Setting up to fail

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"Setting up to fail" is a phrase denoting a no-win situation designed in such a way that the person in the situation cannot succeed at the task which they have been assigned. It is considered a form of workplace bullying. [1]

Contents

There are also situations in which an organization or project is set up to fail, [2] [3] and where individuals set themselves up to fail. [4]

The first known documented use of "set up to fail" was in 1969 in the United States. [5]

In the workplace

Setting up to fail is a well-established workplace bullying tactic. [6] [7] [8] One technique is to overload with work, while denying the victim the authority to handle it and over-interfering; [9] another is the withholding of the information necessary to succeed. [10]

If a person puts another individual (usually a subordinate) in a stressful situation in which failure is almost certain, this may be an aspect of bullying wherein the outcome can then be used to discredit and blame the victim. [11] Sometimes, this may involve the bully covertly sabotaging and undermining an objective that may have otherwise been achievable. This type of bullying may be the result of the projection of the bully's own feelings of inadequacy onto the victim. [12]

There can be cases where an employee is set up to fail because the stated goals of the task are considered harmful to the organization; an internal investigation is one example. Institutions may protect themselves by "going through the motions" of a sham investigation in which the findings conveniently fail to find any evidence of wrongdoing by the authorities involved with setting up the investigation.

Another case where employees are set up to fail is one in which new employees, or redundant employees, are considered harmful or a threat to other employees, resulting in their efforts to sabotage others work to maintain their positions if a future reduction in force is anticipated.

Bigotry

Minorities seeking positions in society are often set up to fail in the face of covert institutional racism or sexism  – something feared for example by the first Black US naval officers. [13] Concurrently, individuals from the larger group can be set up to fail during implementations of workplace programs in color consciousness.

Families

Parents may have excessive expectations for their children's academic success for instance, thus setting them up for failure by hoping they may solve their parents' problems for them. [14] The result may be to create a self-destructive syndrome in the child – the so-called Divine Child complex. [15]

Therapy

Therapy may be sabotaged by either the client or the provider. The client, both hoping for and fearing the possibility of real help, may impose conditions on the therapy that all but guarantee its failure. [16] Conversely, the helper, needing to keep clients in a state of dependency, [17] may be threatened by the prospect of success/closure, and undermine the therapy accordingly. [18]

Setting oneself up to fail

A person setting themselves up for failure may do so because they have a fear of failure, an unrealistic assessment of their own abilities, or because they are naive and uninformed regarding the abilities necessary to succeed. In some cases, an individual has an unjustified expectation that they will fail, a self-reinforcing negative spiral, [4] or failure neurosis [19]  – perhaps driven by a sense of guilt, [20] or by the compulsion to repeat self-destructive behaviour. [21]

In television

It is a tactic used in reality television, where situations are engineered to produce certain results. [3] My Kitchen Rules contestant Emily Cheung told the reporter that "she believes the producers set them up for failure in the instant restaurant round when they were told at 6 o'clock the night before they had to cook a Chinese dish they weren't familiar with—smoked quail—and scored 2 out of 10". [3] The same article goes on to state that, "A former Apprentice contestant feels similarly manipulated, saying he believed producers had already decided who they wanted to win when he was eliminated." [3]

9/11 Commission

9/11 Commission member Lee H. Hamilton was quoted as saying that "the Commission was set up to fail"; some observers interpreted this as meaning that he was dissatisfied with the results of the 9/11 Commission Report, and conspiracy theory developed. The context of the interview transcript indicates that Hamilton said his reasoning was that "Tom Kean and I were substitutes—Henry Kissinger and George Mitchell were the first choices; we got started late; we had a very short time frame—indeed, we had to get it extended; we did not have enough money—3 million dollars to conduct an extensive investigation. We needed more, we got more, but it took us a while to get it." [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

Neurosis is a term mainly used today by followers of Freudian thinking to describe mental disorders caused by past anxiety, often that has been repressed. In recent history, the term has been used to refer to anxiety-related conditions more generally.

