Political-style maneuvering can sink careers
Thomas Realm says he can’t watch the presidential debates.
“I have nothing to do with Benghazi or locker-room talk or any of that, but I know a lot about someone’s reputation being ruined,” says Realm, a 44-year-old resident of St. Paul, Minn.
Realm left his job at a large NewYork-based marketing firm last fall after 19 years. Although he wasn’t directly involved, Realm says he offered his resignation after realizing his workplace had become “a warzone of ‘he said, she said’ — constant infighting and bickering, a place that began wearing him down both professionally and personally.
“I’m not blaming anyone personally, but when a company has a great culture and a great track record, that should count for something,” he says. “But people come in with different ideals, different roadmaps to success, and that can cause problems.”
Realm says the changes in office demeanor were slow at first, but soon began engulfing the entire office. “People say things about people, and then other people start saying things about people; then sooner or later, half the office caught up in something that is completely irrelevant to the work they have to do,” he says. “It’s like bad reality TV. I had to get out.”
Bold talk
Aaron Brent, a career coach in San Diego, says Realm’s situation is becoming more common. “I think there was a brashness in today’s employees, something that gives them the right to think they can speak critically or negatively of others, whether they’re talking about their co-workers or people who work for them or even the people they work for,” Brent says. “People feel empowered when they can cut the legs out from under one of their colleagues. They feel like that’s going to help them get ahead and if it doesn’t, they’ll just move on to the next company.”
Although Brent doesn’t blame the onset of social media entirely, he thinks it’s a definite factor in today’s workplace. “We are used to an immediacy of critique. We can tell someone we don’t like a restaurant while we’re eating there or bash a movie while we’re walking out of the theater,” he says. “People have self-worth that they may not have necessarily earned.”
Realm admits he was “no Boy Scout” during his final year in New York, but says he often said or did things in an effort to stick up for himself or others. “I would be sitting at my desk and I would hear people talking about me just a few cubicles away and I wasn’t going to sit there and take it,” he says.
Realm says he began going after some people individually. “I didn’t necessarily confront them, but I would talk to their boss about it. I’m not sure if I would have handled it any differently because I was so angry at the time, but I did not get the results that I wanted. Instead I looked like the longtime employee who just wasn’t willing to change,” he says. “I was told that it was collaboration. People were just trying to give strong, positive criticism that would help out the business as a whole, which was nonsense.”
Use caution
Brent says there’ s a danger to lashing out at others. “Sometimes the fact that you protest what someone else says about you actually makes what they said more valid, at least in the eyes of your employer,” Brent says. “I’m not advocating people letting rumors or misinformation roll off their backs but they should handle it in a professional way. You either confront the person who says these things or document what’s being said and how those allegations aren’t necessarily true, and then you take it up with HR.”
The bottom line is that you have to keep your dignity and remain professional, which will help you in the long run. “People who sell out their co-workers and try to walk over them to get some more recognition rarely succeed, at least over the course of their career. They need people to help them do the work, and once they’ve burned a hundred bridges, the people on the other side of the river who can help them out have no way of getting to them.”
Realm, who is now working for a smaller firm in Minneapolis, says he hears from former co-workers often. “Almost overnight, I began getting LinkedIn requests for recommendations and people calling me to ask if I would send them a letter of reference. Some of these people were the exact same people who screwed me over in the first place,” Realm says. “Either people are just obtuse or they think they can do whatever they want. At some point, you’re going to isolate yourself.”
Realm says he used to ignore most requests but now engages his former colleagues in a little conversation. “I just point out why I can’t recommend them,” he says. “Most people don’t respond after that. A couple have apologized and a couple have said some pretty awful things. That last group — they’re the ones who won’t change. And it’s going to catch up with them if it hasn’t already.”