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.”  This phase is perfectly OK if its followed by a comma and a plan of action.  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.  And may worse yet, nobody learns anything, you have an organization of unhappy robots, and you are destined to repeat this unhappy history.  Blechhh. Ptoooey!  Or, 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.  Resist the control freak trap.  Resist the urge to just answer questions for the sake of expediency.

Make it right

Try answering questions with “What do YOU think?” and keep asking questions until the answer comes out of someone else’s mouth.  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 screw it up from time to time 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.