A month after Danny’ joining the company, Linda approached Carl as if by chance at the lunch table. Carl was having lunch in the cafeteria with Greg, Sanae, and the rest of the team. With a friendly smile on her face, Linda sat at the end of the same table. It was as if she saw Carl’s team by chance and wanted to join the same table without any particular reason. Linda silently listened to their conversation, beaming. It was an important time for the hunter Linda to gather information about her targets in the field, who would never think that they were being watched. “Would you like to have coffee with me?” Linda smiled at Carl and asked, when they finished and were leaving. Linda knew that Carl would never turn down such an invitation from Linda, the HR Director.
Linda asked with a coffee cup, “How are things since Danny joined your department, Max’s team?” Linda spoke to Carl in a natural manner, as if she cared about Carl and everyone else. In fact, Linda was well aware that Danny was causing troubles across the company, meaning conflicts within Carl’s department and with other departments. Several of these cases had been brought to Linda’s attention with severe complaints by the parties affected. It was a new record; the complaints against Danny were so many and quickly developing in all directions, for a person who joined the company so recently.
‘There is some friction between us at the moment.”
Carl, as was usually the case with an Englishman, was quite insinuating, but admitted that there was some kind of problem.
Linda’s eyes widened, looking surprised as if she were hearing this for the first time,
“Oh, really? Is it since Danny joined you, or already before? I would interpret that your department is in the process of finding the right balance with each other, to enable working together as a team. It may be rough at the beginning, but it will get better once you get through it. It is necessary to have such a phase before stabilizing”
Linda only put a positive light to what Carl said, pretending to be analyzing the situation together with Carl as his supporter. Linda knew the magic of words in manipulating people in a difficult situation, especially when Linda was the one who set up the person. If Linda had admitted that there were actually serious troubles right now and Danny’s arrival caused those troubles, Carl might be inclined to think that there was something wrong with Danny’s character. It was key not to allow Carl to admit the fact that the newcomer Danny was causing a lot of problems in the department.
Linda decided to round up Carl completely and to lead him in a totally wrong direction.
“Danny came into your department with Joe’s endorsement, so it’s important that your team members find ways to work with him. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Pretending to give Carl some friendly advice, Linda cleverly blocked Carl’s exit. Now Carl could not even complain about Danny to Linda, who is reporting to Joe. No matter how much of a problem Danny was, Carl should shut down the complaints from all sides and pretend there was no problem at all, for the sake of his own survival. Carl, who climbed up to the VP position at a company where management was full of lies, had political skills of flattering to superiors and covering up his ass. Calling a black donkey as a white horse should be nothing for Carl. Nevertheless, Carl took a sigh and said that Greg and his team, the research and analysis department, was having “friction” with Danny.
Danny, a member of the strategic governance team led by Max, had been assigned to make a presentation at a management meeting hosted by Joe. As mentioned, Max was managing an agenda for Joe’s monthly management meeting. Danny, taking the chance to the maximum, took Greg’s team’s accomplishments in his presentation as if those were his own work. No one, including Joe, could argue with Max and his team that they should “play fair,” not taking others’ credits. Max was being backed up by the CEO Ben with his mother being Ben’s current wife. The combination of the ‘noble’ Max being an ambitious German of natural arrogance and the superficial eloquence of Danny, it was only a natural consequence that they would run a theater of their enormous achievements at such a big meeting, taking others’ work. Carl, who was only interested in his own self-preservation, of course, did not intervene in these developments. Greg complained to Carl about unfairness, but Carl ignored everything.
Exasperated, Greg one day stood up at a management meeting, right after Danny’ presentation followed by Joe’s questions. In front of the gathering of key members, he said, “Thank you for your compliments, Joe. My Research and Analysis Team did all the work for this presentation!” For a moment, the entire meeting room went silent and everyone around him was frozen. Carl’s expression stiffened. The silence was broken by Joe’s words, “That’s great, Greg and the Team. Well done.” Greg was pleased, but Carl hid his dismay with a forced smile. Linda was there in the meeting and remembered Stephen’s bewildered expressions at that moment. Linda decided to use this episode to steer Carl.
