Pettiness

Henry Kissinger once said that the reason for the vicious nature of faculty politics is that the stakes are so small.

I thought of that the other day when the topic of pettiness in the workplace arose. Over the years I've seen plenty of examples and most of the infractions were by people at the highest levels of their organizations. Each time, I was surprised if only because, as the Center for Creative Leadership once found, people who are insensitive to others usually get derailed on their journey to the top.

But several of the louts I've noticed were at the highest levels. One corporate CEO openly brushed off his diversity officer in front of a room of observers. Another CEO made derogatory and baseless comments about the performance of one of the operations and blithely continued without even a pause. Still another took extra effort to ignore the presence of another executive. One more commented on the contributions of everyone in a group then - with just enough delay to register the insult - passed over the remarks of another. [I believe the British expression is to "cut" the person, which is truly descriptive.]

Such behavior baffles me because, aside from its rudeness, it invariably makes the perpetrator look shabby and cheap. Do these clods really believe that they've scored some points? Since the normal reaction of witnesses is to sympathize with the victim of such antics, the purpose of the behavior may be to satisfy some twisted internal need to inflict pain or discomfort regardless of the appearance.

Whatever the motive, the fact that such people can slip through the promotional screening process is evidence of a gap in the system. Ethical lapses are not easily compartmentalized. As Dag Hammarskold observed, a good gardener does not reserve a plot for weeds. The person who readily engages in pettiness in one area is not trustworthy in others.