If conflicts at work mushroom, feuds can turn into vendettas and spiral far beyond the original problem. Even some attempts to resolve them can backfire, as the blame game creates more and more victims. In such cases, even if you are not at fault, it is best to deal with blame and false allegations in a calm, cool, strategic way, or risk being caught in the undertow.
The situation is like being a passenger in a boat that could be capsized by a crazed passenger who is blaming you for a storm. You didn’t cause the storm; you are not in charge of the boat; but the passenger thinks you are. So you have to gain control of the passenger or situation, but do so in a calm, controlled way—or your boat will go down.
That’s what happened to one man—let’s call him Dan—who wrote to me about an increasingly desperate work situation at his department in a nonprofit agency, which was headed up by two senior employees. Unfortunately, the office was often in turmoil because one problem employee, Tom, often slacked off on his job. He frequently came in late or took extra long lunches, and when he worked, he often made errors that had to be corrected by his colleagues. When one senior employee, Barry, complained to the agency director, the director initiated a meeting with Barry and Tom to discuss Tom’s performance. At the meeting, Tom denied Barry’s description of his work habits and argued back that Barry had been picking on him. To solve the problem, the agency director called a meeting a week later with the whole department, which included the letter writer Dan.
During the meeting, Dan offered his own opinions about Tom’s poor work habits, confirming Barry’s original complaint. The two senior employees who ran the department decided to set up a new work schedule for Tom, so he would put in the required hours and be more productive. But after two days, Dan noticed that Tom was not following this new schedule and was still making many errors, and after Dan reported this to Barry, Barry spoke to Tom. Soon after, Tom said he didn’t feel well, and headed home.
But the next day, Tom returned determined to get back at everyone, especially Dan. Within a few hours, Tom announced he was going to file sexual harassment charges against Dan. Though they were untrue, Dan was immediately terrified that in the ensuing investigation, some personal problems he had once confided in Tom would be revealed, since he feared Tom would bring up old skeletons from the past, including a long-buried criminal conviction. In Dan’s view, Tom didn’t care if his allegations of sexual harassment against Dan weren’t true. He just wanted to create as much havoc at work before he finally was fired, including embarrassing Dan by bringing up these old charges in an investigation.
What Should Dan Do?
Here are some possibilities. What would you do as Dan and why? And what do you think the outcomes of these different options would be?
Tell a supervisor about Tom’s threat to file untrue harassment charges and acknowledge the long-buried criminal conviction in confidence to deal with that now, before it potentially leaks. (This way maybe his supervisor might be more understanding about him concealing this information, though the concealment could be grounds for dismissal.)
Talk to Tom to try to overcome his feeling of resentment and even offer to help, to avoid his filing the charges, even if untrue.
Wait until Tom actually does something, since it could be an idle threat; then, deal with whatever charges or negative information that come up when they do.
Find a new job, get a good recommendation, and go, before these problems erupt and you leave with mud on your face.
Confront Tom and tell him in no uncertain terms how you’ll fight back if he files any false charges or releases any private information against you, since you could get damages for defamation or invasion of privacy.
Other?
What should Dan do to avoid being dragged down by this runamok employee? A first step would be to find out whether Tom was just making threats and whether his charges were based on some kind of misunderstanding or were completely unjustified and just being used for revenge. Then, if Tom’s plan to file charges was still merely a threat, Dan might still have time to talk to Tom and smooth over any problems. Should there be a misunderstanding, perhaps this could be worked through—or even if Tom was contemplating revenge, maybe his anger could be defused. For instance, if he was feeling a lack of respect and understanding, maybe Dan could build Tom up to feel better about himself and less angry with Dan.
Or suppose Tom did already register his sexual harassment complaint with someone else, such as Barry or another employee. Perhaps Dan could talk to this person to learn what the charges were and give his side of the story. In fact, because of privacy considerations, these employees might already be bound to keep the charges confidential, particularly when they were only alleged but unproven, so these other employees could probably be trusted to keep Dan’s confidences.
In short, down the road, Dan might have invasion of privacy or other grounds for legal action should private information about him be revealed hurting his reputation. But long before that, my suggestion to him was to try to talk to first Tom and then Barry to work out this conflict in a spirit of understanding and problem solving. In fact, it was best for Dan not to bring up the legal possibilities as threats in his conversations with Dan, unless these other approaches didn’t work. (Even then, these might not really be viable options given a hard to win case.) After all, why bring up potential future retaliatory actions if you are trying for harmony and reconciliation now. To talk of retaliation is like holding up a hammer while saying you want to work for peace—a contradiction between what you are saying and doing that usually doesn’t work. Moreover, if Tom was already acting like a loose cannon in the office, anything that might make him even more angry and defensive could light the spark to make the cannon go off.
Thus, even though Dan may have done nothing wrong and had only gotten the problem employee furious at him by speaking the truth, he still had to find a way to contain the problem before it spiraled out of control.
Likewise, if you’re in a potentially out-of-control situation, think of ways to get it under control. Perhaps imagine the situation like a raging fire, where you want to use water to douse the flames, and want to avoid doing anything to add fuel to the fire. In other words, use sweet talk and words of support and reconciliation to smooth over the relationship; stay away from accusations and threats that might fan the flames. Maybe the senior managers might have kept down the tension by having a discussion about his performance problems with Tom individually rather than at a group meeting where everyone aired their complaints. But then, the complaints were widespread, so they wanted to hash out the problems openly. Once the laundry was out in the open, so to speak, Dan had to deal with the situation; he couldn’t control what the senior managers did.
Today’s Take-Aways:
- If you’re facing a fired-up employee, a first step is to put out the fire.
- When others are raging, think of ways of engaging.
- Just as honey can make the medicine go down, sweet talk can sometimes be just the medicine to put down office conflicts.
- Avoid threatening legal action when someone’s already enraged and upset. These could be fighting words that provoke even more fight from someone ready to go off.