Monkey or idiot? You be the judge

By Mary Helen Gillespie, 2/21/2005

Managers, even those who excel at customer service and team leadership, tend to fall down on the job when it comes to managing peer relationships. This goes beyond that casual sense of camaraderie that allows us to feel at home, so to speak, with our own community, and goes right to the heart of a management weakness that is often ignored or, in some cases, enhanced by the organizational point of view. Here is where we'll find the real idiots.

Managers tend to put on a very public face when dealing with external partners such as clients, employees, senior executives, and other stakeholders. You know the drill: the voice tends to take on a polished, cultured tone. The body language is confident, and non-threatening. We nod as we chat, with a flash of eye contact and genuine appeal. We encourage, even praise critical feedback, and if only for appearance's sake, the clear message is: I care. I care very much.

Switch to fellow managers, and the mantle crumbles. We let our hair down. Speech is more intimate, and often colorful. Arms flail and stomping begins. But it is not always just letting off steam. Sometimes there is a bit of boasting, a dash of faux confidentiality and even brutal honesty that has a cruel and dangerous edge.

Call 'em bullies or any other "b" word, it still comes down to idiocy. They consider their peer group as target practice to spew every ounce of competitiveness, slashing out with jibes, jaunts, and other jollies. Behavior that would not be tolerated or allowed in other circumstances, runs amok under the illusion that "We're all on the same team. Hence, anything goes."

Not. This isn't about playing nice. Or taking pot shots on the chin. This is about undermining colleagues and using fists and fingernails to promote one's own damaged brand.

And here's the point: it's happening more and more. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we interact more and more electronically. If you sent an e-mail - it only has to be one - to the person who sits next to you, stand up and take a bow with the rest of us trained monkeys.

If your work team consists of individuals whom you have never met and will never meet in person, please applaud as you bend over. Now, if you manage these folks, admit it: you go to extremes to compensate for the remote angle. Every typed word, every voice-mail message is scanned to be politically correct. There's convivial and occasionally forced chit-chat to ensure the working relationship is not compromised by distance. Verbal superlatives abound in the absence of old-fashioned "Thatta boy" chat behind office doors.

All true, unless you're talking with another manager. Like the humans we are, we tend to relax and open up the comfort zone when surrounded by folks who look like us and talk like us. Given limited capacity and resource issues, we also have to scrimp on time and tasks while we are sitting back basking in the Magic Mirror of Peers. So the e-mails and messages and phone calls we have with fellow managers tend to favor terse, spare communiqués, short on niceties yet loaded with attitude.

Such behavior gives license to act freely while hiding behind the wires. It is very difficult for most managers to act inappropriately when face-to-face with another person in a professional setting. The tools of the trade, whether an office, an operating room, or a building site, tend to set the tone - and the boundaries - for actions and words. But if you can't see or feel or touch that other party, well, there are no boundaries. Trouble abounds.

Quick example: The head of operations for a small nonprofit gets wind that his colleague, the head of development, had a long telephone conversation with the chairman of the board about future funding of day-to-day operations of the foundation. It's important to note that the chairman initiated the conversation, and placed the call directly to the development head and asked for top-of-mind recommendations.

Operations guy gets wind of this and goes ballistic, calling his peer via cell phone on her day off, lambasting her for having the, er, "guts" to talk about this topic without, and we quote, his "permission." He roars that in the future, he must approve all discussions with the board regarding operations. Oh, and he makes sure that his office door is open and that every other employee can hear his profanity-laced tirade at his off-site colleague, who, of course, initiated a job search the minute he hung up the phone. Meanwhile, his executive assistant, beloved by all employees as the heart and soul of the NPO, had already given her notice and was packing her desk during this display with a half-happy, half-sad look on her face.

The moral of this story is that when the monkeys start throwing things around, smart people duck and head for the Exit sign.