Navigating Passive Aggressiveness as a Senior Leader

Sometimes people will say they agree with you. They love your idea. They say they’ll do whatever you need and give you all the resources you need to move forward. Then, they simply do nothing and passively resist your efforts. They might not give the resources they commit to or take the actions they said they’ll perform. When you’re dealing with this type of behavior, get written commitments that are then shared and followed up on publicly.

I know one chief operating officer who was involved in a major cost reduction project. He didn’t like the program’s direction, but he had to look committed to it. Especially because it was the CEO’s top priority. The COO said he’d provide teams to do analysis. He said they’d contribute ideas for cost savings. But he always came up with other priorities and excuses for why his folks weren’t contributing time or ideas for the project. To look committed, he spun-up a bunch of meetings to try and drive the cost reduction effort forward. The problem was all those meetings did was waste time, create new work, and actually slow the project down.

When dealing with the situation, the project manager sat down and got public commitments from this COO in terms of the time their teams would spend, and the ideas that the team was responsible for delivering. Those public commitments eventually got the behavior to change.

When you’re dealing with this situation, pay attention for patterns of failed commitments. Passive-aggression is hard to spot at first. So, by looking for where people are coming up short, it might be an indicator that you’re dealing with this type of behavior.

When you’re dealing with it, get public commitments from this person in terms of resources. Also ask this person to provide public updates, so everyone can hear how they’re moving the project forward. And when there’s a shortfall in terms of a commitment, make them explain it. It’s not up to you to make excuses for them.

Passive-aggression is really challenging to deal with, because it’s so hard to see until it’s too late. By paying attention to commitments and seeing when people are falling short, it gives you an opportunity to call the behavior out publicly and get things back on track.