Positioning Wars can Ruin a Business

Turf wars are a well-known fact of life in many organizations.  Lesser known, but far more destructive, are positioning wars – struggles by two or more opponents for the top spot in an organization. Turf wars aren’t any fun.  But they’re mostly defensive – people trying to protect their turf from encroachment by a real or imagined rival.  Positioning wars are far more aggressive and destructive.  They involve a fight to become No. 1 immediately or, at least, the heir-designate to whoever’s in charge now.

Turf battles often lead to bureaucratic slowdowns.  Positioning wars can ruin the very kingdom being fought over.

To read the rest of this article from the Dallas Business Journal, see: Positioning wars can ruin a business http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2007/04/30/smallb2.html

Imagine the consequences when two powerful, competent princes, who run different operational units, fight to determine who’ll inherit when the king retires:

  • Political in-fighting takes precedence over vision, mission, productivity or clients.  Good staff stops trying to make a productive difference.  Meetings degenerate into skirmishes.  Soap opera flourishes.
  • The princes circle each other like birds of prey seeking to uncover hidden agendas. Unofficial power centers are established.  The princes’ teams reflect their antagonism.    They focus on the faults of the other team and the hidden meanings behind looks, words and deeds.  They score trivia points by publicizing the other faction’s setbacks or their own minor victories.
  • Innocent bystanders aren’t safe.  Neutral parties are inevitably drawn into choosing sides. Tension and terror activate childhood coping strategies.  Everyone watches their words more carefully than their productivity.
  • Bad apples suck up to each prince looking for protection and power.  Slackers try to turn their protector against managers who pressure them to be more productive.
  • Previously productive people become double agents or assassins.  Even within teams, suspicion prevents aligned, concerted effort.
  • Clients are ignored or entangled in alliances.

Positioning wars are even more debilitating if the princes had previously been able to work together effectively.  Most people don’t adapt effectively to the dramatic change in environment.  They’re blindsided, feel victimized and waste time bemoaning their undeserved fate.

Competition stimulates creative juices and inspires outstanding achievement.  But cut-throat, internal war inevitably scorches the land.  If you’re still the king, act decisively to aminimize destruction from the princes’ fighting.

Positioning wars create the same symptoms. Performance decreases.  Behavior sinks to the lowest level tolerated.  Narcissists, incompetent, lazy, gossip, back-stabbing, manipulation, hostility, crankiness, meeting sabotage, negativity, relentless criticism, whining, complaining, cliques, turf control, toxic feuds, harassment, bullying and abuse thrive.  Power hungry bullies take power.

Don’t waste your valuable people time on slackers.  You won’t make things better being a peacemaker.

Begging, bribery, endless praise, appeasement, endless ‘second chances,’ unconditional love and the Golden Rule usually encourage more harassment, bullying and abuse.  Stop emotional bullies and stop bullying.

High standards protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  You can learn to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

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AuthorBen Leichtling
CategoriesCoaching, Consulting, Eliminate Low Attitudes CD, Hostile Workplace, Stop Bullies Book
Tagsabuse, achievement, agendas, aggressive, aligned, alliances, antagonism, appeasement, assassins, attitudes, back-stabbing, begging, Behavior, blindsided, bribery, bullies, bullying, bureaucratic, business, Bystanders, change, clients, cliques, Coaching, competent, competition, complaining, consequences, Consulting, control, crankiness, creative, criticism, Dallas, decisively, defensive, destructive, effort, environment, faction, faults, fight, Golden Rule, gossip, harassment, hidden agendas, hostility, ignored, incompetent, innocent, inspires, lazy, love, managers, manipulation, meetings, mission, narcissists, negativity, opponents, organizations, peacemaker, performance, political, positioning, power, powerful, praise, pressure, prevents, productivity, protection, retires, rival, ruin, sabotage, slackers, slowdowns, Standards, stop bullying, stop emotional bullies, strategies, struggles, suspicion, teams, tension, terror, tolerated, toxic, turf, turf wars, unprofessional, victimized, vision, wars, whining
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Top ten ways to create a hostile workplace

Bullies at work can ruin a culture, destroy productivity and make your life miserable.  Many people focus only on bullying bosses, but I’ve seen just as many coworkers and employees use these bullying methods as I have managers and supervisors.  Before you read the top ten I’ve seen, please think for a moment.  What bullying methods used by whom, have you seen most? Have you seen these techniques ruining your workplace?

