have you experienced passive aggressive behavior in the workplace and has that experience caused you to hesitate when going into New Opportunities today what I'm going to share with you are five key principles on how you can effectively manage passive aggressive behavior in the workplace without kindling the fire passive aggressive behavior is when someone is upset or angry but instead of talking to that person about it the person they were upset and angry with instead of talking through instead of vulnerably sharing what they are experiencing they do that they communicate that by other behaviors for example
it could be giving that person the silent treatment it could be saying something that appears nice but they don't really mean it it could be gossiping to other people about it it could be blatantly saying something and and telling people and blaming that person behind their back so these are examples of passive aggressive behavior and it is everything to do with avoiding that conversation with that person and avoiding having a heart heart and having a transparent conversation of what's really going on and so those are how passive aggressive behaviors exhibit themselves sometimes co-workers do make
passive aggressive remarks over sensitive issues or when they do believe that they cannot be direct now of course there's a multiple reasons why someone could feel like they cannot be direct for example they might feel like there's a fear of Retribution they might fear that they might lose out on potential opportunities in the future they might fear how that would reflect on them professionally or they might fear criticism or embarrassment there's a multitude of reasons why someone might feel like they cannot be direct in that moment and so therefore the fallback plan is to make
passive aggressive remarks now regardless of their reason behind it these five principles when you implement them in the workplace it will allow you to open up the conversation authentically and effectively without kindling the fire without making it worse or without promoting or sanctioning that type of behavior principle number one calm humility paves the path to conflict resolution so let's go deeper into that calm humility when it comes to managing passive aggressive behaviors from co-workers the key importance is to remain calm because the opposite of remaining calm is to feed fire with fire and when you
feed and respond fire with fire this is kindling the fire this is lighting a bigger fire and it could be condoning the exact behavior that you don't want to condone so this is sanctioning that type of passive aggressive behavior when you fight fire with fire so the principle here is to model the behavior that you wish to see in your co-workers model it be an example of it live it breathe it and it might be hard I'm not saying this is easy it might be difficult especially if you are observing the behaviors and you're feeling
the impact that their behaviors are having on you it's not easy but this is your opportunity to lead through example exemplary leadership so that's the calm portion of it now here's what the humility part of it because I'm talking about calm humility now the humility side is to own your part in this and again this is very difficult as well but own your part in this because when it comes to relationships at work it takes two we hear that a lot it takes two it takes two so what does that mean it takes two this
is your opportunity to really step up into self-governance and to ask yourself some very insightful questions how did I what was the part that I played in this Dynamic how did I contribute to that type of behavior was there something that I did to sanction it to condone it to encourage it to open the door for it to happen what was my part in it own that part for you and once you own that part for you nothing will be left inside of you except for a greater appreciation of that Dynamic and a learning moment
as well for both of you and on as well the humble side of it the humility side of it is to realize that there's no need to judge here because sometimes when we observe A co-worker exhibiting these passive aggressive behaviors we in the moment we judge it we judge it as negative we judge it As we judge the moral morals we judge their ethical resolve we judge the individual in certain ways but this is with your opportunity to ask yourself another key important question and that is well how have I exhibited that same behavior in
the past can I think of moments in the past maybe not with this team but a different team where I had also passive aggressive tendencies did I act on those Tendencies and this is where you realize that any human characteristics or traits that you might observe that impact you in negative ways that you realize that people humans are Dynamic including you so how can you see where you have exhibited them as well and this is where you can have some empathy in realizing why does this person do what they do because we're all here and
we desire to have meaningful relationships at work we want to have meaningful relationships throughout life and one of the key ingredients to having meaningful relationships is appreciation of where they are who they are and why they are the way they are and this is understanding behaviors why do people do what they do what is the driver behind it so when you approach these situations with calm humility it puts you in a situation where you're not judging but you're also expanding your perspectives beyond what you see as behaviors and this is where you can have greater
appreciation for who they are and their drivers behind those behaviors key principle number two situation Behavior impact provides professional communication so let's talk a little bit about that this is a framework for how to communicate with passive aggressive behavior and this framework allows you to communicate it with more clarity with more precision and professionalism as well so here's what the model says situation Behavior impact situation means what's the situation that you saw Behavior means what did the person do observably and impact is what is the impact did that behavior have so let me give you
a concrete example let's say you have a colleague that is on your team and you're leading meetings regularly with higher ups and stakeholders present in the room and you're depending on this person to be able to provide you with key updates in that meeting because that's what the stakeholders are waiting for and let's say in one of the most important meetings of your life they show up late and as a result of that you are on the cutting board and you're taking accountability for that and you're being held responsible for that and as a result
of it just threw your projects right out of whack and now the higher apps are talking about you being unable to lead your teams so let's say that's the situation now a passive aggressive response would be to cut them out of the meetings it would be to try to replace them without telling them that you're replacing them it could mean that you tell them a different time for that meeting that's half an hour earlier right so that they can show up on time another example of passive aggressive behavior is behind their backs starting to perpetuate
the reputation of them being right or not respectable not respecting the time so those are examples of passive aggressive behavior now I'm going to give you a concrete example on how do you implement the framework of situation behavior and impact in this example okay so this is what it sounds like it's a communication framework so it sounds like this you have to sit State the situation the observation of the behavior and the impact so here's what it sounds like I've been waiting for 10 minutes for you to start the meeting the stakeholders were there the
higher-ups were there as well and we had an important situation where we were going to make a decision at the end and when you showed up five minutes later we didn't know I didn't know whether or not you were going to come and we had scheduled this meeting at least two weeks in advance so then we had ended the meeting the way it was and now as a result of that we're going to have to scramble to get these busy people back into the room and I'm going to be needing to respond to the higher
