The No. 1 Way To Stop A Toxic Office Hater In His Tracks

Here’s the setting. You realize something’s wrong—deeply wrong—with the way things are going in your organization. You’ve done the research. You've gotten consultancy from insiders and ousiders. And, through side-bars with colleagues and stakeholders, you've gathered buy-in for the changes you want to make.

So, feeling confident, you decide to present everyone with a solution that will work.

You call a big meeting. Everyone attends—even the CEO. And generally speaking, everyone’s in a great mood. They're relieved someone’s finally going to address the elephant in the room—that is, the problem you’ve identified.

Yet, no sooner do you start your presentation and turn to slide 3 does it happen...

One of the people who’d earlier pledged his undying support, starts tearing you down.

It’s Bob, from Finance. He starts launching torpedoes at your data and your assumptions. Then he starts asking questions you know he already knows are unanswerable. Questions he’s aware can only be addressed several steps down the road.

Seeing your nervousness and surprise, Bob takes further advantage.

He starts denying the earlier assurances he gave you during your side-bars. Indeed, he starts suggesting you never even told him what you were doing. In the end, it becomes clear Bob doesn’t want your program to happen.

In fact, it becomes clear Bob might even want you to lose your job.

And with each of his subsequent questions, jokes and rude comments, he sows more and more doubt among everyone in the room—including the CEO. Others chime in and it becomes apparent you and your program are in trouble.

You’re crushed. You’re angry. You’re shocked. And you realize all at once you’ve a toxic hater on your hands.

Bob’s a “frenemy”. He gained your confidence over an extended period, only to attack you once the stakes were highest. For that reason, you feel like a fool for trusting him. And as you look around, you feel the room closing in.

Finally, the worst happens. The CEO—who’s been relatively quiet up to that point—excuses herself to take a call.

Others in the room start getting restless. Their body language suggests they want you to end the meeting. You start feeling an epic fail coming on—and a headache. You start wondering whether you've a cardboard box big enough to carry all your office junk to the car.

All is lost... Or is it?

Pause for a moment. It’s correct to think you made some mistakes. Chief among them: you didn’t recognize Bob as a frenemy. In a later post, we’ll talk about that.

Also, there are ways of gathering sentiment and doing side-bars that leverage behavioral science. You might not have known about those or followed those ways. We’ll talk about that in a later post also.

But mistakes notwithstanding, there’s still one way you can stop that despicable, toxic, pretend-friend, enemy, hater, Bob, right in his tracks:

Give him a job!

That’s right: Give Bob the official job of tearing down what you’re building.

And don’t wait until the meeting’s over, either. Do it right then and there—in the heat of the moment.

Otherwise, if you wait, Bob will bask in the praise of the semi-haters he’s recruited to his side. Then, after the meeting, he’ll get high-fives and you’ll be chasing after him like a lost puppy. But by then, he’ll excuse himself and run off to catch the CEO—for lunch.

So instead, stand your ground.

While you still have the floor say this: “Bob, I am so excited you’ve dug deep into this. It shows me we’re both in agreement on this huge issue. Let me propose something. Let's shift this whole presentation around. Let's have you lead the charge of figuring out why we shouldn't do this."

And then, as Bob stutters to find an answer, you continue...

“No, no, you’re up to the task, buddy. I know it. I’m just happy to have someone on board who can keep me on the right track. Because the questions you’re asking are valid ones. They just need more than one head to answer them. So I think all of us here in this room agree you’re the best person to offer that other head.”

At that very moment, you've destroyed Bob.

Every head and all eyes turn towards him. And the half smirk you give him when that happens—the one only he sees—will burn worse than any pepper spray you could have whipped out of your purse moments ago while he was attacking you.

He’ll stutter and grasp for words. Then he’ll agree. And that’s when you go in for the kill...

As the CEO walks back in, you announce that you and Bob will be working together to make this project happen. The CEO will agree. And, in one fail swoop, you’ll have gotten your project approved and turned your sworn, toxic, hating frenemy into your...pet.

