Purge The Victims and Villains Syndrome

You've seen it, I've seen it, and maybe we've all participated in it.

For me, it happens during a consulting engagement. Others may experience it as water cooler conversation, a team meeting, or as part of survey feedback.

Here it is:

People talk, authoritatively, about what a villain a certain manager is. 

"Our Director never listens to anyone." "Ashley makes micromanagers look like big picture thinkers." "You can't trust our Controller."

The fascinating thing I've noticed is that this "feedback" isn't usually about a direct boss, but often about someone a few levels up in the hierarchy. Hmm. How do folks know these things to be true if they don't have much direct contact with the accused?

Because their manager is telling them. There are a lot of ways
to say, "I don't trust our Controller" without using the words. Employees listen closely to subtle cues and innuendo. After a while it all adds up.

Managers get paid to buffer a lot of the "jerk" stuff from above and can erode confidence by criticizing company leadership.   Even if we think our observations are true, it's not really helpful to share it.

What Managers Can Do

1. Deal directly.  If your boss really is a poor listener, tell her. Telling your team does nothing to fix the problem and, quite frankly, makes you look a bit less trustworthy yourself ("What is he saying about me that he won't say to me?). 

2. If you've had the conversation from #1 and there's really no change, figure out how you will manage that reality.

3. In order to be a victim there has to be a villain. Think about your task: to manage a high performing group of people. The more villains you create, the more victims you develop in your team. Do you want to build up your people or ultimately be a counselor to an "ain't it awful" pity party that you created?

In fact, your bosses may be jerks in many ways. Heck, we all are.

What a great opportunity to differentiate your personal brand.
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( "All Things Workplace" has been selected as one of the 10 finalists for the 2009 Best of Leadership Blogs competition hosted by the Kevin Eikenberry Group. It's an honor to be selected. If you are interested in voting for your favorite, please vote at Best Leadership Blog 2009 by July 31st.)

You've seen it, I've seen it, and maybe we've all participated in it.

For me, it happens during a consulting engagement. Others may experience it as water cooler conversation, a team meeting, or as part of survey feedback.

Here it is:

People talk, authoritatively, about what a villain a certain manager is. 

"Our Director never listens to anyone." "Ashley makes micromanagers look like big picture thinkers." "You can't trust our Controller."

The fascinating thing I've noticed is that this "feedback" isn't usually about a direct boss, but often about someone a few levels up in the hierarchy. Hmm. How do folks know these things to be true if they don't have much direct contact with the accused?

Because their manager is telling them. There are a lot of ways
to say, "I don't trust our Controller" without using the words. Employees listen closely to subtle cues and innuendo. After a while it all adds up.

Managers get paid to buffer a lot of the "jerk" stuff from above and can erode confidence by criticizing company leadership.   Even if we think our observations are true, it's not really helpful to share it.

What Managers Can Do

1. Deal directly.  If your boss really is a poor listener, tell her. Telling your team does nothing to fix the problem and, quite frankly, makes you look a bit less trustworthy yourself ("What is he saying about me that he won't say to me?). 

2. If you've had the conversation from #1 and there's really no change, figure out how you will manage that reality.

3. In order to be a victim there has to be a villain. Think about your task: to manage a high performing group of people. The more villains you create, the more victims you develop in your team. Do you want to build up your people or ultimately be a counselor to an "ain't it awful" pity party that you created?

In fact, your bosses may be jerks in many ways. Heck, we all are.

What a great opportunity to differentiate your personal brand.
__________________________________________

( "All Things Workplace" has been selected as one of the 10 finalists for the 2009 Best of Leadership Blogs competition hosted by the Kevin Eikenberry Group. It's an honor to be selected. If you are interested in voting for your favorite, please vote at Best Leadership Blog 2009 by July 31st.)

Comments

[Mike Henry Sr.]

Steve, thanks for the insight that you need a villain in order to be a victim. So often I see people making villains of others they don't know. It's very difficult to make someone a villain if you have a good relationship with them.

I also appreciate the comment that if you make others villains, it will be no surprise that you have a team of victims.

Thanks for the great post.

Mike...

[Mary Jo Asmus]

Steve,

I really liked the honesty of #2: if you've had the conversation, and there isn't change, find a way to deal with that reality.

Unless the relationship is so fare beyond repair that hope is lost, or unless the boss is a total tyrant, there is one other strategy that might assist. Perhaps a bit Polyanna-ish but nonetheless simple and sometimes useful. How about focusing on the good stuff that the boss does? They all have something. when the mind goes to "damn, he's a lousy listener", lead it to "he's an amazing strategist" or whatever that person has in the way of strengths. Communicating those to others (most importantly your team) can also cut down on the negativity.

