Career Opportunity or Career Trap: II

Some once-in-a-career opportunities aren't opportunities at all — they're traps. For these opportunities, accepting what has been offered can be a career-ending move. We began last time with a vignette and a challenge. The vignette described how Terry, a project manager, received an offer from Paul, a program sponsor, to accept a position leading Marigold, a large but troubled project. Terry would become the fourth person to try to "bring Marigold home," as Paul put it.

The challenge last time was to identify as many indicators of trouble as possible — indicators that would lead Terry to decline Paul's offer. Before reading further, you might want to review the vignette.

I'll continue now with six more indicators of trouble.

The "pitch" is accompanied by anomalous deference or charm

When the offer is expressed unusually deferentially, or when the person making the offer is behaving in an uncharacteristically charming manner, most of us might be taken aback, at least a bit. When the deference or charm goes beyond ordinary politeness and respect, and when it is counter to the relative organizational ranks of the deliverer and the recipient, the probability of entrapment is elevated.

Entrapment is even more strongly indicated when the person delivering the pitch is not known as charming, or worse, is known as abusive, disrespectful, gruff, or ruthless.

The person making the offer has "researched" you

In the vignette presented last time, Paul mentions more than once that he's familiar with Terry's talents and achievements. That might be flattering to hear, but coming from a potential organizational psychopath, it can be a strong indicator of risk.

The danger lies not in the good things Paul knows about Terry, but in what else he might have learned about Terry in the course of Paul's "research."

There is turnover in other closely related positions

Apparently, Paul has a new assistant. Because the story doesn't explain why he has a new assistant, we don't know if turnover in the assistant position is significant. But we do know that Paul is trying to recruit Project Manager #4, and it's possible that the problem is Paul, rather than the previous project managers or the previous assistant.

Turnover in positions that work closely with the position being offered, or in positions that work closely with the supervisor of the position being offered, could indicate that the trouble isn't — or isn't only — in the content of the work. Such turnover could indicate that part of the problem lies in the difficulty of forming the stable professional relationships that are needed if the group is to attain its objectives.

The offer has unusual financial and status attractants

The immediate skip-level promotion is highly unusual in most companies. Promotions are usually incremental (step-by-step), and typically occur at only one time of the year. Most of us want to be regarded as exceptional, but a very few need to be so regarded. Immediacy and skipping levels appeal to people who have that need.

Organizational psychopaths are among that very few who intensely need to be regarded as exceptional. They are more likely than nonpsychopaths to expect that granting exceptions to the rules would be a convincing element of any offer.

Upon investigation the opportunity looks even better, if a little different

If Terry notices some of the elements of the entrapment pattern, he might become skeptical enough to investigate the situation in more detail, looking for confirming or disconfirming evidence of entrapment. Some of what he finds might indicate that the situation is different from what Paul described to him. For example, three people might tell him that the terminated project manager had misrepresented the state of the effort in status reports to the Executive Committee, making it seem less troubled than it actually was — an item that Paul omitted (see "The project is in big trouble" in Part I). And Eunice (the tech lead in the vignette) might tell Terry that she's been with the project only four months, and she can't answer most of his questions.

Paradoxically, one sign of entrapment is the absence of disconfirming evidence. Truth is complex — no situation is completely homogeneous. Looking closely, we would expect to find factors (the positives) that make the situation seem more promising than we were told; we would also expect to find some factors (the negatives) that make the situation seem less promising than we were told. The absence of negatives is consistent with someone having "scrubbed clean" the situation by hiding negative data, or terminating or transferring people who might be too willing to reveal inconvenient truths. As a result, based on the evidence available, the situation looks more promising than we expected. And as a result of hiding disconfirming evidence or transferring people, the situation is a little different from what we were led to expect.

If the person who The absence of evidence
that the opportunity is a trap
might be evidence that it isset the trap (Paul in the vignette) is an organizational psychopath, one strategy might be to encourage the target (Terry in the vignette) to do some investigating. Paul expects that Terry won't find any disconfirming evidence, because the situation is scrubbed clean. Consequently, Terry will emerge from the investigation phase confident that the trap is not a trap.

So remember: the absence of evidence that the opportunity is a trap might be evidence that it is.

The offer is unexpected — even sudden

The more anticipated is the offer, the more likely is the target to be prepared to receive it. A prepared target is likely to know more about the opportunity than the probable psychopath would like the target to know. For example, if the situation has been scrubbed clean, the target might be able to determine the timing of any transfers or terminations, and might find ways to contact these people, even before the offer is made.

Targets who don't anticipate the offer, and who receive the offer suddenly and with a short timeline for acceptance, are less able to conduct investigations that might reveal the opportunity to be a trap. Organizational psychopaths know this, and some might exploit it.

Probably the most significant indicator of a trap is difficulty in obtaining objective advice about the accepting the opportunity. If the time-scale for a response to a request for advice is too short, or if potential advisers are wary of providing wisdom about the opportunity, then question the opportunity closely.   First issue 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

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Workplace Politics:

When You Think Your Boss Is Incompetent

After the boss commits even a few enormous blunders, some of us conclude that he or she is just incompetent. We begin to worry whether our careers are safe, whether the company is safe, or whether to start looking for another job. Beyond worrying, what else can we do?

Political Framing: Communications

In organizational politics, one class of toxic tactics is framing — accusing a group or individual by offering interpretations of their actions to knowingly and falsely make them seem responsible for reprehensible or negligent acts. Here are some communications tactics framers use.

Active Deceptions at Work

Among the vast family of workplace deceptions, those that involve presenting fiction as reality are among the most exasperating, because we sometimes feel fooled or gullible. Lies are the simplest example of this type, but there are others, and some are fiendishly clever.

Unanswerable Questions

Some questions are beyond our power to answer, but many of us try anyway. What are some of these unanswerable questions and how can we respond?

Exploitation and Conversational Narcissism at Work: II

Exploitation of others is one of four themes of conversational narcissism. Knowing how to recognize the patterns of conversational narcissism is a fundamental skill needed for controlling it. Here are six examples that emphasize exploitation of others.

See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming May 14: Working with the Overconfident

A cognitive bias known as the Overconfidence Effect causes us to overestimate the reliability of our judgments. Decisions we make based on those judgments are therefore suspect. But there are steps we can take to make our confidence levels more realistic, and thus make our decisions more reliable. Available here and by RSS on May 14.

And on May 21: Mismanaging Project Managers

Most organizations hold project managers accountable for project performance. But they don't grant those project managers control of needed resources. Nor do they hold project sponsors or other senior managers accountable for the consequences of their actions when they interfere with project work. Here's a catalog of behaviors worth looking at. Available here and by RSS on May 21.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenDJpmhgyaDTwBQXkhner@ChacmGoYuzfZpOvDQdRkoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info