Mobbing, as a sociological term, means bullying of an individual by a group, in any context, such as a family, peer group, school, workplace, neighborhood, community, or online. When it occurs as physical and emotional abuse in the workplace, such as "ganging up" by co-workers, subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation, it is also referred to as malicious, nonsexual, non-racial/racial, general harassment.

Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other types of aggression. To these descriptions, one can also add the Kantian notion of the wrongness of using another human being as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. Some sources describe abuse as "socially constructed", which means there may be more or less recognition of the suffering of a victim at different times and societies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bullying</span> Use of force or coercion to abuse or intimidate others

Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception of an imbalance of physical or social power. This imbalance distinguishes bullying from conflict. Bullying is a subcategory of aggressive behavior characterized by hostile intent, imbalance of power and repetition over a period of time.

Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is an active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy, the aim of which is to resolve emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and to help people to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.

Impostor syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or impostorism, is a psychological occurrence in which people doubt their skills, talents, or accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as frauds. Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon do not believe they deserve their success or luck. They may incorrectly attribute it to the Matthew effect or the Dunning–Kruger effect, or they may think that they are deceiving others because they feel as if they are not as intelligent as they outwardly portray themselves to be. Impostor syndrome can stem from and result in strained personal relationships and can hinder people from achieving their full potential in their fields of interest.

Individual psychology is a psychological method or science founded by the Viennese psychiatrist Alfred Adler. The English edition of Adler's work on the subject (1925) is a collection of papers and lectures given mainly between 1912 and 1914. The papers cover the whole range of human psychology in a single survey, and were intended to mirror the indivisible unity of the personality.

Workplace bullying is a persistent pattern of mistreatment from others in the workplace that causes either physical or emotional harm. It can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, psychological, and physical abuse, as well as humiliation. This type of workplace aggression is particularly difficult because, unlike the typical school bully, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society. In the majority of cases, bullying in the workplace is reported as having been done by someone who has authority over the victim. However, bullies can also be peers, and subordinates. When subordinates participate in bullying this phenomenon is known as upwards bullying .The least visible segment of workplace bullying involves upwards bullying where bully- ing tactics are manipulated and applied against “the boss,” usually for strategically designed outcomes.

A toxic leader is a person who has responsibility for a group of people or an organization, and who abuses the leader–follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse condition than it was in. Good and bad leadership styles can propagate downwards in an organisation, and there may therefore be little support to be gained by reporting toxic leadership upwards in the hierarchy.

Mind games are actions performed for reasons of psychological one-upmanship, often employing passive–aggressive behavior to specifically demoralize or dis-empower the thinking subject, making the aggressor look superior. It also describes the unconscious games played by people engaged in ulterior transactions of which they are not fully aware, and which transactional analysis considers to form a central element of social life all over the world.

Psychological resistance, also known as psychological resistance to change, is the phenomenon often encountered in clinical practice in which patients either directly or indirectly exhibit paradoxical opposing behaviors in presumably a clinically initiated push and pull of a change process. In other words, the concept of psychological resistance is that patients are likely to resist physician suggestions to change behavior or accept certain treatments regardless of whether that change will improve their condition. It impedes the development of authentic, reciprocally nurturing experiences in a clinical setting. Psychological resistance can manifest in various ways, such as denying the existence or severity of a problem, rationalizing or minimizing one's responsibility for it, rejecting or distrusting the therapist's or consultant's suggestions, withholding or distorting information, or sabotaging the treatment process. It is established that the common source of resistances and defenses is shame. This and similar negative attitudes may be the result of social stigmatization of a particular condition, such as psychological resistance towards insulin treatment of diabetes.

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Workplace deviance, in group psychology, may be described as the deliberate desire to cause harm to an organization – more specifically, a workplace. The concept has become an instrumental component in the field of organizational communication. More accurately, it can be seen as "voluntary behavior that violates institutionalized norms and in doing so threatens the well-being of the organization".

