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Sabotage
101: To this day, Scott Rosen can't
understand how he dragged himself to work every day. A few years ago, the 41-year-old assistant manager at a
financial-services company started to notice that his colleague, another
assistant manager, was getting the better of him -- without his knowledge.
"He'd always go right into the manager's office," Mr. Rosen says.
There, he'd lead their boss to the conclusion that
Mr. Rosen was mishandling his job. If Mr. Rosen didn't know the answer
to a staffer's question, for example, his colleague would tell them, "I
can't believe he didn't know something like that." When he asked
staffers to take care of certain tasks, his colleague would tell them,
"I wouldn't make you do something like that." "It was constant," he says, still sounding battered
by the incident. "Whatever I did, I lost." Soon, his associate was promoted and
Mr. Rosen was demoted. He eventually quit and rebounded. By the time you finally understand that some workplace
saboteur is climbing your back, there's a footprint on your head, and you've
been portrayed variously as incompetent, witless, power hungry, adulterous
and, above all, as worthy of a demotion as the assailant is worthy of a
promotion. Rebounding from such an assault can be a long and difficult
process. Rumors about your good character don't
rocket around the shop the way the bad rumors do. With any luck, the saboteur
gets snared by his own trap. Until then, get used to
the fuzzy end of the lollipop. What motivates people to behave like this? Sometimes, they
have a single target, other times it's a modus
operandi for a whole career. In the latter case, the tendency can be
"some kind of character disorder," says management consultant Fred Nader. He also blames a work environment prone to
dishonesty. A tight job market also can spur acts of sabotage, according
to Judith Briles, a management consultant who has
studied the subject for years. Her 2003 survey shows that 81% of respondents
believe they had been undermined within the past
year, up from 72% in 1999. Bob McDonald, a management consultant, says saboteurs are
often popular and claim to be a friend of the victim, sometimes even
professing misgivings about criticizing their friend. In the mid-'70s, he was a psychologist in a psychiatric
treatment center when one of his colleagues invited him to view a
pornographic film. He declined and their relationship cooled. Then one day,
the head nurse raked him over the coals and warned him not to mess with her
staff. "I was flabbergasted," he said. "I didn't have any idea
what was happening." A friend finally informed him that after his rejection, the moviegoing colleague began telling everyone of influence
that Mr. McDonald wanted to take over the unit. He "started poisoning
the water around me," he says. Over time, Mr. McDonald says, he bounced
back, but "there was damage there that I never fully repaired." To combat a saboteur, Mr. McDonald recommends telling key
people that the person is, in fact, not a friend, which takes power from the
perpetrator and reveals the smear campaign. These assaults can even come from the top. John Staugaitis worked at a bank in upstate "It was cruel," he says. Blind ambition is a prime motivation, explains a 30-year-old
executive at a In 1999, he was teamed with a field
sales representative who worked out of the client's office. He was the inside
sales rep who grunted around headquarters supporting her work. After three months, he picked up the scent of an opportunity
and began wooing the client while taking down his colleague. He heard small
complaints about her from the client. "Nothing big, but big
enough." he says. And he began sharing these
"issues" with the boss. When the client complained, for example, he would ask for it
in an e-mail. "I'll see what I can do," he would say. Then, he
would forward it to the boss, along with his own note saying: "I'm
powerless to deal with this. She's not being responsive and the customer is
beating on me." He would withhold information from her so that whenever she
presented to their boss, she was somehow wrong. He went so far as to schedule
meetings on an electronic calendar but doctoring her version so that she was
either early or late. Pretty soon, he convinced their boss
that "she's overworked," and offered to spend more time at the
client's office. He was on the plane the following Monday and she moved back
to HQ within 60 days. "There are days I can justify what I did," he says,
"and others where I just call myself an a-." |
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