Praise in the Swamp

I once read the minutes to a committee meeting and was surprised and amused to find that people who had been privately very critical of a particular program went out of their way to praise it at the meeting. I don't mean faint praise, delivered in a mumble. This was calling-down-the-blessings-of-heaven praise. This was the sort of praise you'd want in your performance evaluation or obituary. It was the praise of a mother for a child, a hunter for his dog or a dieter for a pie.

Now I know all of the people who were at that meeting. [I was not present.] Each one is an honest, decent person and yet each, in his own way, had found a way to justify what can only be called deceptive behaviour. [I'm half-tempted to corner them and gleefully read their comments from the minutes.]

There must be teams and work groups that have not had a candid conversation in years, if at all. They spend a large portion of their lives in a passive-aggressive straitjacket where they nod when they want to pound the table and smile when they want to scream.

Rather sad. How did they get that way? How can we avoid that trap?