Cogitate and Percolate

To assist those continuing to adjust to full time remote work, I share one story from my archives about a passive aggressive employee that used online meetings to derail projects and get his own way. To be clear, I considered this employee a friend and in-person, they never pulled the passive aggressive behavior I’m describing.This was unique to group phone calls or web conferencing.

So this story is about the passive aggressive behavior and the day I’d had enough and decided to prank him back. It is NOT a “do as I do” story.

This person’s go-to passive aggressive technique in online meetings was to wait until near the end of a discussion on a topic and then quietly in a voice that purposely trailed off, say something like:

• I only wanted to add that…
• There is the extra point that…
• I wanted to point out that…

The key to this technique was to start out VERY quiet and get QUIETER. So the voice has to truly “trail off”. It has to sound as if the person either stopped having the will to talk or the line itself faded away or some sense of “I’ve given up hope” has to come through the auditory line. That is key. One cannot be bold and pull this off. Think Eeyore but 20x more and quieter.

I had observed this employee do this behavior for years. In this story, I’d like to point out– he didn’t work for me; he was not on my team. So on the day I decided to take him on for this, I was truly poking the bear, I wasn’t actually ‘taking the mick’ out on a team member of my own, which I would not do.  But I knew this person loved to get his own flavor or mission added to projects or to hard steer projects into his own ‘my way is best’ direction. Here is how he’d try to use this technique on a work project:

1. He’d use this trailing off voice line.

2. Immediately the person running the meeting would say “Oh, I’m sorry, what did you say?”

3. He would repeat it a little louder but not much. The point was to draw attention to himself and he had to draw you in. Until he knew he had you, he kept pulling you closer and closer by keeping his voice quiet. Folks would literally lean IN on their cameras.

4. Even if you as the project leader felt like his idea had not merit whatsoever, because he would present it in this “humble servant who can barely speak above the quietest mumble mode.” Socially, the proper response he was banking on would be something like “Oh, you have a point there, I didn’t think of that” or “We might be able to consider that” because he was being so meek and mild.

5. THAT was the foot in the door he needed because YOU just acknowledged HIS idea as valid in front of the entire team (this technique was always done before a crowd). In case of any backsliding or NON-implementing of his idea now, he would constantly remind you that you had approved (notice the wording change) of his idea and you’d failed (as a leader) to put it into play. Said another way, he had you. He had his way. All from a mumble.

*The foil to his technique, by the way, was to simply listen, lean back in your chair, consider and then deny it forthrightly.

*Another technique (that I was bold enough to use) was to stop him right as he started mumbling and override his talking with your own and say something like “I realize you are trying to interject but we don’t have time for more comments. Moving on to the next agenda item.”