I was recently working with a manager who has inherited a staff she did not hire and her major responsibility is HR. Of the approximate 15 staffmembers, there are three staff members who dominate this manager's time due to (for lack of a better term) "drama". The drama du jour was this employee did not like a birthday card the practice had given her and kept going from manager to manager; peer to peer trying to get buy-in on her cause because she thought it was given in poor taste. The inside of the card was full of gratitude and admiration for her. I was quietly thanking the management Gods for this staffer not going to patients in trying to prove her point. This manager is consistently triggered by the maneuvers of a small minority. Lately, the majority of the time we spend together is spent by her venting about the minority. It wasn't too long before I realized that she was allowing herself to become a victim of projections.
Management requires us to solve or listen to conlict after the fact and usually only from one of the players. Unfortunately, being absent from the real-time of the conflict puts us at a disadvantage but doesn't excuse us from the responsibility of finding resolution. If you are this far and still wondering why understanding projection in the workplace should matter to you, please allow me. I have an internal management triage mechanism (IMTM-kinda like a management GPS) that divides issues of the day into "drama" and "non-drama". Sometimes we need to manage through the drama to get to the heart of what is or isn't getting done in the practice and when this is the case we will need to navigate through territory without getting caught up in the drama ourselves. This is where understanding the basics of projection in terms of how it relates to managing people could help.
A good working definition of projection for our purposes here is the "qualities, characteristics, or motives we see in the other that can be positive (idealized) or negative." (Kellett, 2007) Positive projections occur when individual project their own desires, wishes, qualities they see in themselves, and possibly their deepest passions onto another. Negatives projections occur more are typically connected to the often unconscious side of our emotions, perceptions and experiences. For instance, a common negative projection is we often make misjudgments about others based on some quality of ourselves that we project onto another. A whole body of work and research exists on this subject, not just from a psychological angle, but from a comunicative angle as well, which is the angle I am addressing here.
Back to the top of the story. The inflamed employee, who did not like her birthday card and felt it wasn't appropriate (despite the oozing gratitude noted in the card) was engaging in negative projection. Perhaps she simply didn't like the outside of the card, but was ignoring the intent i.e. the inside of the card) that simply was not there. She projected what she felt was there (insensitivity to her) and projected that the card was given inappropriately perhaps because she couldn't fathom giving a card like this or writing kind things to her co-workers and management. In other words she complained about what she herself would not be able to do herself.
Here are the management implications. She successfully pulled in her peers, the managing physician, the office manager and the finance manager into her drama. Wondering why the finance manager? She bought the card (last tme she probably does that!). But wait! There's more...the office manager and the finance manager allowed herself to be so affected by the employee's projection, that now I have spent time with both of them talking about this and allowing them to vent.
As exective management, we cannot solve every little drama, however we are in a place to put a stop to the dialogue and redirect the players. The more time and energy set aside for the projections of the day-the more we get away from the good stuff such as focusing on patient care and enabling healthy dialogues in the workplace and stopping those conversations that detract from our goals. We cannot control how our employees or physicians "feel" at work. Engaging in the drama-justifies the drama and puts us in a place of defending or explaining reality. Do we really need to explain reality?
When you have this kind of conlict in your practice it is at times easy to take the bait and when we allow this we run the risk of managing on defense. When we manage in defense mode, we are forced into a place of justifying our decisions, such as justifying the act of giving a well-intended birthday card. This is what we get paid for-managing people effectively. Don't take the bait folks!
References:
Kellett, Peter M. (2007). Conflict dialogue: Working with layers of meaning for productive relationships. Thousan Oaks, CA; Sage Publications.