How to make enemies and tick people off

There are lots of schools of management, and many of them are wrong.

I frequently see a management philosphy used called "ask questions instead of giving direct orders". Click on the link to see all that Google has to say about it.

The idea here is that the average employee is so emotionally fragile that you can't give them a direct order. Instead, you have to dance around the issue in order to trick them into thinking it was their idea.

I object to this on three levels:

1. I'm offended by the idea that the average person is unable to take orders. I think other employees are as well.
2. Being cleverly tricky as this suggests is difficult. And when you do a poor job of it, you irritate employees far more than you would by just giving them an order.
3. I am offended by the thought that someone thinks it's OK to play mind games with me instead of legitimately communicating with me. I know for a fact that others are offended as well.

On the first point, if your employees are resentful when you give them direct order, there are a few things that could be wrong:

1. The person is so emotionally screwed up that they need professional help.
2. You have mismanaged this person to the point where they'll be upset no matter what you do.

If the first problem is the case, I don't have any advice for you.

But the second one is the one I see far more frequently. Let's take some scenarios that I've actually seen that lead to this:

1. The person has frequently been told things like, "have x done before you leave today." when 'x' is more work than can be done in that amount of time.
2. The person has frequently been told exactly how to do their job, in exact detail, when they actually know how to do their job, and the micromanagement is both a hindrance to production and an insult.
3. The person has frequently made honest efforts to improve their work environment for the betterment of everyone, and has frequently had those efforts rejected without good reason, with the result (for example) that they have to work long hours to make up for other people's mistakes.

Any of those scenarios will lead to resentment of orders. In each of the cases, the correct solution is not to resort to mind games to trick people into doing things, but to address the actual problem at hand. If you politely get the person to agree to doing something without ever giving them a direct order, but still micromanage them, you will still find them resentful.

The second one is a fun one, if you enjoy seeing other people suffer.

The fact is that doing this kind of mind trickery is difficult, and when you do it poorly, the results are terrible.

For example, try saying, "Do you want to get those reports done before you leave today?" when you really mean it as an order, without sounding obviously passive-aggressive.

Another funny example (although it wasn't funny at the time) is someone who is so bad at this that they never really complete the process of getting the other person to agree to do the task. For example, I once worked for a guy whose idea of issuing an order was to say something like, "I think we should rewrite that program in Java." Of course, a month later, when I hadn't rewritten it in Java, he was upset that I hadn't followed his "instructions". It was horribly frustrating.

If you search for this tenant on youtube you'll find an example where the person says, "I understand you have Friday off. What do we need to do to ensure that you get everything done that's necessary so you can take the day off?" Aside from the obvious passive-aggressiveness here, the answer I would give is, "Since company policy requires you to approve days off a month in advance, and I requested this day off over a month ago, I've already done everything I need to do." If you feel that's better than the upset of issuing a direct order, I don't want to work for you.

Finally, people don't like it when you play mind games with them.

It creates a passive-aggressive, combative work environment, and that's not good for anyone.

Don't think they don't notice that you're doing it. In conjunction with the second problem, employees definitely know when you're doing this at least some of the time. And after a brief conversation earlier today, 5 out of 5 people I discussed this with are irritated by this tactic and would prefer a direct order.

Not only is passive-aggressiveness irritating in general, but once you establish this kind of anti-rapport with your underlings, you open the door to all kinds of combative behavior.

So don't do it. The next time you issue an order and an employee gets upset about it, just ask, "This is part of your job, why are you angry with it?" Then listen to what they have to say. You may be surprised at what you hear.

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