Teaming Up on the Passive-Aggressive Employee

Among personality behaviors, the passive-aggressive employee can be the most difficult to work with. The P-A seems to actively endorse an idea or action, then passively resists it. She may tell you how much you deserved a promotion, then work to undermine you. This person is often subdued, obstructionist and negative — always coming up with excuses why things can’t get done. They play the victim like Sir Laurence Olivier played Othello.

This is behavior in which “hostility wears a mask of passivity,” according to Scott Wetzler, author of Living with the Passive-Aggressive Man.

Managers dealing with passive-aggressives can quickly become beaten down in face-to-face encounters, moving from confusion to frustration to resignation.

Look, you can’t change someone’s personality — that’s a matter for therapists to take on. But managers can act in ways that make them more productive.

One potential remedy is to rely on your team to set and reinforce expectations for the person. This advice, offered by executive coaches Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins, suggests that peer pressure and shared expectations can overcome passive resistance.

“For example,” they write on HBR.org, “if you’re in a meeting discussing next steps, make sure everyone articulates what they heard and verbally communicates what they commit to in specific terms (not just head nodding). This will accomplish two things: (1) your peer will have to openly declare his commitment to follow through and (2) the rest of the team will expect follow through. Ensure there are ways to solidify expectation setting and follow through across the team.”

In other words, you are not using a team to team-up on the person, but rather to include them as part of the group, with an established role and expectations.

How do you deal with passive-aggressive employees? Is termination the only cure?

By Sean Silverthorne

Posted in: Experimental Society