I was the King of Malicious Compliance, and I wore the crown proudly.
Not familiar with the term malicious compliance? It’s a kind of organizational sabotage where the goal is often to get the boss fired.
Thankfully, I’ve been deposed from my throne, but here are some examples:
I’ve been known to rigidly comply with an order from my boss in a way I knew would cause him embarrassment. (Ask me about my M&M watch sometime.)
Knowing I had the correct answer, I might deliberately withhold my contribution in a discussion unless asked a direct question.
I could strictly adhere to mandatory office hours – just the arrival and departure times, of course – while spending the intervening hours in decidedly unproductive ways.
I might even do something I knew was counterproductive, just so I could say, “But you told me to do it.”
And I was pretty effective, because malicious compliance is contagious.
At the time, I freely admitted I wasn’t the best follower, and I blamed it on poor leadership. After all, I deluded myself, if I had a decent leader instead of a marginal manager, I’d have been a better follower. Even so, I never understood why my bosses put up with my crap.
So, what do you do with a guy like me?
I know what you’re thinking: I’d have fired your ass in a heartbeat. And sometimes they tried.
Now, I won’t say all organizations have someone like that, but many do. We justify tolerating them for bizarre reasons like “he’s better than a vacancy,” or “she’s really good at what she does” (when she does it), or maybe “HR makes it so hard to get rid of people.” And we put up with their crap without noticing the negative effect they’re having on the organization.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Do not tolerate those kinds of behavior. Malicious compliance will spread through the organization like sick building syndrome!
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
Take it from me, there’s a much better way, and I’m grateful someone made the effort with me (thanks, Mike): be a leader.
Leaders learn what motivates people – and what demotivates them. Get to know your folks. Find out what they like and don’t like about their jobs and what their aspirations are. When I felt like I was being treated like a person instead of a part in a machine, I responded.
Leaders don’t tolerate harmful behaviors. What you tolerate, you endorse. Address the behavior every time it occurs. Force the miscreant to acknowledge the behavior and its harmful effects. It was a hard conversation, but when I had to confront my own bad behavior, I stopped it.
Leaders seek inputs. Whether implementing a change to a process or a procedure, or developing a solution to a problem, listen to the people who will be affected – especially those who push back. If possible, let the hard heads play a significant role in the implementation; you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it goes. When others saw me get behind something I was originally against, it made a huge difference.
Leaders encourage intelligent disobedience. Your employees should feel empowered to speak up when they see something wrong instead of dogmatically adhering to the exact instruction. If they’re afraid to say something (or keep quiet out of spite), that’s on you, and you’re liable to be embarrassed by the result. Empowerment takes trust. I never set up someone who trusted me.
Leaders develop leaders. It’s one of your primary roles – and possibly your most important. Work to identify referent leadership on your staff, and put the effort into helping that person grow and improve, channeling their efforts to the benefit of the organization. I’m forever grateful to the mentors who saw something salvageable in me and made me a leader with a passion to pass the lessons along.
Look around for the royalty in your organization. Be intentional about your leadership, and give them a chance to respond. I never knew how heavy the crown was until I laid it down.
Is there a difference between giving feedback or giving criticism as a leader? What are the main differences?
Huge differences. Most have to do with intent and desired outcome.
Criticism, in its simplest form, is for the giver, not the recipient. To criticize is one of the easiest forms of ego defense, and is generally a display of defensiveness and lack of personal confidence. We criticize most when someone aspires to accomplish what we cannot (or will not), or when their accomplishment could somehow threaten ours.
It’s acting out hurtfully with negative thinking.
Feedback, on the other hand, is principally to help someone grow and improve. To positively change a behavior for the better. In other words, it’s more of what we recommend they do, and less of what they did wrong.
Further, if we include some self-reflection in our feedback — opening ourselves to others — we both grow. Our blind spots will be forever blind without effective feedback from others, and people are more inclined to be open with those who have been similarly open with them.
The Johari Window is a great tool for determining how public or “open” you are to receiving feedback, which is crucial for your feedback to be well received.
The more I increase my “public” or “open” window:
–The less I am blind.
–The less I have to worry about keeping things hidden.
–The more I may discover parts of me that I like, which are hidden.
I can’t reduce my Blind area without help from others (feedback).
If I am to help others, I must learn to give helpful feedback.
This mutual feedback process builds trust and strengthens relations among teams, groups and even individuals.
In short, criticism is selfish, feedback is helpful.
“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Not long ago, I received a request for comment about employee engagement being at a record high. That seemed like an odd request, since almost everything I’ve read in recent memory was lamenting dismal engagement survey results.
Poking around some, I found that employee engagement soared to its highest level in five years – a whopping 37% last October – rebounding again in February 2017 to 36.7%, only to fall back to 33% at the end of August. In other words, it sucks. If there are any managers or leaders out there that think having two-thirds of your workforce disengaged, I’d love to get paid for what you’re not doing.
Thanks, Gallup, for keeping it real.
I’ve got the sitck for a minute.
