Don’t Let Spite be Your Career Driver!

It is not unusual during our career when we get ignored, slighted, or even openly insulted, despite doing all the right things. Our reaction to such treatment can decide the future course of our career much more than the event or episode that stifles us. Let me explain what I mean, with a recent example of a client that I encountered:

This client was an up and coming manager, who had recently got her MBA and was poised for great things in her rapidly growing services company. Her new boss, a director, after joining the company, did not get along with my client. Upon joining he learned that my client was vying for his job, which bothered him.

The new boss tried whatever he could to ignore her by first giving her trivial assignments, asking her to finish what others couldn’t, and by making her life difficult. He was hoping that she would leave the company—or at least his group—in frustration, providing him a clear path towards his own glory!

Instead of trying to work with the new boss my client decided to sabotage him by first undermining him, by being passive aggressive, and by not supporting his agenda. She tussled for nearly two years, during which time my client had not only suffered significant career-momentum setback, but had also suffered personally by being stressed out and by being defensive. She took home all the day’s frustrations, and her personal life began to take a toll, as a result. Throughout this period she was so intent on sabotaging her boss that she became blind to what options she had available and how to use them on the one hand, and how she was hurting herself and her career more than she was her boss, on the other.

Now I am working with her to rehabilitate her career and her personal life. Even with rapid recovery she is going to have to pay for her actions for a long time. So, here is what I recommend to others who face similar circumstances:

1. When you get a new boss, look at this as an opportunity to get a fresh start for your cause. Even if you are doing well find out how your new boss can further your agenda.
2. Ask managers in your chain of command what you might have done to earn that promotion and what you need to do to continue growing as a manager. If you ask this in a constructive way you will not only learn of your own shortcomings, but you may also build good rapport with the executives in your chain of command, who might now view you differently.
3. Keeping in mind that the boss always wins, set aside your hurt (for your boss’ hijacking your promotion) and openly share with them that you were vying for that promotion, but are open to learning from them. Remember, too, that the new boss just did not show up from nowhere; he was selected by your management to become your boss! Be positive and sincere in your message. This discussion alone may help you to ignite a positive relationship with your new boss.
4. Ask you boss what his agenda is and figure out ways how you can support that agenda without compromising your values and interests. Since you are well ensconced in the company’s culture tell your boss that you will work with him to help him navigate through the system for him to succeed. If you cannot bring yourself to do this then ask yourself the simple question: where else can I go in my own company and continue to grow. In the case of my client she came from a rapidly growing company, so she should have explored other places where her work would have been valued.
5. Always hold your allegiance to how your résumé reads than to your inner desire to sabotage someone, instead. If my client had stepped back and had taken a view of how she was hurting her résumé in the process of sabotaging her boss, out of spite, she would have come to realize that she was being shortsighted in her strategy.
6. Identify a few strategic initiatives within your own group and find ways for your boss to see them as worthwhile. Show some alignment between your own agenda and what the new boss is trying to achieve. Find ways to close any differences in the perceived agendas.
7. In case you are unable to move to another group in the company aggressively market yourself by updating your LinkedIn Profile and by priming your network.
8. If you are tempted to fire up your “spite engine,” look at the bigger picture and find yourself other ways to invest your energy in bettering yourself than investing in pulling someone down.
9. Work hard at keeping your personal feelings separate from your professional needs to grow and to build a strong résumé.

10.  Stay focused on your agenda and move out when you get your chance. But, look at this opportunity as a laboratory to learn how to deal with setbacks constructively now, while you are still young, than having to deal with such situations when you are in advanced stages of your career, where it is going to be much more difficult!

Good luck!