Here’s something essential all top-level managers resort to but are reluctant to publically admit. It’s a topic I seldom see discussed in management textbooks or brought up in the MBA classroom.1 A manager’s daily viability requires considerable pretense, duplicity, and stealth. That’s right: everyday credibility and survival, not to mention performing one’s job competently, entails more under-the-radar activity than most managers would like to think. I’m not talking underhandedness, backstabbing, or some deliberate mischief-causing action. I’m talking about the covert actions required for circumventing resistance and getting just about anything important accomplished.
While pretense, duplicity, and stealth are a natural, seamless part of every top-level manager’s daily routine, few realize how much of their time, energy, and focus goes into keeping others in the dark. For starters, think about how much time managers spend constructing half-truths and giving off the impression they’re divulging everything relevant they know, when they’re not; convincing a person they don’t like that they are their friend; attending waste-of-time meetings; nodding their head to fake agreement; obfuscating to avoid giving an opinion; preparing just-in-case excuses; apologizing for not responding to an email they unintentionally deleted; enlisting someone to tell a third party something they didn’t want to say themselves; covering up for a ducked phone call; pretending to be impressed by a picture of an ugly dog on someone’s desk; persuading a person who, first chance they get, they’ll throw under the bus, that they’re loyal; telling a story that exaggerates their contribution to a positive outcome; asking “innocent” questions to uncover a motive; intentionally leaking a confidential communication; pretending to know what was in a report they didn’t read; giving someone a heads up about something that hasn’t been announced; sidestepping an argument on an issue they don’t think can be reconciled; conducting a conversation in a manner that allows them to deny it ever took place; and generally saying and doing whatever seems necessary to get someone’s support for an agenda laced with self-interests that they don’t want revealed.
During the Cold War 1950s and ’60s, people made jokes about all the plotting, conniving, and conspiring taking place behind closed doors at the Kremlin. I find similar dynamics in executive suites today. However, the only person I hear joking about the deceptive ways managers are forced to operate, and the conspiratorial alliances they’ve formed, is a fictional guy named Dilbert—whose creator, Scott Adams, makes a good living by his doing so.
Considering the amount of pretense required for credibility in the mainstream work culture, stealth and deception is the only practical course. With self-interests intertwined in every action taken, and company-first-and-only dedication required, how, without subterfuge, can a manager make everything they do appear objective and “good management behavior” correct? Forced to keep their real motives hidden, managers realize they set themselves up for big problems by divulging anything self-beneficial in their actions.
Wait, there’s more. The work culture requires managers to cooperate and appear self-sacrificing while working with cohorts pursuing agendas that compete with their own. Possessing self-limitations and faults of which they are aware, and recognizing that they probably have some they’ve yet to recognize, managers fear the consequences of cohorts catching a glimpse of even a single deficiency.
Okay, time for a spot quiz. What do you call a manager who believes that cohorts discussing their accomplishments, and their value to the company, will be even-handed, fair-minded, and generous in accepting their imperfections and limitations? I’ll tell you what I call a manager naïve enough to think this: “headed for unemployment.”
If you don’t yet see the need for all the deception, add in a manager’s need to conceal personality quirks, troublesome home situations, lifestyle eccentricities, and any problem they believe cohorts could use in faulting them. That’s right: in addition to condemning self-interested pursuits, ever-present subjectivity, and skill limitations, the mainstream culture cuts little slack for any deviation from cultural expectations and standards.
I could say more but I’ve made my point. Managers find themselves made vulnerable by work-culture expectations that don’t reconcile with their human essence. They feel too insecure to be open and aboveboard being who they are or stating what they actually see, think, and believe. They’re unable to speak candidly about their personal limitations, what they seek for themselves, what they’re unwilling to do for others, and what they don’t know how to accomplish. They think revealing their motives, and the limits of their commitments to their jobs, would be a death wish fulfilled. In the 1970s and ’80s, few professionals at IBM thought they could keep their jobs, let alone get promoted, without taking an empty briefcase home at night, pretending they were going to kiss the kids and go right back to work. Today, there’s a term for people who don’t take work calls at home or answer emails on weekends. It’s slow-trackers.
Feeling vulnerable for not being as the culture falsely expects them to be, wanting to deter cohorts motivated to call them out for a deficiency, managers search out behavioral routines that safeguard their vulnerability.
