Devious Political Tactics

Here are links to the previous issues of Point Lookout that touch on devious political tactics at work. Bookmark this page. Or browse the Point Lookout archive by date. Subscribe now.

Coming October 4: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I

Conversational narcissism is a set of behaviors that participants use to focus the exchange on their own self-interest rather than the shared objective. This post emphasizes the role of these behaviors in advancing a narcissist's sense of self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 4.

And on October 11: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: II

Self-importance is one of four major themes of conversational narcissism. Knowing how to recognize the patterns of conversational narcissism is a fundamental skill needed for controlling it. Here are eight examples that emphasize self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 11.

Other topical archives:

August 2, 2023

The Six Dimensions of Online Disinhibition: II

The online disinhibition effect appears in computer-mediated communications. It is due to relaxation of inhibitions that demand civility. It's still impactful 20 years after its identification, but it might be less so in today's workplace cyberspace.

July 26, 2023

The Six Dimensions of Online Disinhibition: I

The online environment has properties that cause us to relax the inhibitions that keep us civil. And that leads to an elevated incidence of toxic conflict in public cyberspace. But workplace cyberspace is different. There is reason for optimism there.

July 5, 2023

Fractures in Virtual Teams

Virtual teams — teams not co-located — do sometimes encounter difficulties maintaining unity of direction, or even unity of purpose. When they fracture, they do so in particular ways. Bone fractures provide a metaphor useful for guiding interventions.

December 21, 2022

Attributes of Joint Leadership Teams

The leadership of most teams, business units, or enterprises consists of a single individual. Others have joint leadership teams. What kinds of joint leadership teams are there, and what factors can affect their success?

November 16, 2022

Collaborations That Need to Be Cooperations

Modern products and services are so complex that many people cooperate and collaborate to produce them. When people are collaborating but the work actually requires merely cooperating, risks arise that can threaten the success of the group's efforts.

November 9, 2022

Cooperations That Need to Be Collaborations

Modern products and services are so complex that many people cooperate and collaborate to produce them. When people are cooperating but the work actually requires collaborating, risks arise that can threaten the success of the effort.

November 2, 2022

Collaborations or Cooperations?

Modern products and services are so complex that many people cooperate and collaborate to produce them. Strangely, few of us have given much thought to the difference between cooperating and collaborating. The two do differ, and the differences matter.

February 17, 2021

Remote Hires: Inquiry

When knowledge workers join organizations as remote hires, they must learn what's expected of them and how it fits with what everyone else is doing. This can be difficult when everyone is remote. A systematic knowledge-based inquiry procedure can help.

February 10, 2021

Remote Hires: Communications

When knowledge-oriented organizations hire remote workers, success is limited by the communications facilities they provide. Remote hires need phones, computers, email, text, video, calendars, and more. Communications infrastructure drives productivity.

November 25, 2020

Newly Virtual Politics: Choices

Pandemic or not, workplace politics marches on, though politics might take slightly different forms in a pandemic. Those different forms make new choices available, and render some formerly effective choices ineffective.

November 18, 2020

Newly Virtual Politics: Meetings

Pandemic or not, workplace politics marches on. But with the pandemic and the prevalence of formerly co-located teams becoming more virtual, workplace politics takes a new form, especially clearly so in meetings.

November 11, 2020

Mastering Messaging for Pandemics: II

When pandemics rage, face-to-face meetings are largely curtailed. Clarity in text messaging and email therefore becomes more important. Some sources of confusion that might not be noticeable in speech can cause real trouble in messaging.

November 4, 2020

Mastering Messaging for Pandemics: I

When a pandemic rages, face-to-face meetings are largely curtailed. Clarity in text messaging and email communication becomes more important than usual. Citing dates and times unambiguously requires a more rigorous approach than many are accustomed to.

May 6, 2020

New Virtual Meetings for Teams

Now that so many members of so many teams are working from home, the virtual meeting has taken on a new form, and new importance. Here are suggestions for making your virtual team meetings more effective.

