Tag Archives: #InclusiveLeadership

Are You Falling for Weaponised Incompetence at Work? Here’s How to Stop

Senior Caucasian man holding a blank empty banner covering his mouth with a hand, looking shocked and afraid because of a mistake.
Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash.

I’ve written in the past about how women – especially non-White women – are expected to do the office housework: Those administrative tasks that are important for the business to keep moving but that are undervalued and not likely to result in a promotion.

And last week I learned that office housework has an ally: Weaponised incompetence.

Definition:

Weaponised incompetence or “strategic incompetence” as it’s sometimes called ― is the act of faking incompetence at any one task (though usually an unpleasant one) to get out of doing it.”

Examples:

  • Your partner claims they are “not good” at household chores so you do them.
  • Your family says that they are rubbish at planning, so you get stuck with organising family gatherings.
  • Your roommate consistently does a poor job at cleaning the toilet so you step in and do it yourself.

But it’s also alive and well in the workplace.

How do you identify weaponised incompetence at the workplace?

By the task

They are typically mundane tasks or activities perceived as low-value – taking the minutes, planning office events, handling conflict among colleagues, or soothing unhappy customers.

By what they tell you

  • You’re praised by how well you do the task, e.g. “You’re naturally good at taking notes during the meetings”.
  • They make you responsible for their faked incompetence and delegate the task to you, e.g. ” Remember last time how bad it was when I did it? You’re so much better than me at this”.
  • They say they don’t know how to do it, e.g. “It’s so difficult to update the Excel spreadsheet with the new leads”.

By what they do

Some strategies to deal with weaponised incompetence

  • Recognise you’ve been manipulated.
  • Communicate the patterns you’ve noticed.
  • Set boundaries AND STICK TO THEM.
  • Leave them on their own to figure things out
  • Coach them through doing the task themselves.
  • Take the opportunity to start a discussion about how valuable is the task, who should be doing it, and how it should be rewarded.

Are you a “perpetrator” of weaponised incompetence?

It’s also important that women – and people belonging to other protected categories – check if we are using weaponised incompetence against other people. For example, as I mentioned above, non-White women are expected to do more office housework than White women.

We, White women, need to step up and help break the cycle rather than reinforce it.

The first step is awareness.

  1. Look at the low-value tasks you convince yourself “you’re not to be good at” or that you don’t want to learn.
  2. Reflect on the reasons why you don’t want to learn to do them or why you think you’re not good at them.

Next, think about to whom you deflect that task.

  1. Is it always the same person?
  2. Is there a reason why the task shouldn’t be rotated among other people?

If it’s always the same person and the task is not core to the person’s role, step up and break the cycle of weaponised incompetence.

Final reflections

During an insightful discussion, Rose Cartolari challenged the use of weaponised incompetence as an expression that may further the divide between the giver and the receiver of the action. Instead, she offered the less violent and loaded term learned helplessness for reflection.

The American Psychological Association defines learned helplessness as “a phenomenon in which repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in individuals failing to use any control options that may later become available. Essentially, individuals are said to learn that they lack behavioral control over environmental events, which, in turn, undermines the motivation to make changes or attempt to alter situations”.

I wonder if a term like strategic helplessness could be used instead of weaponised incompetence. I love to get your feedback on the comments on this expression.

BACK TO YOU: What do you do when co-workers use weaponised incompetence to get you to do low-value/unpromotable tasks?

A gift from me to you

Are you interested in discussing how setting boundaries can help you achieve your professional and personal goals?

Then book a free strategy session with me.

What women leaders want: A fresh perspective on retention strategies

Bar chart with the title "if you considered leaving the workforce in 2022, which of the following would make you more likely to stay?". Feeling more valued is at the top with 74%, increased pay second with 60%, and promotion to a higher level of responsibility is the third with 41%.
Results from Chief’s Make Work Work survey.

I’m so tired of bland business advice about how to retain women in leadership positions

  • Talk about the purpose.
  • Given them flexibility.
  • Build an inclusive workplace.

Why bland? Because it’s not a strategy, it’s the minimum.