apps why we couldn't make the decision in the time that we scheduled it so you can see from that example of the communication framework you state what the situation is you state what the observable Behavior was what did they do exactly and the impact it had on you the teams and the projects and so on so when you stated like that this is exactly how you avoid feeding into the passive aggressive behavior yourself you avoid feeding into it this is how you can avoid kindling the fire but at the same time you give the other
person an opportunity to respond in a professional way as well right and so this framework this framework Works whether or not you are wanting to give feedback that is a criticism a critical feedback or whether you want to give praise this works either way so think about how can you implement the situation Behavior impact framework in your Communications when you encounter passive aggressive behaviors principle number three the ratio of negative to positive interactions affects behaviors now John gottman is a relationship expert he spent his whole life in his career path researching and analyzing data of
human interactions observing human interactions to understand how do we improve our in relationships with other people and what he observed was that in a relationship workplace spousal relationship friends it doesn't matter what relationship what he observed through real-time data was that in a human interaction people need more positive they need to hear at least five positive or constructive feedback before they are ready to hear a negative or corrective feedback so the magic ratio is five to one five positive and constructive feedback before they are ready to receive and to hear one negative corrective one so
this is important this gives you an opportunity to reflect on your leadership now reflect on this is it possible that when you're your team hears from you that most of the time when they hear from you is when something is wrong when you need to give negative feedback or when you need to tell them that they need to change the way they're doing things or when they're doing something that's not quite productive like reflect on that is it is it possible that most of the time they hear from you when it's something wrong when it's
something corrective or something negative right so the magic ratio is five to One how can you increase that magic ratio so that you are creating creating more opportunities to give positive constructive feedback and constructive interactions and when you do that at some point when there needs to be some corrective feedback that they are going to be more receptive to it they're going to be more ready to hear it and they're going to be more able to take it in and to be able to reflect on it because they know now that you can see the
value that they bring in the organization principle number four reporting structures inversely represent supporting structures so let me unpack that for you a little bit now everybody is familiar with the org chart how org charts are represented in a company or in a business you have these squares or these circles and they connect with squares and circles underneath it so this is the org chart the formal structure that companies give and who reports to who now one of the things that people don't realize about org charts is that when you look at an org chart
they're structured in very similar ways but when you look at it and you read the org chart from top to bottom that tells you the reporting structure who reports to who who is responsible for who so that's how it how the reporting structure looks like an org chart but what most people don't realize is that when you read the org chart from the bottom to the top now that represents the supporting structure so this tells you who communicates to who who do you communicate to when there are issues when there are challenges because let's face
it if you find yourself in a situation where you are noticing passive aggressive behaviors and these passive aggressive behaviors in your co-workers or your team members if they are preventing you from doing your job if they're holding you back from completing projects if this continues for a certain period of time it will become a liability in the company and if it becomes a liability in the company your productivity is being held back because of that passive aggressive behavior or because of setbacks in that that key relationship if that becomes a liability for the company then
you become responsible for that liability and so look at the oral chart read it from the bottom up if you are having these issues and there's a persistent roadblock in having you to get your job done and your Project's complete who do you communicate to look at the org chart read it from bottom up and you're going to see who you communicate to and chances are it's going to be your direct manager the person that you report to directly but also look across as well that org chart who do you have as a common supervisor
with that person so seek help especially if this is persisting through your efforts at the other implementing the other principles that I shared with you even if it if it continues to persist if it continues to hold you back from getting your job done this is your opportunity to seek help and don't do this alone right so when you seek help look towards the org chart and speak to somebody and speak to someone in such a way using that framework I shared with you earlier situation behavior and impact so it does not sound like gossip
because you're here to exemplify the behavior you want to see in your team members principle number five bad delivery of a message has content nonetheless so when it comes to passive aggressive Communications gossip blame saying something nice not really meaning it right those passive aggressive Communications there's content in there so this is your opportunity to understand what was the meaning behind those words what was the meaning behind what they meant to say but didn't say it in a good delivery because there's content there and when you seek to understand the person you seek to understand
who they are and what they really want to say this is an opportunity to really help that person to feel heard and appreciated and understood and you're going to notice that anytime somebody feels heard and unappreciated for who they are anytime someone feels that way they open up they become transparent they become friendlier their guard goes down as well because they feel safe and protected and look at reflect on yourself whenever you feel somebody is hearing you and appreciating for who you are don't you feel that your guard comes down you feel more relaxed around
them there's trust as well that starts to build right so bad delivery doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad people it doesn't necessarily mean that they're really out to get you or they want to sabotage it does not mean that at all but sometimes bad delivery is a trauma response it's a response to trauma they had they had a bad experience in the past it could be with another company it could be with another team it could be with another situation in their life and their passive aggressive exhibition of their behavior is as a response
to that trauma that they have not yet dealt with so if you does it truly desire to lead and to serve and to be a great leader one of the key behaviors of a great leader is to be able to support their team members and the deepest level of support that you can give is to help someone to be heard and understood and appreciated for who they are and once again I'm not saying this is easy it is difficult to do but most often you're going to find that the most difficult things in life are
also the most meaningful if you notice that these five key principles that I shared today all of them have a foundation of great Communications but more specifically diplomatic Communications diplomacy is being able to manage relationships with people who have very different value systems and value structures but being able to manage these relationships in Communications that elevate trust that elevate the relationship and meaningfulness as well so diplomatic Communications is a sub type of communications that is important to be able to develop if you desire to step up in your leadership and I've created a Content I've
created some content on how do you communicate diplomatically and if you're serious about developing that skill the video about diplomatic communication is coming right up next so stay tuned and I'll see you right there [Music] thank you