Years of observing managers self-protect has led to my accumulating a list of routines that managers use to safeguard themselves from cohorts. Of course, each routine is as unique as the individual implementing it, and nuanced for the distinctive situation and circumstance faced. Nevertheless, I find some routines used so frequently that I suspect almost every manager’s repertoire includes a variation of each. Consider the following six and ask yourself if you’ve seen them used and whether, in some of those instances, the person using them was you.
Among the routines vulnerable-feeling managers use to protect themselves, I find speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil, report-no-evil groupthink2 the most egregious. I think most managers feel similarly, since it’s rare to find a manager willing to own up to using it. While most admit to observing local culture (read: company) norms and mores—benignly characterizing their actions as “one of the things we do here that we don’t speak openly about,” or “how our group deals with difficult subjects,” or “the elephant that’s always in the room when we meet”—managers don’t admit to the denial, false posturing, deception, and collusion entailed in this routine.
The groupthink I see taking place is much more than a conflict-smoothing-over affectation. It’s wide-ranging deception, and basically dishonest, which makes it anything but benign. Using graphic terms, I see it as managers entering into a collusive mutual-protection pact.
Speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil, report-no-evil groupthink involves a group of cohort managers, usually at the same level, tacitly agreeing not to criticize one another or expose any member’s work-culture-stipulated misbehavior. In exchange for a manager overlooking what they see as self-serving in a cohort’s portrayal of a situation, or flawed in their thinking; not commenting on visible self-pursuits, skill limitations, and faulty executions; and refraining from pointed criticism when giving feedback, cohorts agree to do the same for that manager.
In other words, a group of cohort managers enter into an unspoken compact to surface-level, blanket-accept what one another says and does, and the justifications given. And this acceptance goes “double” when what’s alleged concerns an activity within the domain of a manager’s jurisdiction and expertise. A manager hearing a cohort mistake a swan for a duck becomes a mandate for that manager to quack.
The speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil, report-no-evil pact requires go-along-to-get-along relationships. One takes cohorts at their word, refrains from pressing them to discuss topics that cause them discomfort, and avoids calling attention to disparities between what cohorts say about themselves, and the work units reporting to them, and how the discerning manager sees it. Managers may offer “friendly advice,” but only if they think it can given without the recipient taking it as a criticism.
Remarkable to me is how this type of collusion gets played out straight-faced, without group members exchanging so much as a wink. The pressure to go along can be so strong that slow-to-catch-on managers find their breaking-ranks comments ignored. Not only are cohorts unresponsive to what they allege, they become cool to anything else they speak. And this deaf-ear sanctioning doesn’t cease until the ranks-breaker gives a clear indication of joining the compact.
The most damaging part of this routine is when group members avoid discussing actions and activities they see as detrimental to company results. How do I know that one or another member actually sees what they’re not commenting on? Because invoking consultant confidentiality I privately point-blank ask people what they actually see and think is going on. Admitting the importance of speaking up, a manager often tells me they fully intend to do so just as soon as circumstances permit. I also hear from CEOs what mangers tell them when they believe a cohort’s errant actions contribute to the ineffectiveness of a work unit for which that manager is accountable. Feeling backed up against a wall, managers act to self-protect their record. They see no option other than to tell their “truths”—truths spun for optimal self-serving effect.
I can think of no better example of the damage this type of groupthink perpetrates than the way General Motors executives behaved when considering whether certain models had recall-requiring defects. To avoid being held accountable, executives engaged in what insiders called the “GM Salute.” They would cross their arms and point outward to others, which was the coded way of saying, “It’s definitely not me; someone else I can’t name is responsible.” Also used was the “GM Nod,” to signal others that verbally agreeing to a plan for taking corrective action also implied that no one would carry it out.3
Situations change, and people have limitations in how long they can keep a lid on themselves, which makes it inevitable that collusive agreements eventually come apart. Additional safeguards are needed, and managers, especially top-level ones, are always looking for additional ways to avoid offending cohorts, and warding off those motivated to assail them.
Many call this self-protective routine image management—a terminology I find imprecise and overreaching. The self-portrayals I’m about to describe are specifically aimed at managers showboating their hard work and diligence in an effort to deter cohorts who might be inclined to criticize. Seeking to convince cohorts that they’d have a difficult time making a devaluing allegation stick, and that any attempt to do so could prove credibility-eroding to the accuser, managers amass a record of accomplishments and documented diligence. Using this routine, managers portray themselves as ever-attentive, responsive teammates out to get cohorts just what they need and, get this nuance, much too overloaded to take on anything more.
