Passive-Aggressive Behavior: Does it Deliver at Work?

Recently, I was coaching someone and suggested that she come up with a list of subtle things she could try to shift the environment in a frustrating situation. Although the things she came up with at first seemed subtle, they were also passive-aggressive, so probably not a good idea. This made me think a bit more about clarifying the difference between being passive-aggressive and being a positive agent of change.

To me, being passive-aggressive means you want something, but you aren’t saying so; it’s dishonest. It’s also about causing harm rather than making improvements. Passive-aggressive behaviors usually deliver subtle forms of punishment or extinction. For example:

• Purposely delaying in a decision
• Not providing all of the necessary information
• Making excuses for not doing things that would be helpful
• Being chronically late in order to cause harm
• Being chronically forgetful in order to cause harm
• Loud sighs during meetings
• Saying, “do whatever you want” when you actually want something specific

Passive-aggressiveness seems to be born out of fear and lack of skill. It’s easier and less scary to be passive-aggressive and makes us feel a tiny bit better in the moment. It’s not the behavior of a real leader, though. Doing the right thing takes courage.

The result of passive-aggressive behavior is that it creates negative feelings and resentment and the underlying issue doesn’t get addressed. It won’t move the relationship or the situation along in a positive direction; it often does the opposite.

The Alternative
When we find ourselves in a scary and frustrating situation, there are other options to move it in a positive direction, including subtle changes to improve the environment. These kinds of techniques should be based on positive reinforcement and feedback strategies. Some examples of more positive change strategies include:

• Asking a question
• Stating the time at the end of a meeting about to run over
• Providing an example of someone doing something really well
• Sitting in a different chair
• Offering a gentle suggestion
• Role-modeling the desired behavior

More subtle forms of feedback call attention to the current environment without having to make direct, scary statements about it. Even something small like sitting in a different seat than you normally would in a meeting can make people notice the current environment more, because something in it changed.

Sometimes more subtle approaches to shifting the environment are not enough, but it’s best to start off with something small and easy that may impact behavior in a gentle way and then slowly move up the continuum of potential responses if the previous ones don’t work. This kind of progression gives you increased confidence to try something more direct and it also gives the other person the opportunity to make a change without feeling like you are being confrontational.

Most importantly, the end goal is to help others and to improve the current environment. The next time you respond to a frustrating situation, ask yourself: will this just make me feel better or could it improve the environment for everyone? If the answer is the former, rethink your strategy.

The Science of Perspective Taking

Perspective taking is the ability to see things from other people’s viewpoint, to put yourself in their shoes.  I believe that this skill is so fundamental that people cannot become transformational leaders without it.

Behaviorally speaking, there are three components of perspective taking.

1)   Understanding the reinforcers and punishers of others

2)   Knowing something about the learning history of others

3)   Understanding the impact of environment on behavior

Research suggests that people who rate themselves as excellent at perspective taking tend to be poor at it.  People who are good at perspective taking question whether they have truly considered all of the factors necessary to understand the situation and behavior.

Benefits of Perspective Taking

The better people get at perspective taking the harder it becomes to make decisions that negatively impact employees.  We generally try to avoid harming ourselves and so when we get good at perspective taking and can imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we will probably try to avoid harming them, too.

Research suggests that transformational leaders are better at perspective taking.  Because of this, they often manage using relationships.  They understand their people and know how to subtly shift the environment to create change.  Transactional leaders, on the other hand, rely more on tangible leadership tools like incentive and punishment systems.  Stronger consequences that are likely to shift most people’s behavior are used indiscriminately.  It’s less personalized and means that while they might overall get the kind of behavior they want, they are probably not getting the best from their people.

Perspective Taking is a Learned Skill

It turns out, we aren’t born with a natural ability to take perspective.  As children, after a certain age, we get better at it and it can be taught.  In fact, research suggests that our ability to take the perspectives of others doesn’t generalize all that well to new situations, as children or as adults.  So, it takes practice and effort.

In fact, as people move up in leadership ranks, they tend to regress in perspective taking and start to assume that people around them agree with their perspective.  This is because the environment starts to shift as power increases.  People become more timid about expressing dissenting opinions because the perceived, and maybe the real, negative consequences get larger.  As leaders move up in rank, they have to work harder to hear different viewpoints.  For many, it’s just too easy to get comfortable with people around them agreeing.  This means we should start teaching leaders this skill early on to avoid problems later.

