It's not just tantrums. It's a huge variety of status-reinforcing behaviours which symbolically or actually make the lower-status person uncomfortable in favour of the higher-status person.
Even something like having an entrepreneur stand and present in front of a group of seated money men. They sit in judgement of him, they are comfy and he stands, they relax and he works and struggles to please them.
Or, when bosses make weird symbolic work demands that don't actually make sense. Sometimes there's the idea that they're just looking out for the product and are wrong about something, but there's also often an element of 'I sense some disturbance in the status hierarchy so I'm going to make you do this task we both know is useless just because I say so to remind you that I can'.
Or 'I'm going to be unreasonable to demonstrate that I can'.
Or 'I'm not going to give this question the think-time it really needs; to demonstrate my superior value I'll save myself five minutes while costing you two days to remind everyone that I'm above you'.
A lot of this is subconscious. The people with the power don't always do it intentionally, thinking "I'm going to signal status today." It's just what feels good and intuitive to them, so they execute these status-signalling behaviours without conscious intent.
Which is why people like myself who are honest and oblivious to social signals upset so many managers/etc. We'll honestly and fervently correct your misconceptions without so much as an eye blink. This confers its own sort of status with the rest of the rank-and-file, but doesn't win you any favors come review time. It does make the manager look like an idiot for trying to force you to do something obviously stupid though, which is its own sort of bonus.
Commendable and worth remembering the next time it happens to you. But do remember... Sadly this can backfire. Repeatedly doing this can get you fired, suspended, grounded, or suffering whatever other punitive action the "superior" is capable of metering out.
I agree 100%. It has backfired on me several times in life, but it has also been a good thing in my career in organizations which respect it. I find the response to honesty is most measured by the quality of the leaders in your organization. Good leaders crave honest feedback, because its impossible to correctly judge your leadership decisions based on the advice of sycophants.
As an example, in one big company I worked at, I was very far down the totem-pole, but in a senior technical role. I had, however, firmly established my reputation for honesty (sometimes brutal honesty) and integrity. While some of the managers a few steps above me did not care for me because of this, my direct supervisor respected it, and I was meeting for lunch weekly with the SVP of our business unit to answer any questions he had about the internals of the product and give him "straight answers" about things he had asked about. Sure, in some ways, I was probably backstabbing the guys above me, but only because they were lying to the SVP constantly and that impacted his ability to make good decisions.
Honesty is pretty much always the best policy, no matter who asks. It won't always win you favors, but at least no matter the outcome you can be assured of your own personal integrity. Being dishonest when it seems advantageous may prevent some heartache, but it won't prevent all heartache, and you'll end up seeing yourself as a bad person in the end and have a troubled conscience (unless of course you're a psychopath).
Then you are probably under special protection by law. For your the pointy-haired boss it means he has to use more subtle methods, e.g. a performance review, to get you out of the door.
This is why there middle managers, project leads, senior developers over those employees. Their job is to frame the misconceptions into something which appears more acceptable to employees who wouldn't toe the line if they were being directly managed.
> Even something like having an entrepreneur stand and present in front of a group of seated money men. They sit in judgement of him, they are comfy and he stands, they relax and he works and struggles to please them.
This is a stretch. The same physical arrangement happens when undergrads see a Nobel Prize winner speak.
The same physical seating arrangement can express more than one social dynamic.
The undergrads won't be judging the Nobel Prize winner or asking him/her to justify their work. The prize winner will not be sweating or struggling. The flow of status goes in the other direction - the undergrads are supposed to be grateful that the great prize winner has agreed to spend some time with them.
Entrepreneur and money men conversations could just as easily happen with everyone sitting on sofas. The adversarial panel approach is intended to be challenging and adversarial - which is only possible if those who are doing the challenging have higher status and feel a need to display it.
There's a case to be made for the suggestion that the primary product of the entire global economy is status signalling. Physical and intellectual invention is a useful byproduct, but most things in most corporations and markets seem to happen because one primate subgroup wants to impress, seduce, or intimidate some other primate subgroup.
> The same physical arrangement happens when undergrads see a Nobel Prize winner speak.