And after the meeting's finished, you'll be the one getting high-fives. Bob will be the one trying to run up to you like a lost puppy. But before he can reach you, you’ll excuse yourself to catch up to the CEO—for lunch.

But wait: what just happened?

Now let’s double back. There’s science to the solution I’ve proposed here and I’ll just mention its main contours.

The first relates to something called, cognitive control. When Bob started attacking, you immediately went through a set of emotions: surprise, first and foremost. Once you discovered Bob actually meant you harm, your fight or flight response kicked in.

Cognitive control is your ability to stop either of these extreme reactions.

Had you fought Bob, your lack of preparedness, given his surprise attack, might have led to defeat. At the same time, closing the meeting to reconvene later—that is, fleeing—would also have established your defeat.

But, by consciously practicing control of these extreme emotions there’s hope. That takes practice: it’s a habit. And it works.

Next, as you began realizing you were losing ground to Bob as he attacked, your mind brought into play a certain mental hangup. It’s called, loss aversion.

When we feel we’re facing an inevitable loss, loss aversion drives us to take excessive risks. Quite often, this is a bad thing. For example, if we fear losing our jobs because of a new company initiative, we might drag our feet or subconsciously sabotage things. If we’re caught, we definitely lose our jobs, but it’s a risk we feel is necessary to take.

In this case above, however, loss aversion can work in our favor.

Just about anyone would admit confronting a toxic hater like Bob in the way I suggested seems risky. After all, Bob could be more senior or more powerful. Yet, it’s a risk worth taking. And, as I said, you'd lose any other way. Nonetheless, without loss aversion, you might lack the courage. So cognitive control helps again in making sure the risk you take is the right one.

But there’s even more: by confronting Bob on the spot you actually shift whatever power he thinks he's just acquired, in your favor.

That shifts our psychoanalysis over to Bob...

The moment Bob tried to take the floor from you, he exposed his left flank. He wanted to make the conversation about him and his “brilliant," alternative idea. Yet, his critique of your project turned him into a narcissist—even if only a temporary one.

But here’s the thing with narcissists: They have a dying need to express their ideas and brilliance.

Narcissists like Bob are more interested in telling everyone about their own greatness. They're only interested in destroying your plans if those plans are an obstacle. Otherwise, they claim them as their own. So when you specifically gave Bob the job of poking holes in your project, it disarmed him and put him off balance.

That’s not what Bob wanted. He didn’t want to work from your template. He was neither willing nor prepared to sideline himself so as to draw greater attention to you.

Moreover, as soon as Bob started feeling his initial attack was effective, he started building up a psychological endowment. That was his belief he was winning the crowd over to his side, including and especially, the CEO.

How could he think this given it was your show?

It's something called groupthink. As long as everyone believes there’s consensus—especially in line with the CEO—no one will disagree. You probably did have that consensus until Bob went on attack.

But groupthink is all or nothing. Research shows groups that gain consensus take more extreme positions. And Bob knew that—at least, intuitively. So he wagered if he could get the CEO to nod in agreement, the rest of the group would abandon you and shift to the extreme—i.e., to his position.

But again, that’s risky.

The endowment Bob thinks he’s getting in terms of CEO and group support is not something he wants to lose. But he stood much to gain from it as long as you were off-guard and he had you stumbling. But when you showed you were aware, his endowment became less certain.

In fact, the endowment effect tells us Bob would rather avoid any gamble he'll fall on his face.

So that’s precisely why he backed down.

Bob would rather live to fight another day. And that day, assuming you stay tuned, you’ll also be ready. Moreover, he knows the CEO will aim for consensus. So by making Bob part of your camp—even though he’s really not—you’re casting the impression there’s consensus. Checkmate.

Who says you can't use science to stop a toxic office hater?

*No offense to any Bob’s, Billy-Bob’s, Jim-Bob’s or Robert’s out there.