How can we improve our perspective taking skills?

1. Learn more about behavioral principles and the impact of the environment on behavior
2. Ask good questions
3. Get good at observing behavior

I am a firm believer that as people learn and practice behavioral science they become more effective.  And more empathetic.  And more likely to act in accordance with their values.  So, in 2013, consider working on your perspective taking skills through practicing behavioral science.

Should We Use Punishment When An Injury Occurs?

I often get this question when delivering our BMT for Safety course in workplaces. I tend to tread lightly when making specific recommendations in an organization because I understand that the issue of punishment is complex. Many organizations are strongly encouraged by their HR departments to be consistent in order to avoid litigation. Unfortunately, this means it can be difficult for policies to evolve. Rather than making recommendations about a specific situation in a particular organization, I thought it might be better to write about the topic more generally.

Defining Punishment
First, let’s define punishment from a behavioral science perspective. Punishment is something that follows behavior and results in a decrease in the likelihood of that behavior in the future. So, is getting a warning in your employee file punishment? Only if it decreases behavior.

In general, questions about punishing for injuries tend to come up for employees who violated a policy or procedure, took a shortcut, or made an error. For example, if using the wrong tool for the job to keep production going resulted in an injury, some organizations would resort to punishment. I’m going to talk about these more common situations rather than malicious acts, for which I think using punishment is questioned less often. Punishment techniques range from getting a warning, fine, time off, demotion or job transfer, to getting fired.

The Injury is the Punisher
The first thing that we need to realize is that the moment an injury occurs, punishment has most likely already occurred. You’d have to be a complete psychopath to not feel embarrassed and ashamed if you did something you shouldn’t have that injured yourself or a colleague. Most of the time, when we screw up, we know it, we feel bad, and we relive the awful thing that happened in our mind. No external punishment will match that and the external stuff probably isn’t necessary to influence our behavior. Often times, a person associated with an injury becomes the safest person at the site because of their experience. The additional punishment delivered probably doesn’t compare to the punishment the person already feels about the injury. Therefore, the science would say that disciplinary action is not necessary, in many cases, to change the behavior of the injured person.

Changing Behavior
If the goal of punishment is to change behavior in the current context, then we should probably use a more temporary punisher instead of one that lasts for a career, like a job transfer or demotion. Behavioral science says that soon after we punish behavior, we need to give people the opportunity to do the right thing and then reinforce it. Without reinforcement, lasting change is unlikely. Career-changing punishers often lead to frustrated, less productive employees.

Punishing Behavior Instead of Results
Even though it may have been the first time that particular injury occurred, it probably wasn’t the first time someone engaged in the risky behavior that led to the injury. Most of the time, many people will admit that they took the same shortcut or violated the same procedure but nothing bad happened. Most workplaces aren’t set up to punish the behavior, they are set up to punish the unlucky result. If we want to use punishment, we should deliver it to everyone who violates the procedure, regardless of the result. If we can’t do that, it really isn’t fair to punish someone only when an unwanted result occurs.

Punishing Up The Consequence Chain
I once reviewed an incident investigation that said the employee, “failed to learn from previous injuries in the unit” because he had repeated a similar short cut taken by another employee that had resulted in an injury 5 years before. Was the employee the only person who failed to learn from the previous injury? If that is going to be used as a reason to punish, should that same logic not also be applied to the managers? Many other employees in the unit admitted to using the same shortcut, so clearly the causes of the previous injury had not been properly addressed.

Punishment Discourages Honesty
Behavioral science tells us that people will avoid you or alter the truth if they fear punishment. I’ve seen many workplaces where people avoid talking about unsafe conditions that encourage risky behaviors because they are afraid of punishment. In these cases, the punishment could be direct and obvious or it could be more covert, such as corrective actions that make doing a job more difficult. This is likely to makes the workplace less safe, which is counterproductive.

Are You Saying We Should Never Use Punishment?
The best leaders I know agonize over delivering punishment. It hurts them, they have to think a lot about whether it is the right thing to do, and they have an adult conversation with the person in question. They care about their people, they empathize, and they take the time to try to understand what factors in the environment influenced the person to have done what they did.

Before using one of the typical punishment techniques listed above, much consideration is necessary. We should seek to fully understand the situation – the unwanted behavior was occurring for a reason and that reason resides in the current environment.

We should also assess whether using punishment will make things better or worse in the future.