April 8, 2020

The New Virtual Meeting: Digressions

The bane of meetings everywhere, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, has been digressions. But there are reasons to expect the incidence of digressions in meetings to increase now. What reasons could there be, and what can we do about digressions?

April 1, 2020

Virtual Meetings: Then and Now

Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to stay-at-home orders that affect many of us, more of our meetings are virtual, and the virtual meetings we used to conduct are somewhat changed. How have they changed, and what can we do about it?

January 22, 2020

Disjoint Awareness: Bias

Some cognitive biases can cause people in collaborations to have inaccurate understandings of what each other is doing. Confirmation bias and self-serving bias are two examples of cognitive biases that can contribute to disjoint awareness in some situations.

January 15, 2020

Disjoint Awareness: Systematics

Organizations use some policies and processes that can cause people in collaborations to have inaccurate understandings of what each other is doing. Performance management, politics, and resource allocation processes can all contribute to disjoint awareness.

January 8, 2020

Disjoint Awareness: Analysis

Breaking large problems into smaller parts can sometimes create a set of risks that make solving the problem in pieces more difficult than solving it as a whole. But we can still profit from breaking the problem into parts if we manage those risks.

January 1, 2020

Disjoint Awareness: Assessment

When collaborators misunderstand each other's work and intentions, they're at risk of inadvertently interfering with each other. Three causes of misunderstandings are complexity, specialization, and rapid change.

December 25, 2019

Disjoint Awareness

In collaborations, awareness of how our own work might interfere with the work of others is essential. Unless our awareness of others' work — and their awareness of ours — matches reality, the collaboration's objective is at risk.

November 20, 2019

Paid-Time-Off Risks

Associated with the trend to a single pool of paid time off from separate categories for vacation, sick time, and personal days are what might be called paid-time-off risks. If your team must meet customer expectations or a schedule of deliverables, managing paid-time-off risks can be important.

January 3, 2018

Polychronic Meetings

In very dynamic contexts, with multiple issues to address, we probably cannot rely on the usual format of single-threaded meeting with a list of agenda items to be addressed each in their turn. A more flexible, issue-driven format might work better.

March 29, 2017

Virtual Blowhards

Controlling meeting blowhards is difficult enough in face-to-face meetings, but virtual meetings present next-level problems, because techniques that work face-to-face are unavailable. Here are eight tactics for dealing with virtual blowhards.

October 26, 2016

Toward More Engaging Virtual Meetings: II

Here's Part II of a set of simple techniques to help virtual meeting facilitators enhance attendee engagement.

October 19, 2016

Toward More Engaging Virtual Meetings: I

Keeping attendees engaged in virtual meetings is a widely sought but rarely achieved objective. Here is Part I of a set of simple techniques to help facilitators enhance attendee engagement.

September 28, 2016

Favor Symmetric Virtual Meetings

Virtual meetings are notorious for generating more frustration than useful output. One cause of the difficulties is asymmetry in the way we connect to virtual meetings.

August 24, 2016

Virtual Teams Need Generous Travel Budgets

Although virtual team members who happen to be co-located do meet from time to time, meetings of people who reside at different sites are often severely restricted by tight or nonexistent travel budgets. Such restrictions, intended to save money, can contribute to expensive delays and errors.

August 17, 2016

Costs of the Catch-Me-Up Anti-Pattern: II

When we interrupt a meeting to recap the action so far for a late-arriving attendee, the cost of the recap itself is just the beginning. There are some less-obvious costs that can be even greater.

August 10, 2016

Costs of the Catch-Me-Up Anti-Pattern: I

Your meetings start on time, but some people are habitually late. When they arrive, they ask, "What did I miss? Catch me up." This is an expensive way to do business. How expensive is it?