That’s why it was so refreshing to read Chief‘s article “What women leaders really want at work

Chief’s “Make Work Work” survey of 847 Chief Members, all of whom are women at the VP level or above and who collectively manage $220 billion of the U.S. economy found that – surprise, surprise – there’s a massive disconnect between what companies think women want at work versus what they actually want. To be honest, that’s not a big surprise for me. Already in 2019, I wrote about the disconnect between HR and millennial women on the top reasons why those women leave companies.

So, what’s at the top of the wishlist for those 847 female leaders? In other words, if they considered leaving the workforce in 2022, which would make them more likely to stay?

Feeling more valued – Recently, I read in a community of women in tech a post from a female VP that is routinely expected to play the “secretary” for the exec team: Writing minutes, sending reminders… How valued do you think she feels?

Increased pay – Who would have guessed that women want to be paid as much as White men?

Promotion to a higher level of responsibility – Another shocker! I was sure women don’t care about promotions…

What retain women executives? In order of priority

1.     Power

2.     Money

Is that so different that what male leaders want?

Quiet quitting and rusting-out

So what happens to those that remain in their jobs and don’t get what they want?

In the last six months, there’s been a lot of chatter about quiet quitting. As per Forbes, “burned-out or unsatisfied employees put forth the least amount of effort possible to keep their paychecks”. Whilst for some this is a euphemism for lazy workers, others have made the case that quiet quitting can also be understood as refusing to be a workaholic and instead strictly delivering the work that matches your role and remuneration. But it’s not the only option.

Last week, I learned a new word rust-out: the condition of being chronically under-stimulated, uninspired, and unsatisfied at work

In an article in Stylist, Sharon Peake mentions that “rust-out is also more likely to affect women than men due to the unique workplace barriers that women experience, such as the double burden of paid and unpaid (domestic) work. This often leads highly capable and experienced women to return to work part-time, working at a lower level of responsibility after maternity leave, or even opting out of the workforce.” Moreover, “it can cause employees to ‘doom loop’. that is, repeat unhelpful stories about ourselves.”

In my post Join the conversation: How has mansplaining impacted your life? I mentioned the importance of having words to explain and validate our experiences.

I can finally name the experience of all those fantastic women that started with me in tech years ago and that were given unappealing part-time jobs when they came back from maternity leave, without access to the plumb assignments that lead to career progression.

Their organisations had condemned them to rust out in their jobs.

3 things we should unlearn from COVID-19

Finger clicking on a button that has the inscription “31 December 2019”.

Figure adapted by Patricia Gestoso from this image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay .

(7 min read)

Imagine you go into a one-week change management training with the expectation is that when you are back to work you’ll reassure everybody that there is no need to change. How does that sound?

Actually, this is what’s happening right now. We’ve been in a change management boot camp for 3 months now, at the cost of $2-4 trillion US$ (UNCTAD, Asian Development Bank), but most leaders keep using sentences such as “back to normal” and “resume”, or simply they have gone hiding. Do they really believe we can all go backwards in time to 31 December 2019? Are they lacking the creativity and energy to be the catalyst for a different future miles away from their vision four months ago? Or are they simply patronizing their citizens and employees by thinking that if they keep insisting on going forward to the past, we’ll all close our eyes to our individual and collective experiences during this crisis?

If it’s the latest, it’s not working.

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Inclusive leadership in the time of the coronavirus is also worrying about food and toilet paper

Picture of the empty shelves in a supermarket in England. Picture taken on 14th March 2020 by Patricia Gestoso©

Picture of empty shelves in a supermarket in England. Picture taken on 14th March 2020 by Patricia Gestoso ©.

(3 min read)

Last week, I asked a colleague how her recent transition to remote working was going on. Was her internet and VPN working ok? Did she get access to the docking station, screen, and mouse from the office? Was she proactively taking breaks?

Her answers reassured me: Yes, yes, and yes.

She also told me that after finishing her work at 6.00 pm she rushed to the supermarket to only find broccoli and Brussels sprouts. We made fun about how some people rather starve than eat certain food. It also made me realize that I’ve failed as a leader.

The scarcity trap

The picture that accompanies this post it’s how the supermarkets looked like where I live a week ago. It’s how they looked all this week too. And this weekend as well.  Me too, I’ve felt the pain and stress of visiting 3, 4, 5 supermarkets to gather the basic food and toiletries I needed.

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