Passive Aggression in the Workplace

In sabotaging the workplace productivity and office morale, passive aggression becomes the ultimate crime. This is also coined out as a masked and deliberate way of saying covert feelings with ager. In its nature, passive aggression happens through justifiable and covert actions which evade the disciplinary action of the human resources. The work flow is disrupted and the authority is undermined. What are the reasons for passive aggression to become vulnerable?

Relationships Happen

Either for friendly lunches or strictly business, lasting relationships likely develops within relationships and most workplaces. Passive aggression likely occurs in the workplace.

Honesty May Not Always be Professional

In office settings or a professional atmosphere, honest and true emotional expression may not be acceptable. However, in formal and business environment, the emotions are being aroused by many different things- work quality, workload, respect, credibility, talent, big deal and other personal issues that affect the self-worth of an individual. These personal and heartfelt emotions require an outlet.

It’s not Business, But Personal

In the workplace, a particular employee has no ability in telling his or her boss of what he feels about a certain issue. It may also be real that a boss, who is upset or irritated by the work of a supervisor, may violate unwritten or written company policies with candid feedback to an employee. The words inside the workplace should be chosen with great care. Thus, this makes a perfect environment on passive aggression.

Time Factor

Apart from home, it is at work that many adults spend their time. For a particular person that has difficulty in communicating directly and honestly, he plays a passive and aggressive style as he likes to spend a good time of it.

Reminding a Person of His Mom

A workplace organization may often look like a dysfunctional home. On the part of a child that grew up along controlling parents, without allowing the true expression or display of anger, a chain of command workplace may likely trigger the belief of authority figures as aggressive.

Apart from it, the employee behaves considering that the authority figure is an intolerant adult back in his youth days. Then, he will certainly act out in secrete ways that subvert the authority.

Reading a Person Wrong

Electronic communication provides a perfect cover in passive aggression among workers. During telephone or face-to-face interaction, the voice tone and body language betray hostility and anger. Texting and email have completely changed the manner through which people interact. The meanings are also transmitted differently.

When working relationships, major decisions and big deals are maintained and established without conventional personal contact, the efficiency may be worn but the important messages are hidden or lost.

The Task is Not a Responsibility

The active teamwork is further encouraged by a lot of workplaces that is a source of venue on passive aggression. A team member and his covert actions may stop and sabotage the entire projects and whole show in a slight way because his own responsibility is tenaciously justified or not readily obvious.

Passive Candidate Characteristics

Author Biography
Keith Miller has over 25 years of experience as a CEO and serial entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, he has founded several multi-million dollar companies. As a writer, Keith's work has been mentioned in CIO Magazine, Workable, BizTech, and The Charlotte Observer. If you have any questions about the content of this blog post, then please send our content editing team a message here.

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