[John Schonegevel]

This post reminds me of the potency of the Drama Triangle from Transactional Analysis;

the manager tells employees that the 'Boss' is the 'Villain' i.e. a persecutor and the manager and his employees are the victims. This sets it up for the manager to move to the rescuer role whenever they want and thus 'rescue' the employees from the evil boss.

This is a pernicious strategy for the organization, if it continues, as it leaches out employees capability for independent thought and action. If you keep reminding people that they are victims, they will eventually only behave as victims. But it is also very common. Why? Because it offers the manager an opportunity to gain some control (albeit spurious control) of their work situation.

Actually I think that the potential for solving this lies with the boss - he or she is best positioned to identify the syndrome and then to introduce strategies to limit it.

A simple but effective strategy is for bosses to spend more time listening and talking directly to employees, encouraging them to appreciate that you are just as human as they are.

[Ami]

I couldn't agree more with "Employees listen closely to subtle cues and innuendo. After a while it all adds up." Fortunately I haven't had this problem with my current company, but it has happened in the past and it makes things very uncomfortable!

~Ami

[peter vajda]

Interesting post, Steve. Some thoughts:

In terms of the psychodynamics and pattern behavior here, which John Schonengeval also points to, I would categorize the manager here, for example, the "middle man," as the "splitter" – those who appear on the surface to be congenial and helpful, watching your back, but who are masters of the power game.

The "splitter" uses innuendo, emotional bribery, finger pointing and gossip to get you to be their puppet – insecure, powerless and unsure of their own skills, they want to control you by alluding to those others who are "out to get you" – here, the "boss". In my work and experience, he's probably doing the same type of "I'll watch your back" to the "boss" by pointing out the faults and foibles of the employees…pitting one against the other.

The important thing to note here, is that NONE of these behaviors, i.e,. the victim, the splitter, those who collude at the water cooler, etc., is a "one-off". These same individuals will behave the same way in job after job, workplace after workplace, water cooler after water cooler.

So, what's really going on here?

What's the first organization you joined? Actually, the first organization we all joined is our family. And in this organizational setting, we learned how to "be" - how to act, react and interact with authority figures, peers, and outsiders and how to create roles for ourselves - amassing knowledge and skills we would later bring to our world, and the world of work.

Psychological, neuroscience, physiological, emotional and brain research more and more conclude that the patterns of behavior and roles we learned as children stay with us throughout life. Like it or not, we bring our family - our biography and our biology - to our adult life at work, at home and at play.

Invisible roles (e.g., the victim, the splitter, the over-achiever, the martyr, the drama queen/king, the denier, the persecutor, the pleaser, the rebel, the procrastinator, the rescuer, the avoider, etc.) are unconscious and contain certain assumptions, expectations, and emotions.

So, it's no surprise that in our life at work, at home, at play and in relationship, we more often than not are acting out our childhood patterns and roles. It's not surprising that we unconsciously place overlays of our family members on to our colleagues, bosses and managers at work, on to our spouse or partner at home and on to our friends, neighbors and others at play. It's natural and normal, but often self-destructive and self-sabotaging both to us and to our relationships.

It's not uncommon, then, to witness workplace (or home or "playground") arguments that resemble family arguments, disagreement and conflict. It's not uncommon to experience dysfunctional relationships in the workplace with in-fighting and back-stabbing behavior that mimic sibling rivalries.

While families do not speak outright about these invisible roles, they have an unspoken agreement that they are what they are and affirm them by how they indirectly respond to them. Such invisible roles include: the bright one, the funny one, the pretty one, the weak one, the incorrigible one, "brainy" one, the good one, the compliant one, etc. Each of these roles comes with it's expectations and rules for how one is to play it out, e.g., be a straight-A student, be popular, make everyone laugh, be a troublemaker, follow the rules, please everyone, etc.

However, it's the unconscious, invisible roles that cause us so much upset and difficulty in our adult lives. This role and pattern dynamic is true for all families, even "healthy" families.

All of life, even life at work, is about relationships. At work, if truth be told, it's our dealing with others that causes us and others the most pain, upset and conflict. And, the interesting note is that it's not about the other person so much as it's about who in our workplace reminds us of our original family. So, at work, we play our roles as we learned how when we were children.

For the vast majority of us, these patterns - our patterns - the ones we learned as children, are unconsciously and invisibly embedded in our cells, our brains and in our emotional bodies. These patterns represent who we are. They give us comfort and a sense of peace when faced with stressful, challenging and difficult times, events and circumstances and drive how we interact with others. They are self-fulfilling prophecies, and unless we have done the work to make the invisible, visible, we'll continue to react the same way over and over again in this job or another job, in this relationship or another relationship, in this or another similar circumstance, often wondering what pushed out buttons or why we reacted the way we did.