I’d been the boss for about six months and decided that we needed a climate survey to get to what was below the surface. It hadn’t been too long since the folks had endured that kind of survey, but it was under the last commander who had been gone a couple of months before I arrived. I’d just spent six months balancing listening to people and trying to address their concerns with getting the mission done. The biggest issue from the new survey was – wait for it – I was the only one who could use my reserved parking space. Yep, that was it. Who knows who was used to using the space when the commander was gone, but I sure as hell wasn’t giving up the one perk a commander gets on an Air Force base.
But I was listening. It’s possible there were some additional non-base commander approved parking spaces painted around the building just for the fun of it… obviously without my approval.
Anyway, we spend way too much time and effort trying to measure engagement, not to mention the money we throw at employee engagement programs. Based on the almost flatline chart above, we’re spending a lot of money without much results. I’m convinced it’s because we’re letting the wrong people lead – and take the blame for – our unsuccessful engagement efforts.
News flash: Low employee engagement is NOT an HR problem. It’s a leadership problem.
I’m not knocking HR–far from it. But much like with leadership development efforts, HR takes its cue from senior leadership. If there’s just lip service and no involvement at the top, employee engagement efforts are doomed.
If your company is hiring consultants to find out why your employees aren’t engaged, you’re wasting your money. I’ll give it to you for free: your employees aren’t engaged because they don’t feel valued doing worthy work, and that’s a leadership issue. If your latest employee engagement program is aimed at the employees, you’re missing the whole point. Your employees aren’t engaged because their bosses aren’t engaging them. Focus your efforts on providing your managers and leaders with the skills and tools to better engage their people every day.
But, you say, what about that annual engagement survey we take and the mandatory engagement reporting we have to do? Doesn’t that count for something?
No. Most employees would love to tell you exactly how they feel about the workplace but aren’t going to if they don’t believe you a) are listening to them, and b) will do anything about it. That’s a leadership issue, too.
How do you know what makes them feel valued? Ask them. And don’t do it with surveys and suggestion boxes. Actually talk to them. Effective leaders know how to have meaningful, face-to-face conversations with their employees and are okay with getting feedback from the people who work for them. Ask them what makes them feel valued, and listen to what they say.
What about the worthy work part? How do you know what would make them feel like they’re engaged in worthy work… like their efforts are part of something bigger than their paycheck?
Right… ask them. And not just once a year at performance evaluation time. They’ll say anything they think you want to hear to get their evaluation over as quickly as possible, and chances are it won’t change what you’re doing anyway.
When we develop leaders, we help them improve communication and feedback effectiveness, empowerment and delegation, conflict management and trust building… all skills that involve engaging the people who work for and with them. In other words, if you’re employees aren’t engaged, they’re not being led.
So when it’s time for your company’s next annual employee engagement survey, how about suggesting spending less time measuring employee engagement and more time engaging employees?
An old friend sent me a picture the other day of this blue ribbon that says, “I survived another meeting that should have been an email.” He obviously remembers how I feel about meetings.
Turns out you can actually buy the ribbons here, and I know a lot of bosses who should pass them out.
You leaders have got to get a handle on the endless parade of time-wasting, morale-draining meetings you expect your people to sit through!
Routine, regularly scheduled meetings – the ones that are on your calendar until the end of time – are the worst! They typically involve endless droning around a table about activities that only one or two people in the room care about. When the boss at the head of the table tolerates such time wasting, the expectation is that everyone has to say something, and we’ve all experienced the guy who’s a little too fond of his own voice.
Several years ago, everyone in my directorate went to a weekly staff meeting like the one I described above. I used to tuck a couple of Sudokus in my notebook to make it look like I was taking notes (I know, not setting a good example). One week, I asked the director if I could skip the meeting if I was too busy. He said, “Sure.” I never went again.
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
When I was talking the other day with a senior government leader about making meetings more productive, I got some pushback on my value judgement. He said, “It’s the only time we all get together. How else will everyone find out what the others are working on?” I remember one time a Deputy Under Secretary actually saying, “The daily meeting’s not for you; it’s for me to find out what everyone’s doing.”
Trust me, there are far better ways to connect the people who need information with the people who have information. If you’re the boss and doubt what I’m saying, give this to your people and ask for their thoughts.
Productive meetings don’t happen by accident. If you want to see a dramatic improvement in Return On Time Spent In Meetings (ROTSIM – a new metric?), try these proven steps:
Put someone (preferably someone who values efficient use of time) in charge of the agenda. Meetings without agendas usually end up being free-for-alls. If you absolutely have to have a routine meeting to update the boss, make it clear in advance that no one brings more than two or three of their most critical issues that a majority of people around the table really need to know about. Any issues that only the boss and the person speaking care about should be handled one-on-one or in an email.
Get rid of as many routine meetings as you can. I was once part of an organization (for a very short period of time) who actually tracked the number of meetings attended as a performance metric. Try only having meetings when there is something to decide. Have clear objectives, not open-ended ones like “Discuss employee engagement.” Send pre-work to the attendees so they can come to the table as an informed participants, not as sponges.