Undergrads are the paying customers in you example, so they are in charge and the Nobel Prize winner is delivering a service they have paid for and his is expected to satisfy his customers! Yeah, in the bigger overall picture of life and things he's above them, but in that particular situation he's their bitch...
At least this is how I always viewed my teachers, even having benefited from free higher education (and the teachers were way richer than me): they were there to satisfy my needs (for knowledge), just as the McDonals' worker was there to satisfy my need (for a burger).
It's important to note that the CEO can throw a tantrum, while the mailboy cannot. Throwing tantrums isn't a way to build status; it's a sort of 'luxury' one can get away with if one is already in a clear position of power in a social setting.
Ever see the show Entourage? Ari Gold can throw tantrums, and he does. (Constantly.) His underlings don't have that privilege. If one of them ever tried to throw an Ari-style tantrum, he'd be out on the street in five minutes flat. [Full disclosure: I worked at a talent agency a long time ago, and what was depicted on Entourage was accurate enough to have passed as a documentary.]
That's an important point. To be clear, the article also reaches this conclusion:
> Of course, like a swagger, the signal is not so much the tantum itself as the fact that someone can get away with it.
It also links to a paper[1] about NBA players that deals with this phenomenon. Here's the abstract:
> Casual empiricism suggests that celebrities engage in more anti-social and other socially unapproved behavior than non-celebrities. I consider a number of reasons for this stylized fact, including one new theory, in which workers who are less substitutable in production are enabled to engage in greater levels of misbehavior because their employers cannot substitute away from them. Looking empirically at a particular class of celebrities - NBA basketball players - I find that misbehavior on the court is due to several factors, including prominently this substitutability effect, though income effects and youthful immaturity also may be important.
Because he's a celebrity, not a politician. His followers love Donald Trump, while people backing Rubio or Cruz are doing so for far less emotional reasons.
He's working from a different script, playing a different game, appealing to a different audience. It's staged drama like professional wrestling. The uselessness of the American media helps him along, too.
I don't believe that Entourage is an accurate depiction. I've seen the whole series. I bet in the real world if events took place like they did in the show, then legal action against Ari would have been taken. However, I did still enjoy the show, but I took it for what it is: a fictional satire show on premium television, nothing more nothing less.
The show is obviously exaggerated for dramatic and/or comedic effect at times.
But it's shockingly accurate in its depiction of the film industry: movie studios, agencies, the politics of it all, the day to day details, the personalities, and so forth. Hell, even Ari is closely based on a real-life superagent who happens to be named Ari.
I've never been a mover and shaker in Hollywood, and I fled that business long ago. But trust me, I certainly lived and worked in that scene for the better part of a decade. Entourage comes closer to capturing the details and feel of Hollywood than any other depiction I have seen in recent memory. Every so often I actually had a hard time watching the show because it dredged up all sorts of awkward memories and nostalgia.
When I've read the title, the first image that popped into my head wasn't of an athlete or some CEO. It was the video of that Yale student screaming and swearing at a professor at the top of her voice. Viewing that kind of behavior as a status symbol explains a lot of things I've observed in the past couple of years.
Personally I see throwing a tantrum is something a kid does. If an adult does it, it just seems immature. I've seen executives throw tantrums at their underlings and of course get away with it. However in doing so I'm pretty sure they do lose the respect of a lot of people, at least they lose mine. It may be a cultural thing though.
I'm pretty sure it's a cultural thing, although the word "tantrum" has many meanings, and we might be thinking of different ones.
From what I've seen of the US, being able to get someone angry is a sign of superior status in New York and the Northeast; getting angry is a sign of low status in the Midwest, although being able to get someone angry isn't a sign of high status; while in the South, well, it's a good thing dueling is illegal.
I suspect that this may go back to smooth mercantile Lowlands English versus tempestuous Celts, but I certainly can't prove as much; and most of the Southern aristocracy comes from the West Country, not the Scottish border.
