Bad colleagues can and will wreak havoc on you personally, your business and your family. One of the Red flags of a bad colleague is a pattern of persistent undermining—intentionally hindering your success, reputation, or personal and business relationships. If you have ever had a colleague actively start a campaign to interfere with your business success, productivity, try to make you look bad in front of clients and other colleagues, steal your ideas and try to make them their own, or give or allude to false, tainted or even criminal and unethical information, you are a victim of “Colleague Undermining”. Kind of sounds like this, “Hey, don’t say anything and you didn’t hear it from but you may want to know…”
The opposite of an “underminer” is a supporter. When colleagues are supportive, they go out of their way to be givers rather than takers, working to enhance your success and business productivity, make you look like a shining star, share your ideas as your ideas, refuse undue credit and are always willing to provide an inexhaustible amount of assistance. They just want to see you succeed.
Most people perceive relationships business or otherwise as either productive or unproductive. Our colleagues are either “TAKERS” who undermine us or “GIVERS” who become a support system around us. After looking into the matter I found that me research showed otherwise: productive and unproductive relationships are independent. Many of us have confusion, mixed ideas and even “Rose Colored Glasses” when it comes to relationships with a colleague who set about to undermine us in some situations and then show up to support us in others. What is problematic about these two frames of mind concerning colleague relationships?
Searching on the internet I read a very interesting study by Michelle Duffy, where police officers filled out a survey about how often their closest colleague undermined and supported their efforts at work. The study found that Officers who were concerned about colleagues undermining them were less motivated and committed at work, experienced more health and stress problems, and were more likely to be absent and take breaks which were longer or unauthorized. Being undermined was a major cause of on-the-job stress.
But when the officer’s undermining colleague was also supportive, things did not get better, they got worse. The officers experienced even lower levels motivation and commitment at work, had more and extended health issues, missed even more work and often became depressed. So, in looking at the broader picture on this issue, it is actually far worse to have a colleague who is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in their devotion towards you than for them to only be Dr. Jekyll all the time. When a colleague is a TAKER and a TAKER alone, you know what’s coming and what to expect. You can formulate a plan to minimize your exposure and initiate a timely DAMAGE CONTROL plan. But if that colleague is unpredictable and takes in some situations and gives in others, makes it almost impossible to avoid the undermining situations in a timely fashion and possibly over reacting in other situations where the colleagues position is yet known. This makes preparing to deal with these relationships impossible at best and successfully dealing with undermining situations quite unpredictable and often the reaction to protect yourself comes far too late. As Duffy’s research team concludes, “In these situations the victim colleague must use far more emotional energy and coping ability to deal with the colleagues are inconsistent and lack loyalty.”
“Frenemies” let me tell you are far worse than enemies, and it’s not just in the workplace, professions, families and neighborhoods they are everywhere. In a very well-known study, a Psychologist found the potential for “Frenemie” patterns are in every normal relationship. In one study this Psychologist and his team of researchers looked at older adults and the ten most important and trusted people in their lives reacted to the persons requests help. Some relationships were consistently supportive and always there to help, others made life miserable rather than better, and some were at time aloof, unreachable, non-respondent in some situations and eager to help in others, a real mix of the available and unavailable. The Psychologist and his team of researchers asked the adults to completed two anxiety-provoking tasks: delivering a speech with minimal to no preparation time and taking a rapid-fire math equation test. The team tracked the older adult’s heart rates and perspiration during the tasks.
The results of the experiment revealed that the participants with increased more mixed feelings and opposing points of view with others had more of an increase in their heart rates and perspiration while giving their speech and the during the rapid fire math test. Conclusion, folks with friends who are both undermining at times and supportive at others have greater stress. In an associated study of hundreds of adults, the more relationships folks had that were undermining at times and supportive at others were more likely to be highly stressed, depressed, and dissatisfied with their professions, families, friends and their life in general.
The conclusion which might be drawn with regards to UNDERMINING colleagues and “Frenemies” would be to avoid these types of relationships as they are far more destructive that purely negative relationships. But you might want to look at a completely different strategy concerning these types of relationships and in doing so become more effective in dealing with them.
Consider this, even though you might be receiving support from friends and colleagues who at times undermines you and causes stress, receiving solid support from others in your profession, family and friends will serve as a balance. Also in the police officers study conducted by Duffy’s research team they found when a person has a supportive supervisor this partially reduces the negative effects of the wishy-washy colleagues. Following the research of many and reviewing several decades of findings on GOOD and BAD supervisors yet another psychologist Robert Sutton found that the most critical roles of a supervisor is to serve as a shield to protect his or her subordinates against such destructive relationships and to weed those relationships out of the work place thus creating a safe work environment.
Remember this, when you are being undermined by one colleague, you will recognize and feel the importance of seeking out others who will support you and your goals professionally. But an even greater investment in time might be to invest in those supportive relationships when you are forced to deal with someone who’s guilty of both undermining and supporting you. Know the water, there are sharks out there. Know those who are with you, those who are against you and beware of those who roll with the tide and are neither for you or against you for any duration of time that would be considered friendship, they are self-serving. The problem today in this world of social media is that the word “FRIEND” is used far too loosely.
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