April 20, 2016

Virtual Brainstorming: II

When virtual teams must brainstorm, they try to do so virtually. But brainstorming isn't just another meeting. There's a real risk that virtual brainstorms might produce inadequate results. Here's Part II of some suggestions for reducing the risk.

March 4, 2015

Virtual Trips to Abilene

One dysfunction of face-to-face meetings is the Trip to Abilene, which leads groups to make decisions no members actually support. It can afflict virtual meetings, too, even more easily.

September 25, 2013

Social Entry Strategies: II

When we first engage with a group at work, we employ social entry strategies to make places for ourselves to carry out our responsibilities, and to find enjoyment and fulfillment at work. Here's Part II of a little catalog of social entry strategies.

September 18, 2013

Social Entry Strategies: I

Much more than work happens in the workplace. We also engage in social behaviors, including one sometimes called social entry. We use social entry strategies to make places for ourselves in social groups at work.

April 17, 2013

Toxic Conflict in Virtual Teams: Virtuality

In virtual teams, toxic conflict sometimes seems to erupt spontaneously. People who function effectively in co-located teams can find themselves repeatedly embroiled in conflicts that seem to lack specific causes. What triggers toxic conflict in virtual teams?

April 10, 2013

Toxic Conflict in Virtual Teams: Minimizing Authority

Toxic conflict in virtual teams is especially difficult to address, because we bring to it assumptions about causes and remedies that we've acquired in our experience in co-located teams. In this Part II of our exploration we examine how minimizing authority tends to convert ordinary creative conflict into a toxic form.

April 3, 2013

Toxic Conflict in Virtual Teams: Dissociative Anonymity

Toxic conflict in teams disrupts relationships and interferes with (or prevents) accomplishment of the team's goals. It's difficult enough to manage toxic conflict in co-located teams, but in virtual teams, dissociative anonymity causes toxic conflict to be both more easily triggered and more difficult to resolve.

June 2, 2010

Communication Traps for Virtual Teams: II

Communication can be problematic for any team, especially under pressure. But virtual teams face challenges that are less common in face-to-face teams. Here's Part II of a little catalog with some recommendations.

May 26, 2010

Communication Traps for Virtual Teams: I

Virtual teams encounter difficulties that rarely confront face-to-face teams. What special challenges do they face, and what can we do about them?

August 12, 2009

Long-Loop Conversations: Anticipation

In virtual or global teams, conversations are sources of risk to the collaboration. Because the closed-loop response time for exchanges can be a day or more, long-loop conversations generate misunderstanding, toxic conflict, errors, delays, and rework. One strategy for controlling these phenomena is anticipation.

June 24, 2009

Long-Loop Conversations: Clearing the Fog

In virtual or global teams, conversations can be long, painful affairs. Settling issues and clearing misunderstandings can take weeks instead of days, or days instead of hours. Here are some techniques that ease the way to mutual agreement and understanding.

June 10, 2009

Long-Loop Conversations: Asking Questions

In virtual or global teams, where remote collaboration is the rule, waiting for the answer to a simple question can take a day or more. And when the response finally arrives, it's often just another question. Here are some suggestions for framing questions that are clear enough to get answers quickly.

November 5, 2008

On Virtual Relationships

Whether or not you work as part of a virtual team, you probably work with some people you rarely meet face-to-face. And there are some people you've never met, and probably never will. What does it take to maintain good working relationships with people you rarely meet?

June 11, 2008

Inbox Bloat Recovery

If you have more than ten days of messages in your inbox, you probably consider it to be bloated. If it's been bloated for a while, you probably want to clear it, but you've tried many times, and you can't. Here are some effective suggestions.

June 4, 2008

Virtual Presentations

Modern team efforts almost certainly involve teleconferences, and many teleconferences include presentations, often augmented with video or graphics. Delivering these virtual presentations effectively requires an approach tailored to the medium.

April 9, 2008

Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: III

Facilitators of synchronous distributed meetings (meetings that occur in real time, via telephone or video) can make life much easier for everyone by taking steps before the meeting starts. Here's Part III of a little catalog of suggestions for remote facilitators.

