Cruel Gets Promoted
“Why are you so mean to the people who work for you?” Asking this question to the one person it shouldn’t have been asked would probably get me fired, but it was late, the hotel bar was dark, and closing time was approaching fast. If I hadn’t asked this now, I would never have. It was just him and me left from the large group earlier. He was drunk, and I was sober.
He drew his head back in a defensive posture and pushed his half-empty drink away from his hand, closer to the bartender. His feathers were up now, and it was the witching hour of the post-software conference haze. He defensively asked, “What do you mean by that?”
I said, “Well, it seems you are always sowing chaos and fear everywhere you go. Nothing is ever good enough.” I looked down at my hands, which were shaking now because I was on the verge of telling a Senior Executive exactly how I felt about the trauma they had caused others for years, a cardinal sin that has ended careers for lesser truths revealed.
I said, “People are afraid of you. They don’t respect you.”
He snapped, “Well, maybe I don’t need or want their respect. I have a job to do.”
I said, “Yeah, so do we all. And you always make it harder for us to do our jobs.”
“How so? Please enlighten me.” He downed his drink and motioned for another. The bartender said it was the last call and poured the drink. I hadn’t had a drink in over a year, and I was clear about what I was saying, but my exhaustion was intoxicating, and my patience was being tested.
I carefully said, “Well, for one thing, in customer meetings, you always talk about yourself. Every meeting I’ve been in that’s involved you has been derailed during the meeting. You’ve never engaged in the planning of those meetings I work on. You don’t attend the dry runs. And then you show up, shit on everything we’ve done, and derail each meeting with your selfish comments, name dropping famous people and companies you’re meeting with, while revealing proprietary details about our company you shouldn’t be talking about or showing in public. Why do you do that? It’s juvenile.” I was getting closer to insulting him.
And now, he was pissed. “This is the first I’m hearing of it. Tell me more because I feel like I always ask engaging questions to the customers I meet with, because that’s my job!” He taps the glass hard on the bar, and the big square ice cube clinks against the thick crystal. Everyone looks at us, but most quickly look away.
My face grew red and hot. I said, “Yeah, but those questions are just setups for you to talk more about yourself.” And suddenly, I was irate. I said, “You may be the most egotistical person I’ve ever worked for and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Do you really think this company a better place by you acting like this?”
Well, there it was. I’d insulted the man with the truth, which is the worst kind of insult one can give. Harsh truths must be swaddled in a soft cloth and handed over like a sleeping baby. But when truth is rubbed on the tips of arrows, it becomes a poison that can easily backsplash on the archer.
I started off giving honest feedback, and it turned into an insult. I was sure I was getting fired for offending him. But I had spoken the truth as I saw it. Wasn’t it more meaningful that this man heard the truth from one of the hundreds of people he’d undeservingly abused in his career? After all, it’s never too late to change our harmful behaviors toward others once we become aware of the damage we do. I have certainly struggled with this in my life. Wasn’t I passing on wisdom to someone who needed it? Alas, there was the insult, and he didn’t hear anything constructive from what I had said. All he heard was the insult.
I was once in a town hall meeting with him, and someone politely interrupted, asking him to speak up because they couldn’t hear him from the back of the room, and there was no amplification. He reacted in a huff by loudly dragging up a chair, scraping it across the floor for theater, and demanding the person sit beside him, facing the crowd for the rest of the meeting, like a cheeky child’s punishment in daycare. Imagine the trauma of that person who was made to sit in that chair for an hour, looking up at him uncomfortably from the side, while he lectured us all on why we weren’t good enough. The whole crowd stared at that unfortunate soul in the hot seat for the whole meeting. Everyone in the audience was thankful they weren’t in that chair and committed to never speaking up or speaking out when this man was in the room. That’s how you run a company with terror, not inspiration, no matter what the core values say on the website.
So, why are the cruel so often promoted in business? Why aren’t consistently kind people elevated to positions of influence and decision-making? Why are the worst behaviors honored so often and the best behaviors usually suppressed and ignored? I think it’s because cruelty is so easy. So frequently, people like this become bullies during their youth to achieve power over others. Eventually, these ambitious humans warp the world around them into a demented set of funhouse mirrors that they laughingly push others through, gleeful over the ensuing confusion and misery. Cruelty, combined with actual power, turns these people into monsters who terrify every human culture they engage in, and it often earns them promotions and pay raises. Soon, they are running entire divisions like hit squads.
Well, the only way to defeat a monster in the dark is to turn on the lights, which happened when closing time hit that night. The lights went up, and we saw each other clearly now. He finished his drink, told me to perform an anatomically impossible act, grabbed his suit coat and left without saying goodbye.
I wasn’t fired, but I’ve never spoken to that man again, and I never received another promotion in that company. Eventually, I left and found a better job. I suppose he’s still out there, posting on LinkedIn about how much his company loves their people and values their hard work. But I have no doubt he remains a great white shark, circling his next prey and avoiding the harsh light of day.
