The story of how the usual “Good morning, Claudia Petrovna” from a work colleague hinders the inherent mechanism of aggression, and, perhaps, saves someone’s life at the next office meeting.

Half a step from the dream team

I have no habit of yelling at my team.

There is no such tool in my managerial arsenal, although I have been in management for a long time. And in general, in 2019, the boss screaming in the office is like a dinosaur in the middle of a megacity. It will cause surprise and discouragement, but no more. After all, such agile, team, turquoise, as we are, so no longer scare. We - IT professionals already know what the Dream Team should look like. And I myself have literally half a step left before it. Only now I can’t walk it.

Sometimes life in the office seems unbearable. And this despite the constant “forgive me, I probably will ask a stupid question ...”, “thank you, for the answer ...”, “this is a very valuable remark ...”, “yes, I absolutely agree with you ...”. Sometimes I even feel nostalgia for the times when you could just say “Lesha, you are the fucking point”.

But I understand that the past can no longer be returned, but it is impossible to live with such a present. So it's time to go figure out why everyone seems to love each other, but there is no happiness. This will do.

main reason

Having started to understand the situation, I came across an interesting fact: what do we feel if a familiar person comes into our room, but does not say hello and in general behaves as if there is no one else in the room? Full ignore.

We feel misunderstanding, irritation and even hostility. It turns out that the suppression of the usual greeting is perceived and felt by us as open aggression.

Aggression!

It turns out that shouting, punching the table and throwing heavy objects at subordinates is not necessary. The aggression did not go anywhere, as I thought. She just changed. And I can remember a lot of similar manifestations in my practice.

The nature of aggression to their

But why should humanity hate its own kind?

There are already a lot of enemies around us. Yes, and develop, and progress easier in teams. But no. It turned out that man is not as different from a monkey as we would like to think.



There is the concept of intraspecific aggression in animals, and it plays the following important roles for the evolution of a species:

1. Natural selection
   
   Darwin asked a question and answered it himself: from the point of view of the future of the whole species, it is more profitable for the territory to be occupied by a stronger representative. And it turns out to be in fights, primarily between their own tribesmen.
   
   In the modern world, the interpretation has changed from “strong” to “adapted”, but the essence has been preserved.
2. Hierarchy
   
   Hierarchical instinct has, perhaps, the greatest influence of our behavior in society. The hierarchical system is more orderly and solid, and it is shaped by our desire to protect our social position and move higher.
   
   Aggression also helps to determine where the power, and where submission. Strong at the top, weak at the bottom.
3. Resettlement
   
   Intraspecific aggression contributes to the dispersal of one species over a larger area.
   We are angry, we quarrel, we fight, driving around on apartments, cities, the countries.
   
   And as a result we have:
   
   
   • resistance of the entire species to the external environment. Global cooling, rapid frost, flooding - any global catastrophe causes less damage to the population, distributed over a larger area;
   • intraspecific diversity - this type of settlement does not allow to unite into groups on any one basis (kinship, profession). Each individual getting into its habitat takes a certain role there. This contributes to the diversity of groups and, as a result, sustainability.

What have we learned?

• That intraspecific aggression is inherent in us by nature.
• Understood why she did it.
• Received a scientific justification for their aggressive behavior. Which can be used at the next meeting.

And this mechanism of intraspecific aggression works not only in humans. But ... not without "but".

What's wrong with us

There was a study to measure the level of intraspecific aggression in animals. About 80% of all mammal species were included in the sample.

Scientists believed how many of the 100 deaths within one species occurred from their own tribesman.



What conclusions they came to:

• 40% of the species studied are seen in aggressive behavior towards their own kind;
• the average level of lethal aggression to stay in the area: 0.3% (three murders per thousand deaths);
• the highest level of aggression is observed in schooling and territorial animals;
• most mammals have a special braking mechanism that prevents the complete destruction of a kind.

And for me, as for a researcher of office aggression, the latter fact is most important, because people just have no such mechanism of inhibition.

But why did this happen?

The main task of the aggression deterrence mechanism is to protect all “professional” predators from the use of weapons (claws, teeth, poison) against their relatives.

Of course, sometimes these animals and birds kill their relatives, invading the territory of their group. However, this is still an exception. And the fact remains: all heavily armed predators must have highly developed braking mechanisms that prevent the self-destruction of the species.

In contrast, a person without improvised means will need a lot of time to cause lethal harm to his fellow tribesman. Therefore, nature simply did not endow us with restraining aggression mechanisms. She did not know that a person would suddenly take a stick in his hand, then a spear, and after a few thousand years would create a bomb capable of destroying hundreds of thousands of people, as happened in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.