Especially useful in securing the hardworking and overloaded image are activities and outputs to which numbers and percentages can be attached. Why? Because in a work world characterized by false objectivity, numbers and percentages provide tangible evidence that a manager has delivered all that was promised, and oftentimes even more. Get the number of contact hours high enough, cross charges for services down enough, and provide reports chronicling what’s been accomplished thick enough, and a manager has unassailable documentation of efforts expended, progress made, and results delivered. Whether a manager could have worked smarter, managed resources more effectively, or produced results of greater value remain open questions. But the hard numbers verify that what was contracted for was delivered, whether or not it was what any individual, or jurisdiction, needed most.
Using this “hardworking and overloaded” routine provides managers an ever-ready excuse for not engaging in unfamiliar activities that might expose a limitation. Self-protectively, a manager reasons, “Why risk credibility on an assignment I have no experience performing?” When asked for such involvement, it’s safer to merely say something like, “You’re right, it’s definitely something the company would benefit from our doing. I wish we had the time to give it a try. Unfortunately, my unit is overloaded. I’d be letting all of us down if I assigned my people more work.”
Of course, the responsive way for a manager to engage a cohort with needs, and establish goodwill in the process, would be to assume an other-directed focus, asking questions to learn the cohort’s reality and the basis of their needs. Begin by inquiring how that person views their work unit’s function and the role that person sees your jurisdiction performing companywide. Find out what they believe they’ve been receiving and how people in their unit value it. Ask where they see their unit’s function headed, and what technological and marketplace changes would cause their operations to change. Find out what else they need to be effective. Get a feel for the distinctive way they reason. Experience their unique style and pay attention to how they react to your attempts to influence them. Why is all this important? Because managers alleging they know what’s best for a cohort, prior to that individual relating their views, could give the impression of being out to dominate. It’s bad politics to leave someone thinking that your idea of teaming up entails your views dominating theirs.
Unfortunately, taking an other-directed, inquiring, power-sharing approach seems too risky for most managers. Hearing what someone wants, but is not receiving, registers as criticism in many people’s minds. What if someone requests what a manager lacks the capability to provide? Fearing the possibility that cohorts might later complain about being turned down for something essential, few risk surrendering control.
Instead of inquiring, managers seize the initiative. Asserting jurisdictional authority, they inform cohorts “here’s what your unit needs, and this is what my organization will be doing to accomplish it.” Each manager draws on their own inimitable form of “I’m the expert, trust me,” or “This is how it’s always been done, can’t you see we’re now doing it better than ever.” They essentially tell the cohort, “Cool it, I’m in control.”
Most managers like to portray themselves as having a self-sacrificing, team-oriented mentality. They look for opportunities to make clichéd statements like, “It’s never an inconvenience, I’m always glad to help out,” “Don’t worry about asking, we all work for the same company,” and “I’m just one of the many who did my part.” They seek to affect this image in face-to-face discussions, group meetings, and, on occasion, even sell it to themselves. However, if you listen closely to their words, most of the time you’ll find the rhetoric used in alleging themselves team players impersonal and imprecise. You’ll hear managers mouthing the same gratuitous compliments regardless of what the “team” they’re speaking about accomplished, even when that team includes people whose efforts they found insufficient.4
Convincing cohorts that one is a team player often entails substantial doublethink. For managers to be convincing, it’s best they believe it themselves. Despite competing, they posture as the teammate any cohort should find ideal. Attempting to walk the talk, their gait is as pretentious as their rhetoric.
Thinking about the pretense of team play, I’m reminded of an apocryphal story that has Abe Lincoln questioning a carping constituent. Lincoln asks, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” The constituent answers, “Five.” Making his point, Lincoln responds, “No, four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” Likewise, labeling a group of vying, pretentious-speaking cohorts the “senior leadership team” doesn’t cause members to think and act collaboratively. They just become slicker at hiding their competition. In a self-interested work world where concealed self-agendas inevitably clash, expressions of team play are often politically correct, hollow statements.
Managers can talk team play as much as they like, but in the end, outside of a few exceptional relationships, it’s self-protective participation with pretentious words to indicate they’re for one another all the way. This is not to say that managers lack a bonding gene or an intrinsic desire for collegial affiliation, or aren’t loyal, won’t compromise, or don’t find gratification expressing themselves authentically. Most people have these inclinations and sincerely want to help others. But such inclinations are only enacted when relating to people they trust, not cohorts whose hidden self-pursuits and sensitivities have them on edge.
Real team play entails owning up to self-interested pursuits, learning the basis of other people’s viewpoints, negotiating with all cards on the table, and feeling appreciated for sacrifices made. It requires managers to trust one another sufficiently to say what they truly believe. Work-culture-required pretense stifles activities like these.