  1. Yelling, physical threats (overt or subtle) and personal attacks.
  2. Verbal abuse, emotional intimidation, personal insults and attacks (in private and in public).  Put-downs and humiliating, demeaning, rude, cruel, insulting, mocking and embarrassing comments.  False accusations (especially outrageous), character assassination.
  3. Harassing based on race, religion, gender and physical attributes.  Sexual contact, lewd suggestions, name-calling, teasing and personal jokes (sometimes overtly nasty, or threatening or sometimes given with laughter as in, “I was just kidding” in order to make it hard for you to fight back.
  4. Backstabbing, spreading rumors and gossip, manipulating, lying, distorting, evading, hypocrisy and exposing your problems and mistakes.
  5. Taking the credit; spreading the blame.  Withholding information and then cutting you down for not knowing or for failing.
  6. Anonymous attacks and cyber-bullying – flaming e-mails and porn.  Invading your personal space and privacy – rummaging through your desk, listening to phone calls, asking extremely personal questions, eating your food.
  7. Hypersensitive, over-reactions, throwing tantrums (drama queens) – so you walk on egg shells, back off in order to avoid a scene, or beg forgiveness as if you really did something wrong.
  8. Dishonest evaluations – praising and promoting favorites, giving slackers good evaluations and destroying careers of people the bully doesn’t like.
  9. Demeaning at meetings – interrupting, ignoring, laughing, non-verbal comments behind your back (rude noises, body language, facial gestures, answering phone, working on computer).
  10. Forming cliques and ganging up.  Turf wars about budgets, hiring, copiers and coffee machines.

Most bullies use combinations of these methods.

We’ve all seen the effects of bullies and the hostile workplace they create.  There’s increased hostility, tension, selfishness, turf wars, sick leave, stress related disabilities, turn over and legal actions.  People become isolated, do busy work with no important results and waste huge chunks of time talking about the latest episodes.  Effort is diffused instead of aligned.  Promotions are based on sucking up to the most difficult and nasty people, not on merit.

Teamwork, productivity, responsibility, efficiency, creativity and taking reasonable risks are decreased.  The best people leave as soon as they can.

The wrong people or the wrong culture can always find ways to destroy the best operational systems. Your pipeline will leak money and your profits will plummet.

I’ll go into solutions in future posts, but I want to mention one frequently used tactic that does not work to stop dedicated bullies.  It’s based on the false assumption that if we – educate, explain, understand, reason, show the consequences, accept, forgive or make enough attempts to satisfy bullies – then they will become reasonable, civil, professional, friendly and good to work with.  That approach only stops people who are not really bullies, but have forgotten themselves one time and behaved badly.

Determined bullies don’t take your acquiescence as kindness.  They take your giving in as weakness and an invitation to grab for more.  Bullies bully repeatedly and without real remorse.  You won’t get a sincere apology from them.  A sincere apology doesn’t mean anything about how they look.  It means that they change and stop bullying.

I’d like to hear your horror or success stories.

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AuthorBen Leichtling
CategoriesCoaching, Consulting, Eliminate Low Attitudes CD, Hostile Workplace, Public Speaking, Stop Bullies Book
Tagsabuse, accept, accusations, aligned, anonymous, answering phone, apology, assumption, attacks, blame, body language, bosses, budgets, bullies, bullies at work, bully, bullying, bullying bosses, character assassination, civil, cliques, comments, comments rude, computer, consequences, contact, coworkers, creativity, credit, cruel, culture, cyber-bullying, demeaning, determined bullies, difficult, disabilities, dishonest evaluations, distorting, drama queens, e-mails, educate, efficiency, embarrassing, emotional, emotional intimidation, employees, evading, evaluations, explain, exposing, facial, facial gestures, forgive, forgiveness, friendly, ganging up, gender, gestures, gossip, harassing, hiring, hostile workplace, hostility, humiliating, hypersensitive, hypocrisy, ignoring, insulting, insults, interrupting, intimidation, isolated, jokes, laughing, legal, legal actions, lewd, lewd suggestions, lying, managers, manipulating, meetings, merit, methods, mistakes backstabbing, mocking, name-calling, nasty, non-verbal, non-verbal comments, operational systems, over-reactions, personal, personal attacks, personal insults, personal space, phone, physical, physical threats, privacy, private, problems, productivity, professional, profits, promotions, public, put-downs, race, reason, reasonable, reasonable risks, religion, remorse, responsibility, risks, rude, rude noises, rumors, satisfy bullies, selfishness, sexual, sexual contact, sick leave, slackers, solutions, stress, stress related disabilities, success, success stories, supervisors, systems, tantrums, teamwork, teasing, techniques, tension, threatening, threats, throwing tantrums, turf wars, turn over, understand, verbal, verbal abuse, weakness, work, working on computer, yelling
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