No marathon meetings! People lose focus and creativity when you hold them hostage for more than an hour or two, especially after lunch. If need be, break the agenda in half and have two shorter meetings appropriately spaced.
Finally, make sure someone’s keeping track of decisions and deferred issues. Make it a written record and include who is responsible for each along with a deadline. It can be part of the pre-work if you need a subsequent session.
What about the time you spend around the conference room table? Want to reduce it and make it more productive?
Strategic Planning is dead. Long live strategic planning…
An interesting conundrum; we know that strategic planning is valuable. Intuitively. Yet, we seldom march lockstep behind that big blue binder when it’s complete.
Why is that??
I have an opinion (surprise!). During a recent strategy session, the client’s chief executive stated that he doesn’t even consider it strategic planning at all. He doesn’t even like the term.
He uses Strategic Discernment.
I hate doing this, but I visited dictionary.com for the definitive definition of discern/discernment…
1. to perceive by the sight or some other sense or by the intellect; see,
recognize, or apprehend: They discerned a sail on the horizon.
2. to distinguish mentally; recognize as distinct or different; discriminate: He is
incapable of discerning right from wrong. –verb (used without object)
3. to distinguish or discriminate.
Now this is something we can get our arms around. It’s not the strategy, stupid, it’s the planning (or in this case, the discernment). It’s the act of discriminating among choices; of choosing one path, direction, or vision over another.
It’s to recognize something distinct or different. Remember, strategy has never been simple trending of current results — that’s simply forecasting, and can be done via Excel spreadsheet.
No, real strategy is creating our future among the myriad possibilities; it’s determining in advance what we intend to be, who we intend to be, and what will matter to us. Then, making that happen.
Instead of simply watching in awe as things happen around us.
Who out there knows the old saw about what happens when you assume?
Great. You can put your hands down. Yes, we all thought that was funny the first time we heard it – like when we were 12 – but please stop asking people that.
If we know we make an ass out of ourselves when we assume we know what someone else is thinking or how they’re feeling or what they want, why do we keep doing it? I guess I should have put assuming on last month’s list of prohibitions for this Roarin’ Twenties.
Here’s a recent example: I was asked by our volunteer coordinator, “Kevin, we want to show our volunteers how much they mean to us. What do you think about having a big breakfast for everyone?”
I replied, “They don’t want breakfast; they want a shirt so they feel like part of the team.” Undeterred, she matter-of-factly said, “We don’t have money for shirts, but we can buy everyone breakfast.”
The coordinator incorrectly assumed (as almost always happens) that everyone would feel rewarded and appreciated by eating a free breakfast. Even after being corrected, she still assumed she was correct.
News Flash: not everyone feels rewarded by the same token of appreciation.
A month later, the executive director asked me when I thought a good time to get the volunteers together for breakfast would be.
“Ummm… on the 12th of Never?”
Okay, that’s not what I said, although I wanted to. As the self-anointed appointed spokesman for the volunteers, I explained that while breakfast was a nice gesture, what they really wanted was a shirt like everyone else so they felt like part of the team.
Not surprisingly, I heard, “Yes, but the coordinator says we don’t have the money to buy shirts, but we all think a breakfast would be nice.”
Of course a breakfast would be nice… if you served it to me in bed.
But the last thing a sane person would want to do is to drive across town in this neck of the woods with the morning rush to eat a low-quality breakfast and then drive home. Or to lunch. Or to a happy hour – okay, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, but the drive home might be ill advised. What’s wrong with a shirt? Or a nametag, or a cubical sign, or a desk plaque… I’m not picky. But make it something that requires a little thought about what the individual or group would find meaningful.
The short points to my long story are these:
If you want to express your appreciation for a job well done, genuinely express it as soon as you feel it. Not a pat on the head and a “good job” but an expression of sincere appreciation for a specific task done well or hard-won success.
If you want to reward someone for exceptional performance or accomplishment – even with a small token of appreciation – do it publicly to add more meaning to making them feel like a valued member of the team. This assumes, of course, that they don’t mind being in the limelight, which leads to…
If you want to give something meaningful to an employee you would hate to lose, ask him or her what that could be. A morning off maybe? A Friday afternoon off? Tickets to a sporting event? The movies? A play or ballet? Dinner for two at a fancy restaurant? The possibilities are almost endless! Just ask.
By the way, gift cards are nice, but if your employees are struggling for groceries or gas, that’s indicative of a different problem.
Other signs of assuming: “Would you mind…?” “Could you stay late to…?” “Can you come in this weekend to…?” “Did you remember to…?” “Did you fix the…” “Are you available to…?” “Do you have the information I need to…?” “Can you take care of this real quick?” to all of which we assume the answers will be the ones we want to hear and not the reality of what’s going on inside the person’s head.
Those questions are asked so carelessly and thoughtlessly that it’s clear to the receiver that the person asking has no real idea or concern about the impact. There I go assuming again.
If any of this rings true in your organization, please put a stop to it, and if you see someone else making these kinds of morale-killing assumptions, please stop them.
After all, it makes someone look like an ass… and it’s not me.
The more I increase my “public” or “open” window:
