Apologies for the racy title, prepare to be perplexed, bored and disappointed 😝
I'm looking for interpersonal advice, I suppose, but to be used in a professional capacity. Posting here rather than in work or whatever cos I haven’t got much time to prepare and I want a quick transfusion of the collective MN strategic experience.
I can't give many details for confidentiality reasons so I need to ask you all to try and bend your brains round handling this situation without knowing many specifics.
I could try and come up with an analogous set of circumstances but it’s pretty specific so that might set us off down the wrong road and pull focus.
Imagine you’re representing people who find themselves somewhat in the role of a whistle-blower. Their organisation is in some pre-existing trouble, but they also stand to lose a lot by going public or escalating.
How would you tackle a conversation with someone who holds authority over them, and is also the heady combination of defensive, over-promoted, and condescending? He clearly thinks he's The Man (he's not, he’s got a boss, but chain-of-command etc, and we are not certain the ultimate boss will behave differently - explanation to follow)
Short version, it seems to me this chap knows people have failed and been failed but he won't admit it, so is defensive verging on hostile (not quite yet but not miles off). He also has a ‘listen, dear lady’ manner that would make you want to send him on a course.
AFAIAA this is down to not being sufficiently experienced (staff seem to be hired through a revolving door) and employees beneath him not being well-trained. Some of that pre-dates him and is not his fault but from what I can glean, there's been some shockers in a number of areas. This is provable, it’s been discussed elsewhere (to the extent it has been in the press) and he can’t not know this. There have also been several points where someone could have sensibly intervened in the current shitshow without it getting so far. He didn’t exactly jump into action either when it landed with him, I think the hope is that it will magically go away, maybe that’s why they’re in this pickle more broadly, not rigorous enough by some way.
If I was advising him I’d say ‘it’s a wise general who knows when to retreat’ but perhaps because the overall culture seems to be fairly toxic and broadly runs on fit in or fuck off, that’s not happening.
For my part, I don’t want to push him right into recalcitrance. He could do something constructive about this yet and is expressing willingness to ‘get things back on track’ but thus far isn’t actually doing it.
Another issue - can't seem to answer a question. I politely pointed out the second time he didn’t answer me that that's not what I asked and he gave the same irrelevant answer again - think ‘computer says no.'
There are obviously legal ways to deal with this and that’s what I’d advise but sadly it seems it will be neither feasible nor desirable for the parties involved to escalate much further than they've already done - it’s a small world, they are junior, really afraid of reputational risk to them (troublemaker narrative) and not to mention all the stress - so ideally I'd quite like to get him feeling good about the decision to get onside.
I suspect they’ve only got this far cos he's slightly worried about where this could go - like I said, bad press, plenty of failings - but I know what he doesn't (this probably can't and won't go much further and the poor people involved will likely just fold. I also doubt they will be the last to fall foul of these issues).
That said - at the moment he's not seeming worried enough to admit this was poor, or to undertake to prevent a reoccurrence - or indeed, be less of a prick!
So - any prick charmers reading? 🤓