We all sense it. Something is just not right … but we can’t put our finger on it. It feels like folks are just not telling the whole story, or are telling us only the convenient parts, or are looking for a reason to ignore our requests.

Often this is a symptom of so-called Passive Aggressive Behavior (PAB). Columnist Cecil Adams describes PAB in practical terms as “… sometimes a perfectly rational behavior, which lets you dodge unpleasant chores while avoiding confrontation."

From a personal standpoint, PAB could explain why your team members or partners are not providing information that you need while appearing to cooperate. Common PAB display in cross-functional teams is someone agreeing to actions that they have no expectation of completing. So many circumstances will change, they know they will not (and probably cannot) be held accountable for not completing the work. 

For business, PAB can bring projects to a standstill. The October 2005 Harvard Business Review article “The Passive Aggressive Organization” by Neilson, Pasternack, and Van Nuys talks about  “…a place where more energy is put into thwarting things than starting them, but in the nicest way. A startling percentage of companies, especially large, established ones, display the symptoms.”

In large companies, and particularly in projects which affect many departments, the support teams – training, field service, IT, sales – never seem to have the time and resources to participate in the front end of projects. Too often they agree to the work despite their knowledge that it can’t and won’t get done. But agreeing to the plan makes the project manager go away for now – and allows the support team to get back to their daily crises.

This behavior can also be seen in organizations where over-demanding management provides unpleasant consequences or deals unpredictably with performance that does not meet expectations. PAB allows workers to deflect or dodge blame.

Email is partially at fault for the widespread appearance of PAB in the business environment. Any media that allows the possibility of undelivered communications enables PAB – email is a perfect cover. At my presentations on Internetworked teams, 10 percent to 20 percent of attendees raise their hand when asked whether they have had a conversation in the past week where someone said, “I didn’t get your email.” Since not receiving an email allows acceptable deniability of an action received or a decision made, email facilitates growth of PAB leading to the decline of project accountability.

Revitalizing an organization that is immersed in this behavior is a complex change-management challenge. The goal is to build a business norm of telling each other the relevant truth without fear of retribution. It requires a workplace with transparent status information, one that values people, has competently involved leadership, and where employees can fearlessly extend themselves, working with their peers to do their best.

In my view, a large part of a leader’s role is to shrink the team’s supply of possible excuses. With the readily offered and easily accepted excuses that email provides, restructuring email practices to eliminate its use as a passive-aggressive tool has to be a strategic objective for all organizational and project leaders.

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