Emotions in the workplace play a large role in how an entire organization communicates within itself and to the outside world. "Events at work have real emotional impact on participants. The consequences of emotional states in the workplace, both behaviors and attitudes, have substantial significance for individuals, groups, and society". "Positive emotions in the workplace help employees obtain favorable outcomes including achievement, job enrichment and higher quality social context". "Negative emotions, such as fear, anger, stress, hostility, sadness, and guilt, however increase the predictability of workplace deviance,", and how the outside world views the organization.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee's behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. This behavior can harm the organization, other people within it, and other people and organizations outside it, including employers, other employees, suppliers, clients, patients and citizens. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.

Social undermining is the expression of negative emotions directed towards a particular person or negative evaluations of the person as a way to prevent the person from achieving their goals.

As a result of advances in technology, information technology has become a highly important economic sector. Although it is relatively new, this industry still experiences many of the workplace culture problems of older industries. Bullying is common in IT, leading to high sickness rates, low morale, poor productivity and high staff turnover. Deadline-driven project work and stressed-out managers take their toll on IT professionals.

Abusive supervision is most commonly studied in the context of the workplace, although it can arise in other areas such as in the household and at school. "Abusive supervision has been investigated as an antecedent to negative subordinate workplace outcome." "Workplace violence has combination of situational and personal factors". The study that was conducted looked at the link between abusive supervision and different workplace events.

Narcissism in the workplace involves the impact of narcissistic employees and managers in workplace settings.

Machiavellianism in the workplace is a concept studied by many organizational psychologists. Conceptualized originally by Richard Christie and Florence Geis, Machiavellianism refers to a psychological trait concept where individuals behave in a cold and duplicitous manner. It has in recent times been adapted and applied to the context of the workplace and organizations by many writers and academics.

References

  1. ↑ Stambor, Zak."Bullying stems from fear, apathy." APA.com. Originally published in Monitor on Psychology. American Psychological Association. July/August 2006, vol. 37, no. 7. p. 72
  2. 1 2 Quotes - 9/11 Commission member said Commission was set up to fail.Skeptic Project. Accessed September 5, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Fenton, Andrew and Anna Brain. "Insiders say sleep deprivation and setting contestants up to fail are common tricks of the trade". The Daily Telegraph (Australia). September 5, 2015. Accessed September 5, 2015. Originally from news.com.au Archived 2020-06-20 at the Wayback Machine .
  4. 1 2 R. E. Boyatzis/A. McKee, Resonant Leadership (2005) p. 156
  5. ↑ Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1969: Hearings, Ninety-first Congress, First Session, on H.R. 513
  6. ↑ Peyton, PR. Dignity at Work: Eliminate Bullying and Create a Positive Working Environment (2003)
  7. ↑ Rayner C, Hoel H A. "Summary Review of Literature Relating to Workplace Bullying", Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, volume 7, issue 3, pages 181–191, June 1997
  8. ↑ Randle J Workplace Bullying in the NHS (2006)
  9. ↑ J-F Manzoni/J-L Barsoux, The Set-up-to-fail Syndrome (2007) p. 5 and p. 12
  10. ↑ Tim Field, Bully in Sight, Success Unlimited (1996) pp. 63–7 ISBN   978-0-9529121-0-1
  11. ↑ Tim Field, Bully in Sight Success Unlimited (1996) p. 43 ISBN   978-0-9529121-0-1
  12. ↑ S. White, An Introduction to the Psychodynamics of Workplace Bullying (2013) pp. 31–2
  13. ↑ Paul Stillwell/Colin L Powell, The Golden Thirteen (2003) p. 98 and p. 86
  14. ↑ Debra Wesselmann, The Whole Parent (2003) p. 104
  15. ↑ Polly Young-Eisendrath, Women and Desire (London 2000) p. 107 and p. 113
  16. ↑ Neville Symington, Narcissism (2003) p. 70
  17. ↑ P. Casement, Further Learning from the Patient (1990) p. 144
  18. ↑ Eric Berne, Games People Play (1966) pp. 126–7
  19. ↑ De Mijolla, Alain. "Failure neurosis". Enotes. Retrieved 8 April 2013.
  20. ↑ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 506
  21. ↑ S, Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) pp. 292–3
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