Reference reading
Vindictiveness
Using organizational power to make someone pay for an unwelcome truth.
A habitual disposition to seek payback against someone for a real or perceived injury, slight, embarrassment or challenge.
Imagine this: After a colleague reports an embarrassing defect, the leader turns from examining the defect to excluding its reporter.
How the pattern works
The damaged wheel remains after its reporter is cut out of the photograph. Vindictiveness changes the object of attention: the leader turns from what needs correction to who should suffer for the embarrassment. The response may look administrative even when its direction is personal.
Retaliation against a whistleblower can express this motive. A role is narrowed, an invitation disappears or an ordinary request acquires exceptional obstacles after a damaging report. Retaliation can also seek to conceal wrongdoing or deter further disclosure; an outward act alone does not establish which motive operates. The distinctive concern here is the wish for payback.
What it costs the work
The target bears the immediate burden, but others receive information about the cost of candor. Problems may arrive later and in a less recognizable form. The leader can protect a reputation from an uncomfortable messenger while depriving the organization of the correction the message made possible.
A distinction worth keeping
Fair accountability addresses conduct through proportionate, consistent reasons. It can examine an issue about how a report was handled without treating embarrassment as an offense. Vindictiveness seeks repayment for a perceived injury; Domineeringness seeks control, and Callousness can disregard suffering without taking satisfaction in punishment.
What a useful response can change
Separate the substance of the report, any legitimate issue about its handling and the personal discomfort it caused. None should quietly decide the others.
Decisions affecting someone who raised an objection need reasons that can withstand appropriate examination. A private score is easier to pursue when ordinary decisions have no visible grounds.
Repair may require reversing a retaliatory obstacle and examining the original defect. This reading does not instruct a person to confront a retaliator or make a disclosure; power, privacy, support and actual danger affect available options.
Questions for reflection
- Would this consequence still seem fitting if the report had not embarrassed me?
- Have I made it easier to solve the problem or harder to mention it?
Other perspectives
Love is an agreeable, resentment a disagreeable passion; and accordingly we are not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships, as that they should enter into our resentments.
Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source
Smith observes how strongly people seek companions for resentment. A leader’s private grievance can consequently acquire a coalition without acquiring a defensible reason for punishment.
If our friend has been injured, we readily sympathize with his resentment, and grow angry with the very person with whom he is angry.
Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · Read the source
Fellow-feeling can spread anger before its grounds have been examined. This historical account invites scrutiny of a leader’s alliances; it does not establish that every expression of solidarity is vindictive.