The privileges of power

I just had to comment on the latest development in the never-ending saga of the Oslo University hospital merger of four large city hospitals and the health enterprise Health Southeast that owns this hospital. The managing director of the latter, Bente Mikkelsen, made it into the news big-time during the weekend, when it was reported that she was planning to participate in a five-month long course on strategic leadership at the NATO Defense College in, of all places, Rome, Italy! The course was to start in February, and was to be paid for by the Defense Department (the reason for its involvement was not explained), whereas the cost of room and board would have been paid by her employer. The total cost of the course plus room and board was outrageously expensive. She was also to retain her regular salary during her leave of absence. According to one of my colleagues, she had been interviewed on TV and had said that she looked forward to sitting outside in the warm Rome sun and drinking a glass of wine (wouldn’t we all love to be doing that). Her decision to take this course and to leave her directorial duties behind her in Oslo for five months did not meet with much support among hospital personnel at any level. And I can report that she was the butt of derisive jokes the entire day. After a massive uproar on the part of the public and hospital personnel, she dropped her intention to take the course. But she offered no apology for her poor judgment and timing.

Why did this incident garner so much media attention? Because she was planning to hightail it out of Norway at exactly the time the newly-merged hospital needs her to be there to oversee the progress associated with the merger that she set in motion at the behest of the current ruling political party—a merger that has proven to be quite controversial, difficult to achieve, and one that will cost more money than it will save. As Jay Leno once said to Hugh Grant on national TV when the latter had been caught doing something naughty—what were you thinking? The same question applies here. The hospital runs with a huge budget deficit at present. While the rest of us are told to save money, while budgets are being cut and employees are being laid off, it was ok for the managing director to spend money on a NATO course (still no explanation as to why she needs this course) and to talk about how much she looked forward to enjoying the warmth of Italy. Talk about lack of emotional intelligence. I’m sure those employees who have recently lost their jobs were thrilled to read this. I’m sure they wished her well and were appropriately concerned for her career progression. By the way, the answer to the question what was she thinking is--she wasn’t.

Recognizing passive-aggressive behavior in workplace leaders

From time to time, I've decided I will present some excerpts from my book on passive-aggressive bosses in my blog posts. As I've mentioned previously, I've gotten a fair amount of feedback and comments on my book, which tells me that the problem of passive-aggressive bosses in the workplace is a fairly widespread problem. So why not share some of my views with you, and hopefully you will share yours with me and with others. The problem needs to be 'aired' in the workplace and talked about. My new question is the following: is this a managerial survival mechanism? Has the modern workplace become so complicated and confusing that these are the tactics that bosses must adopt in order to survive? If so, it speaks badly for the future of modern workplaces. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Blindsided--Recognizing and Dealing with Passive-Aggressive Leadership in the Workplace (these are just a few of the traits I have listed and discussed: http://www.amazon.com/Blindsided-Recognizing-Dealing-Passive-Aggressive-Leadership-Workplace/dp/1442159200/ref=tmm_pap_title_0). 

How do you feel at the hands of a passive-aggressive boss or co-worker? The word “blindsided” comes to mind. The definition of blindside is “to hit unexpectedly from or as if from the blind side; to surprise unpleasantly” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ blindsided). Thus blindsided describes how one might feel when dealing with a passive-aggressive boss. How many times have you come away from meetings or interactions with a boss or another co-worker, feeling as though you have been hit by a car that came out of nowhere? You just didn’t see it coming. How many times have you been the butt of a joke that isn’t funny or the recipient of undeserved comments, sarcasm and put-downs, and how many times have you wondered about the reason for this behavior? How many times have you ended up feeling used, duped, stabbed in the back, or the victim of dishonest behavior? How many times have you heard that same boss or co-worker describe himself or herself as a nice person (translated--one who tries to help others all the time, never says no to any request, tries to avoid conflict at all costs, one who wants to be liked by all, is not aggressive, never gets angry, is not tyrannical, is not verbally or physically abusive)?

A summary of some of the attitudes and behaviors that characterize passive-aggressive bosses (or co-workers) is presented in the next section. Using the traits and behaviors summarized here, I hope it will become somewhat easier to identify what some might call fairly typical behavior in the workplace as passive-aggressive behavior.

Attitudes/personality traits and corresponding behaviors/patterns of behavior in passive-aggressive leaders

1. Dishonest communicators

Communication with employees is not direct or honest but rather indirect, dishonest, and ambiguous. Employees never get a clear sense of what was discussed, what conclusion was reached, what is expected of them, or what future strategy or plan was outlined. These types of bosses can talk non-stop but little of what they communicate is useful for employees or even remembered by the leaders themselves at future meetings. These leaders are poor listeners and poor communicators. They behave in an indecisive and impulsive manner, are forgetful, lack focus, and are unable to think long-term or systematically. They lack the skills needed to create an organized and rational plan of action for their employees.

