Passive aggression gets a lot of play when we talk about human behavior these days. It’s unhealthy. It’s all too common. That behavior in a business setting is certainly harmful, but not as pervasive as something far more insidious….passive dependency.

Uh oh

Here’s a test – how many times do you hear the words “I don’t know” in your organization? This phase is perfectly OK if its followed by a comma and a plan of action. But when it’s the whole sentence followed by a period, you have a problem.

How about “Well, I was waiting for…” If people are always waiting for someone else to tell them what to do, you have a problem. If everything flows up the organizational chart, action is delayed, decisions get bottlenecked, and customers are poorly served. Nobody learns anything, you have an organization of drones and robots. The vicious cycle of suckitude repeats over and over until the organization dies a slow death. As Bill the Cat would have said, “Ack!!”

Kill the cancer

Passive dependency demotivates people and eats away at the insides of organizations. Treat it aggressively like the cancer that it is.

It’s not you, it’s me. No really, it might be me

Organizations rife with passive dependency have Papa or Momma Bears at the top. Be careful that’s not you. It’s easy to fall into. Are you being responsible, or have you become despotic (benevolent or not)? Are you a nut about quality control or are you actually a control freak? Are you the answer man, brilliantly handling all queries from your people, blowing them away with your knowledge and wisdom? Is that really efficient in the long run? Worse yet – are you taking a certain joy in being the sees-all, knows-all oracle for all things important? You are the problem and your leadership sucks. Sorry to sound so negative, but you needed to know.

Make it right

There is hope….Try answering questions with “What do YOU think?” and keep asking questions until the answer comes out of someone else’s mouth. Help people to think about the why as often as possible. Never allow “I don’t know” to end with a period. Hock out the hairball of passive dependency. Quickly. Definitively. Now. Really.

Go ahead, invest in your people. Put others in a position to learn, to think, to use their best judgment, to act, to be responsible. Then trust, even when you know stuff will go wrong from time to time. Let them goof it up from occasionally and talk about lessons learned along the way. I know, you don’t think you have time. Do it anyway. You’ll save a ton of time in the long run. It’s an investment you’ll be glad you made.