent. Asking clarifying questions is one approach. For instance, in private: "Are you aware that I wasn't even born when Lincoln was assassinated?" When you can expose misleading statements of the framer, you disable the proxies, and perhaps rescue your relationships. Proxies who exhibit little interest in facts are probably internally motivated, rather than misled.
- Multiple-front assaults
- Sophisticated framers To targets, countering a frame
can feel like blowing out a
cakeful of trick birthday candlesknow that spin and fabrication are not durable. To maintain the frame, they work several fronts simultaneously, possibly with different parts of the audience. If audience segments interact weakly, as one might find in a dispersed or global organization, the framer can deploy the same fabrication at different times in different audience segments. To targets, this can feel like a game of whac-a-mole, or like blowing out a cakeful of trick birthday candles. - Counter the multiple-front assault with communication. Do what you can to open communications, becoming visible to all audience segments. Form personal relationships with important members of the audience. Create a sense that "My goodness, Linda couldn't possibly have said that."
Even if you effectively counter a frame, recognize that you reside in a culture where framers do succeed. Another frame is probably just over the horizon. First 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 a discussion of the connection between false accusations and confirmation bias, see "Confirmation Bias: Workplace Consequences Part I," Point Lookout for November 23, 2011.
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- The Advantages of Political Attack: II
- In workplace politics, attackers are often surprisingly successful with even the flimsiest assertions.
Often, they prevail, in part, because they can choose the time and venue for their attacks. They also
have the advantage of preparation. How can targets respond effectively?
- On Being the Canary
- Nobody else seems to be concerned about what's going on. You are. Should you raise the issue? What are
the risks? What are the risks of not raising the issue?
- Kinds of Organizational Authority: the Formal
- A clear understanding of Power, Authority, and Influence depends on familiarity with the kinds of authority
found in organizations. Here's Part I of a little catalog of authority classes.
- Pariah Professions: I
- In some organizations entire professions are held in low regard. Their members become pariahs to some
people in the rest of the organization. When these conditions prevail, organizational performance suffers.
- Facts, Opinions, Estimates, and Desires
- One reason why resource allocation debates can become so difficult is confusion about the differences
among facts, opinions, estimates, and desires. Clarifying their differences can reduce the length and
intensity of resource allocation debates.
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