When it comes to open-mindedness, there’s a fine line managers walk. They know that getting others to value them requires being seen as strong-willed, self-directed, in possession of real expertise, and uncompromising in keeping work units heading in the right direction. They also know that cohorts with different viewpoints and agendas are looking to influence them and want them open to changing their minds. Too much of the former and a manager will be seen as uncaring, only out for themself, and in need of reining in. Too much of the latter and you’ve got a weak-appearing individual who, in the extreme, espouses the viewpoint of the last person to whom they spoke. What’s the right balance to appear worthy of other people’s trust and respect?
Unable to anticipate every stakeholder’s concealed agendas, managers make a big show of portraying themselves as ever interested in others’ opinions and perspectives, and, get this one, empathetic to their needs and concerns. Profess open-mindedness, look pleasant, nod your head to acknowledge you understand, and generally lead others to think you agree. The solution seems quite simple: maintain your course but don’t let anyone see you uninterested in their concerns.
Planning to initiate any action that could perturb one or more cohorts, managers go to lengths seeking guidance and buy-in from everyone affected. When only a few individuals and jurisdictions are involved, a manager holds one-on-ones with each. If it’s many, it’s more efficient to call a meeting. Trying to keep things low-key, a manager pretends they’re merely data-gathering for purposes of scoping alternatives prior to deciding the proper course to take. They go to great lengths to feign open-mindedness even when, as is often the case, the manager’s mind is made up, commitments are made, and, practically speaking, there’s no going back. While the techniques used for convincing people their views and needs are essential considerations vary, the goal is usually the same. Managers seek to avoid any hard feelings that might accompany people’s reactions to what they’re being forced to accept.
For the “marks”5 in this flimflam, the schmooze can be enticing. The manager paraphrases their comments to promote the impression that their viewpoint has been understood and valued. They make a show of taking notes to display the seriousness of the consideration given. They may send out surveys, take straw votes, and solicit comments via email. Whatever they do, in the majority of instances, you’ll find managers going out of their way to appear far more open to being influenced than they actually are.
By and large, people are reasonable, and no one expects their opinion to have total sway over what a knowledgeable manager decides within the purview of their authority. It’s enough for stakeholders to think that their views were seriously considered. To some extent they’re correct—objections raised by one petitioner will be cited as a reason for dismissing the viewpoint of another.
Here’s a highly manipulative, self-protective routine that’s relatively new on the work scene, although I’m sure its basic approach has been around from the beginning of time. Since initially spotting it, I see it used with increasing frequency. Lacking a common-usage term, I refer to it as borrowed-authority power-taking.6 It entails managers expropriating the voice of a powerful person to advocate an action that’s good for them.
In its simplest form, the routine plays out something like this: “I spoke with Bill, probed his beliefs, and this is how he wants it done.” Bill could be the CEO with the power to mandate, the tech expert who people think is the final word, or a witch doctor with powers to hex. Whoever Bill is, if the cohort thinks Bill has the authority and is a person one doesn’t want to oppose, there’s nothing for the cohort to argue. Never said, but clearly implied in the manager’s statement, is this: “If you don’t like what I concluded from what Bill said, go argue with him.” It’s all but been federally mandated.
In contrast to the other routines I’ve described, this one entails a self-interested manager going on the offensive, intimidating cohorts and staring down their resistance. It gets a manager what they desire without having to stand visibly accountable. Instead of arguing the merits of a self-advantageous action, the manager gets to keep their views and motives hidden, challenging the other person to disobey an anointed authority. Through the use an assumed voice, what’s alleged doesn’t have to be literal, accurate, or appear aligned with the views of the power-taking manager. The manager might even claim to believe the opposite of the viewpoint referenced, saying something to this effect: “Golfing Saturday with Bill, I did my very best to argue . . . ,” concluding with, “I see no other alternative but to go along with what he wants.” What’s more, there’s very little vulnerability—at least the first time a cohort uncovers a misappropriation of Bill’s viewpoint. The culprit has a very plausible simple excuse: “I’m glad you caught that; obviously I got it wrong.”
Calling out this routine can sound so irreverent that I feel the need to defend myself prior to describing it. I believe the vast majority of managers are, in their minds, committed to playing by the rules, believe in just treatment for others, and egalitarian in their thinking. I believe it’s only the outliers who seek to always have their way and dominate, and think themselves an elitist class.