April 2, 2008

Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: II

Facilitators of synchronous distributed meetings — meetings that occur in real time, via telephone or video — encounter problems that facilitators of face-to-face meetings do not. Here's Part II of a little catalog of those problems, and some suggestions for addressing them.

March 26, 2008

Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: I

Whoever facilitates your distributed meetings — whether a dedicated facilitator or the meeting chair — will discover quickly that remote facilitation presents special problems. Here's a little catalog of those problems, and some suggestions for addressing them.

March 19, 2008

TINOs: Teams in Name Only

Perhaps the most significant difference between face-to-face teams and virtual or distributed teams is their potential to develop from workgroups into true teams — an area in which virtual or distributed teams are at a decided disadvantage. Often, virtual and distributed teams are teams in name only.

October 17, 2007

Virtual Conflict

Conflict, both constructive and destructive, is part of teamwork. As virtual teams become more common, we're seeing more virtual conflict — conflict that crosses site boundaries. Dealing with destructive conflict is difficult enough face-to-face, but in virtual teams, it's especially tricky.

May 16, 2007

Virtual Termination with Real Respect

When we have to terminate someone who works at a remote site, sometimes there's a temptation to avoid travel — to use email, phone, fax, or something else. They're all bad ideas. Terminating people in person is not only a gesture of respect. It's good business.

May 9, 2007

Have a Program, Not Just an Agenda

In the modern organization, it's common to have meetings in which some people have never met — and some never will. For these meetings, which are often telemeetings, an agenda isn't enough. You need a program.

March 15, 2006

Problem-Solving Ambassadors

In dispersed teams, we often hold meetings to which we send delegations to work out issues of mutual interest. These working sessions are a mix of problem solving and negotiation. People who are masters of both are problem-solving ambassadors, and they're especially valuable to dispersed or global teams.

April 6, 2005

Email Ethics

Ethics is the system of right and wrong that forms the foundation of civil society. Yet, when a new technology arrives, explicitly extending the ethical code seems necessary — no matter how civil the society. And so it is with email.

February 9, 2005

Virtual Communications: III

Participating in or managing a virtual team presents special communications challenges. Here's Part III of some guidelines for communicating with members of virtual teams.

February 2, 2005

Virtual Communications: II

Participating in or managing a virtual team presents special communications challenges. Here's Part II of some guidelines for communicating with members of virtual teams.

January 26, 2005

Virtual Communications: I

Participating in or managing a virtual team presents special communications challenges. Here are some guidelines for communicating with members of virtual teams.

March 10, 2004

Outsourcing Each Other's Kids

Outsourcing is now so widespread that it has achieved status as a full-fledged management fad. But many outsourcing decisions lack the justification that a full financial model provides. Here are some of the factors that such a model should include.

January 14, 2004

Email Antics: III

Nearly everyone complains that email is a time waster. Yet much of the problem results from our own actions. Here's Part III of a little catalog of things we do that help waste our time.

September 3, 2003

Dispersed Teams and Latent Communications

When geography divides a team, conflicts can erupt along the borders. "Us" and "them" becomes a way of seeing the world, and feelings about people at other sites can become hostile. Why does this happen and what can we do about it?

June 11, 2003

Conventional Foolishness

Every specialization has a set of beliefs, often called "conventional wisdom." When these beliefs are so obvious that they're unquestioned and even unnoticed, there's an opportunity to leap ahead of the pack — by questioning the conventional wisdom.

November 6, 2002

Dispersity Adversity

Geographically and culturally dispersed project teams are increasingly common, as we become more travel-averse and more bedazzled by communication technology. But people really do work better together face-to-face. Here are some tips for managing dispersed teams.

May 2, 2001

Make a Project Family Album

Like a traditional family album, a project family album has pictures of people, places, and events. It builds connections, helps tie the team together, and it can be as much fun to look through as it is to create.