Only by working to make the unconscious, conscious, can we begin to see our self-limiting, self-destructive and self-sabotaging patterns and work to transform them into healthier and more productive ways of being so we can be with people, events and circumstances, which heretofore caused us stress, pain and suffering, and experience a firm sense of OK-ness and well-be-ing.

While today's events, characters and players are different from our childhood, our inner emotional, psychological, physiological and neurological wiring and reactions are not. Only when we consciously choose to explore and inquire into our past for the events, traumas, hurts, betrayals, emotions, and values that have determined who we are, and confront them head-on, with honesty and courage, can we become aware of the recurring themes and patterns which cause us and others with whom we relate, so much upset and unhappiness.

One reason much of the work on conflict resolution hardly ever resolves conflict in the long term it that it doesn’t go deep enough, to the root cause of conflict.

When we choose to undertake personal growth and self-awareness work, we then discover how we have come to behave in the ways we do, how we chose to play the roles and wear the masks to cover up our feelings of inadequacy, or guilt or shame. In essence we discover the "shadow side" of our personalities. As Jungian analyst Robert Johnson says, "There's gold in the shadow" and that the discovery and mining of this gold is "related to our higher calling" – our True, Real and Authentic Self - where we can shed the defensive roles and patterns of, for example, the "victim, "clown," "over-achiever, "persecutor," and "pleaser" to be replaced by the "True and Real" me.

When we discover who we truly are, we open to the possibility of emotional, psychological and spiritual maturity - the doorway to the place where the "truth sets one free." We can open to the possibility of being real, a state where we experience lightness of being and we have no need for defensiveness, grandiosity, avoidance, denial or fake and phony self-destructive and self-sabotaging role behavior.

[Steve Roesler]

Mike,

Glad it struck a chord with you.

Isn't it somewhat amazing that, after thousands of years of history and decades of research pointing to the importance of self-responsibility, "they" are still out there trying to get us?!

[Steve Roesler]

Mary Jo,

What you describe as possibly Pollyana-ish I would support as a step in the reality process.

There's some reason why that boss is still in place. Like so many things in life when we can see the valuable contributions made while ceasing to expect people to walk on water in all areas of their work, reality can bring us back to earth. As long as the issues don't breech moral and ethical standards, there is often a way to make peace with the fact that managers are simply human.

When you discover the shining talent vs. the glaring weakness--and make that a part of your characterization to others--it can move everyone out of the "aint' it awful" zone.

[Steve Roesler]

John,

I hadn't thought of it in TA terms. That's a useful model in which to sort this out. Thanks.

Sitting down and having a straight conversation is what is most lacking in relationships of all kinds; it's probably even rarer in business. As you note, this lays the foundation for mutual understanding and expectations that are in sync with reality.

Now I've got to go find that yellowed TA paperback. . .

[Steve Roesler]

Peter,

That captures the dynamic in a way that I believe can be understood by everyone interested in the topic.

Your closing remark--"the truth will set you free"--is the one-liner that underscores the solution to the behavior described in the post. The scenarios are lies, conscious or not. Either way, they lead to actions that will only continue "the dance" and avoid finding out who your dance partner really is. It doesn't work very well with dating; why would it work here?

Appreciate the context. . .

[Steve Roesler]

Ami,

It sounds as if you made a good move!

[Human Being]

Wow what a profound analysis by Ami. Many thanks for your thoughts. It is really a great eye opener to those who seek salvation. Great saints have said what you jotted down for us, but your vision compensates the facts with profound analysis and a much added pinch of modernity. I must admit i have never been a middle manager, thankfully never wanted to get stuck in the middle-'chewing the curd for someone else'. I have always been a doer or visionary implementer. So not speaking for the middle managers, but will definitely speak for character referred as "Villain". To me though such characters are not made, they are born with such a sadistic taste. I will agree though environment and childhood experiences adds on to their misery. I have met many in my 18 years of career. One thing i always found as an interesting correlation to all the 'villains' in all industries and sectors that i have experience with is that such characters cause disruption to business development. Having done corporate psychology and behavior science specialization, i will definitely vouch that if a cleaver person wants to bring business improvement, then they just should know to spot the 'villains' and analyze their game play. Success does not come with just analyzing it, but by taking strategic approach in eradicating (root-level) such behaviors for better future of the company. Although success is much sweeter and simpler to the onlookers, nothing is got without hard work, determination and self-sacrifice,this i say with my past experience.