I’ve been getting a lot of emails lately from people who are asking about the more subtle ways that assholes do their dirty work, the "passive aggressive" and seemingly fun and friendly tricks that they use — often unwittingly — that leave behind a trail of demeaned and de-energized people. Teasing is one of the subtle moves that assholes employ to bring others down. It often used by "clueless assholes" who don’t realize that they are hurting other people (or at least won’t admit they are doing it intentionally). As I’ve written here before, the best description I’ve ever seen of the damage done by “friendly” teasing
is in the late Gordon Mackenzie’s masterpiece Orbiting
the Giant Hairball. When I was writing
Weird
Ideas That Work, I read this little gem over and over again, for general inspiration,
and to quote little gems like this one. Gordon MacKenzie was known as the “Creative
Paradox” during his years at Hallmark Cards and he often ran creativity works. In
Hairball, he describes a woman who, “with a bashful eagerness,” began a sketch that showed how she felt about
herself, the Management of Information Systems group she was part of, and
Hallmark. As I said in Weird Ideas, ‘Her
co-workers reacted with a “rowdy taunting” about her lack of drawing skills;
she quickly changed from looking eager to looking hurt, and then “After an
apologetic explanation of her drawing, she scurried, eyes down, back to her
seat.”’
In many organizations, people would be allowed to get away
with such nastiness. To his credit, MacKenzie
confronted the group with about the demeaning behavior. He said to them:
“Teasing
is a disguised form of shaming… I suspect that when you teased this woman, it
was an unconscious effort to throw her off balance – to stop her from risking,
which she was most clearly beginning to do. Why would you want to do that? …[B]ecause we don’t want to admit to
others or ourselves that we are trying to stop growth, we disguise our shaming
as teasing – ‘all in the spirit of good fun.’ ”
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