“Well, I was surprised at the last meeting when Greg suddenly stood up in front of management and said something like that. It was childish. I wonder if Greg has ‘heroism’.”
It was sharp sarcasm about Greg from Linda. Carl felt uncomfortable with Linda’s comment, but didn’t argue. After rethinking, Carl thought Linda was trying to help Carl to speak politically correctly, not giving dangerous comments about the wrong hiring decision by Joe. It was impossible for Carl to speak of Danny as a problem in the first place. He was simply not allowed to point out the source of the problem, Danny, for the sake of securing his own position at this company. Carl imagined that Linda probably should feel the same way as he. As the head of HR, Linda would have heard about what was going on with Danny, but there was no way she could handle it publicly, with Max backed by the CEO. HR was weak and had to follow simply the decisions of the business stakeholders. Even if the culprit was the excessive favoritism toward Danny and Max, it cannot be openly pointed out, let alone unfairness and narcissistic behavior of Danny. Heroism was in this sense a correct term to be used for such a case. To Carl, it was Max who had “hero” complex and were disrupting the organization order with this heroic mentality. In fact, Carl hated Max from the bottom of his heart.
Carl’s mistake was to interpret Linda’s comments in a favorable light, even though he felt uncomfortable with them intuitively. It never occurred to Carl that Linda was the mastermind behind all the problems occurring to him in the first place. It had never occurred to Carl that Linda, who seemed so fragile and gentle, smiling at him in a friendly way, was actually a clever trickster who was trying to squeeze him as much as possible. Linda was a master of psychological bias, and manipulating people using biases.
“Carl, we need to work on this to clear your way,” Linda said cheerfully. “How about a workshop to raise awareness among your team members? There are so many personality types in the workplace, and it’s not always easy to work with different types. We have to understand the differences and overcome the initial obstacles of communications across different personalities as the entire team.”
In truth, Linda’s suggestion was to divert Carl’s attention from the original direction – solving a problem caused by a single individual with a narcissistic personality. It was an attempt to solve the problem with a generalized framework that there are many different types of people in the workplace, without narrowing down the cause of the problem to one single person.
“People are not flexible enough to adopt themselves to styles that are different from their own, and their inability to recognize these differences can cause friction. But such differences should be overcome by understanding each other. I am also a certified career coach, so I can plan a workshop appropriate for your department. We need to encourage proper awareness among everyone on the team.”
Linda spoke as if the problem Carl was facing had been easily solved. She assured Carl, “I would give you any support you and your team will need, so please share with me any questions or requests.”
Linda was very amused that things were going according to plan. She knew that people would need Linda’s abilities and advice the most when problems occurred. Linda’s full value was shining in the middle of the Swiss office.
“Poor Loser Dog, Carl,” Linda thought.
“He had lost his power after Joe’s recent reorganization. He barely managed to stay on as head of the strategy department, but his ambition almost completely crashed. If any motivation was still left, his focus was solely on how to survive in the organization for the remainder of his career. He could no longer see objectively what was going on around him. As the analogy goes, a drowning person will cling to any help. Even if it’s a witch’s hand.”
Linda was satisfied as she sipped her coffee. Carl was the perfect dog to roll on Linda’s game board. Now she could move Carl any way she wanted. She had successfully deflected the issue away from Danny’s aggressive personality to a general discussion about team development and mutual understanding. This was the state-of-the-art manipulation by Linda, who was pretending to support someone while in fact diverting attention from the true cause to unrelated matters, and to make the situation even worse.
“Carl, you poor fool, I’m going to make you dance the way I want you to dance.”
Linda was thinking so while beaming innocently to Carl.
This story is fictitious and is not based on any real persons or organizations. Copyright: Kunoichi4You 2024
Psychopath in the Next Office 