And all this we should wait in the office.

This is not about bombs, of course, and not even about spears.

For us, in order to sense or express aggression, it is enough to have a scornful look, casually cast for a handshake, a wry smile at a general meeting. Take a closer look and you will see how often we experience and use these techniques. And all of them are ways to release accumulated aggression.

But we cannot produce anger and lawlessness with every next mitap. Need solutions /

Perfect team

Looking ahead, I will share a sample of the perfect team. This is a classic gang.



In the right gang should always be:

• concepts
• enemy
• novice initiation rituals

They seemed to have studied research in the field of intraspecific aggression, found 3 basic rules and applied them.

Translated into civil language, they sound like this

• Morals and Manners
• Reorientation
• Personal acquaintance

Morals and Manners

Morals are the practical rules and norms formed by the long-term experience of mankind, which dictate how people behave in personal relationships or in society.

One of the first functions of morality in the history of mankind was to restore the lost balance between armament and the absence of a braking mechanism, which we discussed above.

What is manners?

In our case, we consider manners as rules of good form.

They are quite rigidly fixed in our culture. Yes, in every culture there are some peculiarities unique to it, but all of them are aimed at one goal - the creation of social unions.

Take for example a small ritual - to greet at a meeting.
Smile, lend a hand ...
And if you on the eve of the next "meeting" talked to each other too much? Smiles we do not get.
And we immediately feel it: something is wrong, a person is angry, offended.
The deliberate suppression of such rituals is equated by us with open aggression.

How to apply it in life:

• it is necessary to encourage the observance of moral standards and good manners in the collective. Create and maintain some of their own rituals, slang, internal jokes;
• knowing that the slightest violation of generally accepted norms can be an indicator of some kind of conflict - to pay attention to such manifestations. You can stop any unpleasant situations in the future;
• and of course not to succumb to such behavior itself. Especially if you are in a leadership position. Whether you like it or not, you will be guided. And everything you do goes down quickly and covers a large number of people.

But morality and the norm of behavior is only an instrument of deterrence. And aggressiveness, as we remember, is given to us by nature. She will continue to accumulate in us until she finds a way out. And here it is in our interest to manage this by sending it where we need to go.

Reorientation

Reorientation is the main mechanism for neutralizing intraspecific aggression.
Than to hate each other, let's better hate someone else.

Easy way: aggression to the client, supplier, support service, mobile operator.
Difficult, but correct: aggression to a problem or task that needs to be solved.

To do this, we must have a common goal and a common enemy.

In life:

• the client constantly sends new edits, and you don’t understand why; the performer does not finish the work to the end; a person does not do what you expected from him or do not do what you expected; people just don't want to do work. Make sure everyone has an understanding of the common goal. Perhaps the team simply does not understand what should happen in the end, so they don’t know how to do it right or don’t want to do it at all;
• frequent transition to the individual; a discussion in the style of “he must ... she owes ...”; shifting responsibility to each other. Add for the team "correct" common enemies, shift the focus from the personalities to the problems that arise.

What is the risk?

To make enemies from other employees of the company, most often - from employees of other departments (bad accountants, slow programmers, stupid leadership). This is a very popular, and, in my opinion, very undervalued behavior ...

Personal acquaintance

The “we and them” problem stems from the most common structure for most organizations.

There is a general director, there are heads of departments and divisions. The heads protect their department as children of their relatives. Which is very good in principle.

But when it comes to solving work issues, we hear: yes, these are all marketers / designers / programmers /…. Any representative of another department. Some abstract unknown people who are very easy to hate.

Impersonation is good soil for aggression, and personal acquaintance is bad.

There should not be “marketers” when there is “Olga, Maria, Mikhail ...”.
There should be no “programmers” when there is “Pavel, Ivan, Nastya ...”.

And I repeat: very often in organizations the cronyism in departments flourishes, which the leaders themselves breed. What is bad in my opinion.

Here, by the way, you can recall the approach with project teams, when employees from different departments are assembled (or simply appointed) for the same task. Then, with proper organization, such a team has both a goal and an “enemy” and personal acquaintance.

Idea short

• People are aggressive in nature.
• In offices, passive aggression is most often manifested.
• Three important tools for disarming: reorientation, morality and manners, personal acquaintance.

Meet, smile, discuss.

I am sure that this greatly affects the productivity of our offices. And even more on a good mood every working day.