But in practice, egalitarian does not describe how companies and most organizations are run—nor should it. Hierarchical organizations are meant to operate as autocracies. Each person’s authority rightly cascades down from the level above. When someone does it wrong, the person above them, who authorizes their activity and delegates their authority, should also take the heat. That’s why CEOs often use the Harry Truman–cited adage, “The buck stops here.”
No one serious about the profitability and effectiveness of an enterprise should think what transpires at work is the result of fair-play processes. But top-level managers like to play it both ways. When mandating an action they think controversial, they often hide behind fair-play processes, pretending the action they support was made “objectively” by a committee, or in consultation with others appropriate to the decision made, or dictated by precedent, but certainly not by their acting alone using self-indulgent discretionary power. “Why don’t you make the decision? Why use so much process?” you might ask them. Their answer is, “Fair play and my need to stay objective require a process.”
You don’t think your CEO deserves such a high salary. Guess what she says? “I agree with you. I don’t think I deserve that much money either. The board’s compensation committee, concerned about my retention, forced it on me.” Fair-play process used; conversation over.
But who created the list of potential board members, and lobbied behind the scenes for “the right ones’ ” to be elected? And who kept some suggested candidates off the list? You guessed it: the same CEO who’s not responsible for her outrageous compensation package, not to mention the generous golden handshake she’ll receive in the event of a forced departure. How does the committee structure appear in the annual report? Independent separation of powers.
It’s the same throughout the company. I believe most controversial and emotionally charged issues are decided by the manager directing the jurisdiction authorized to make the decision. In one way or another, that manager gets to make every decision that matters to him or her, starting with whether to make the decision themself or to invoke a tactically chosen, desired-end-result process. The manager might appoint a committee to study the issue and make a recommendation. Then, stacking the deck to favor the decision he or she wants, the manager decides who serves on the committee and who does not. Alternatively, the manager may decide that the outcome they want is easily justified following precedent, or by invoking a new and different decision-making criterion. Is this issue best reconciled by “bending” a rule, and cutting someone a quid pro quo favor? The idea is always to utilize the means that lead to a conclusion the person on top finds desirable.
By means of an example, consider how President Barack Obama dealt with the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when, in the fall of 2014, he lost confidence in the director’s handling of Ebola cases. Not wanting to take congressional heat for having an appointee screw up, the president invented an “Ebola czar,” a person with no authority and no staff who reported directly to him. Invoking process, the president took personal control of all decisions made about how and where people exposed to Ebola would be quarantined and treated. Contending that the matter warranted the dedicated focus of an expert, he had a plausible excuse for denying the heavy-handedness of his actions.
It’s not possible to stipulate all the so-called feigned fair-play methods managers use. In the world of large organizations, people with authority can always find a way to gerrymander process to ensure someone lower down doesn’t make a decision that runs counter to their interests.
My purpose in describing self-protective routines extends beyond demystifying subterfuge to make what’s going on more visible. I wanted to reify prominent distractions to managers giving reports the good focus they deserve and need. No wonder so many managers arrive home from work asking themselves, “Why am I feeling so beat up and exhausted when all I did today was go from meeting to meeting?” Consciously, few realize the pressures endured, what it took to remain alert, and how much discipline and nuance was required to go another day unscathed.
We’ve got one more chapter to go in my awareness-raising portrayal of the force field in which managers operate and the self-focused mentality acquired out of necessity. You can call what managers do many things—surviving, coping, remaining viable, and accomplishing—but please don’t use the term “good manager behavior” to describe it. Real good management behavior requires an other-directed focus. How do we get that with so many culture forces blocking the way? That’s what I take up next.
1. I did in S.A. Culbert, Beyond Bullsh*t: Straight-Talk at Work (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2008). So did Jeffrey Pfeffer in Leadership BS (New York: Harper, 2015).
2. Groupthink is a means of harmonizing through conformity in which group members forgo the expression of ideas and views they believe put them out of step with what’s mainstream or majority.
3. As described in “Anton Valukas’s GM Internal Investigation Report,” New York Times, June 5, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/05/business/06gm-report-doc.html
4. Now, there are exceptions and I’ve written about these. People get exhilarated working on time-bounded project teams with important missions where people are cut disciplinary authority and no hierarchy is observed. S.A. Culbert and J.B. Ullmen, Don’t Kill the Bosses! (San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler, 2004).
5. Term used by social scientists and “deceivers” when referring to the people cheated in confidence scams.
6. It’s reminiscent of Walter Isaacson’s description of Henry Kissinger’s negotiation style. See W. Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).