2. Flip-floppers

These types of leaders say one thing and then do the other. They change their minds frequently and cannot take a decisive stand on an issue. They forget what was decided upon, which confuses and frustrates those who prefer working with rational thinkers and leaders with the ability to strategize and make long-term plans.

3. Conflict-avoiders

Passive-aggressive leaders dislike conflicts, arguments, disagreements, overt shows of anger, or confrontations. They become uncomfortable or embarrassed by shows of emotion, especially anger. It is possible to recognize anger in them as their faces will redden when confronted and when they are told things they do not like to hear, but otherwise they rarely exhibit overt anger. They view themselves as diplomatic individuals, and many of them have an obsessive need to be well-liked or seen as nice people. They dislike being confronted or having their opinions challenged, but seldom respond with overt anger. Instead they will ‘punish’ employees who initiate discussions or debates (seen as conflicts or arguments). 

In these days before Christmas

Nothing works at work anymore. That’s just the sad truth—a fact of life. And no matter how much the administrators and leaders want to paint a smiley face on everything around us, the fact remains that no one below them much believes in anything they say anymore. I often say that the only reason some things do work at all is because employees generally are good people and want to do their very best (den gode viljen—good will) with some few exceptions here and there. In the twenty-two years I’ve worked here, my peers in the lab, the students, the technicians and the secretaries—all of them have done their best to make my workplace not only function, but be a nice place to work. Believe it or not, it has all been done without much direct involvement from any leader over the years. Why that was, I am not sure. Many of them felt ignored by the management over them and perhaps didn't care enough, but mostly I think it was the 'every man for himself' attitude, which is rampant in academic environments. You learn not to care too much about your potential competitors, and they can be your peers or your students. I think my present workplace is one of the few places that has functioned without much leadership over the years. At present, the extreme opposite is the norm. We now have five levels of administrative leadership; none of them know what the other level is doing and it makes for a very confusing workday. But each of them want power and control, and each of them want to control us. My situation is no different than many others I know; conflicting messages time and again. I am encouraged to join one group in a coordinator function to help out the department, but given no authority or no personnel to help me in that task. We are moved around from here to there and back again like pawns on a chess board. They say that our wishes are important to them, but we all know that it sounds good to say this; and more importantly, it can eventually be written in a report that the employees' wishes have been taken into consideration. But they haven’t. Because we haven’t wished for anything like this in our wildest dreams. And unless you’ve experienced what it’s like to be told more or less to drop what you’re doing now in order to do something else, and then in six months you get another message telling you to drop that and go back to doing what you were originally doing. I think this is a type of sickness; I’m just not sure what kind of sickness. Is there a diagnosis for it? Egomania perhaps? Or perhaps insanity?

I cannot remember one time in all the years I have worked here that any leader has bought a cake, or champagne, or any other such thing to celebrate the ending of a work year, or Christmas, or grant funding for the institute, or just to thank employees. We pay for our own Christmas parties; I can recall possibly two after-Christmas parties in recent years that we didn’t pay for; those are no more. But of course when there are birthdays, or births of babies, or weddings or any other such thing—it is the employees who have baked cakes, bought presents and acknowledged the event in some way. And then the leaders show up—to eat cake. They were and are always there to eat cake. But buy one themselves for their workplace? In my group, we have never gotten a Christmas gift of any kind from our group leader. I used to give him one in previous years, but no more. He did comment once when he first stopped receiving anything from me, but that didn’t change my mind. He once commented that he never received a Christmas card from anyone; I asked him if he ever sent any, and he said no. So then I said that there was a great place to start—write some. We in the group however, have always exchanged presents. What a far cry from my lab at UCSF—where my boss not only gave his employees small Christmas presents, but Valentine’s day chocolates and a single-stemmed rose as well. He was (and still is) a thoughtful man. It made me realize that it was possible to be professional and thoughtful—a nice definition of emotional intelligence. My boss at Memorial was the same.

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol comes to mind in these days before Christmas. Scrooge was transformed from a miser in all respects to an emotionally-intelligent man whose heart, like the Grinch's, grew in size in order to accommodate the immense feelings of generosity that suddenly overtook it. He understood that before he died, before his body rotted to nothing in the earth and was forgotten, that he wanted to do some kind things for others. And he did. So it is never too late. My fervent wish for my workplace is that the leaders are visited by ghosts from the past, the present and future, and that they are shaken out of their miserly prisons and personal hells, into some kind of warmth and emotional intelligence, so that they can stop being scrooges in their daily lives. It will be too late for them to undo what they have done to the current generation of employees; but perhaps future employees will benefit from their generosity. What they could do for their older employees is to at least apologize—that would be a start. My fervent wish for myself is freedom, and maybe God will bless me with that in the near future. I can hope. And that is what the Christmas season is about—hope--in the age of cynicism, egoism, me-ism, narcissism, and any other ‘ism’ that has destroyed workplaces, good will, and the happiness associated with doing a good job.