But while these theories help explain why the seemingly diverse convictions within the right-wing and left-wing mind-sets hang together, they don’t explain why they are tied to geography. The historian David Hackett Fischer traces the divide back to the British settlers of colonial America. The North was largely settled by English farmers, the inland South by Scots-Irish herders. Anthropologists have long noted that societies that herd livestock in rugged terrain tend to develop a “culture of honor.” Since their wealth has feet and can be stolen in an eye blink, they are forced to deter rustlers by cultivating a hair-trigger for violent retaliation against any trespass or insult that probes their resolve. Farmers can afford to be less belligerent because it is harder to steal their land out from under them, particularly in territories within the reach of law enforcement. As the settlers moved westward, they took their respective cultures with them. The psychologist Richard Nisbett has shown that Southerners today continue to manifest a culture of honor which legitimizes violent retaliation. ... Admittedly, it’s hard to believe that today’s Southerners and Westerners carry a cultural memory of sheepherding ancestors. But it may not be the herding profession itself that nurtures a culture of honor so much as living in anarchy.
All right! I'm beyond delighted to read this -- to know that there are other fans of Pinker, Fischer, and Nisbett out there! Have you read _Bound Away_ yet? (It's the companion volume Fischer promised at the end of _Albion's Seed_; it doesn't deal with slavery alone, but with Virginia in general.)
Expressed this lucidly, I almost feel that the exception is those without a culture of honor, not those with one -- that the North and not the South is the odd one. After all, while it's hard to drive off land, it's perfectly possible to burn buildings and loot crops... unless the farmers can band together into militias more powerful than the invading army, which the North certainly does.
My anecdotal experience as a Southerner living in the North was that everyone cared about conformity and hierarchy (including seeing where you were in the hierarchy), and was hostile to the South's combination of a hot temper and a live-and-let-live outlook. But you don't want hot heads or amiability in a territorial militia, and you do want a lot of concern with hierarchy; otherwise your militia will be uncontrollable.
You wouldn't happen to be in the Seattle area, would you? I'd love to get together, and to have the chance to talk about these sorts of things in person.
I'm super-sure you are the outlier. Because Gordon Ramsey throws tantrums all the fucking time on his stupid tv shows and people believe he is the best chef in the world still. In fact, it seems Gordon Ramsey's reputation for being a master of his craft has only increased for all the times he has gotten angry on tv.
An executive doesn't care about the respect from some of those underneath them, which is most likely how they became an executive in the first place. Power relationships are rarely about equal respect.
There are ways to deal with that. "Yeah, whatever" can help. Pull out your phone and take a video. Divert your attention, and the attention of others, to something other than the person having the tantrum. This can be useful in negotiations.
An NLP Guru would advise Matching and Mirroring instead. Get yourself into the same agitated emotional state matching the tantrum thrower. This makes him feel understood. Then calm down and lead him to rationality again.
I'm not sure being patronizing or sarcastic is particularly productive for situations where the person you are speaking to is of a higher status than you. This strikes me as something one wishes one could say, but doesn't dare.
That's for medium high status of those who need to make sure they "have it". A bit like the "I'm CEO bitch" on Zuckerberg's name card: Really high statuses persons have no name cards, and they have no need to ever loose their temper. If something is not to their liking, they will denote it with an even lower tone in their voice. Very competent people around them are listening and will remedy.
Or is this a cultural thing and in US people with real power still loose their temper (and face) like in the movies? I can't believe it... Will Mr Page shout like a kid because G+ did not meet expectations? I hope not...
You are correct, those at the top won't throw a tantrum with those at the bottom, the rank and file. But they will throw a tantrum with their immediate underlings.
A CEO will tantrum and get away with it with the upper management. The CEO's interaction with middle management and the workers will be much more even and charming.
I worked at a company (in the US) where there were stories of the CEO losing his temper. He must have gotten it under control at some point, since I never witnessed it while I was there.
He's right that people higher up do these things more because they can get away with it, but I'm not sure that makes it a signal. These people are in an environment that allows them to do it, so they do. People who won't get away with it would tend to think better of it, before losing their job or some other reasonably dire consequence.
While Bosses and Execs through tantrums are another class altogether - I can suggest a way or two to put a Team Lead/Architect in place when they throw a tantrum (NOTE: this only works if you actually know your shit and are correct):
- Shout back and stare down. Match such a person eye-to-eye. But don't take the heat personally. Simply play-back the game.
- Never-ever (NEVER EVER!!) let anybody (ANYBODY!!) shape your career.
- Rebuff the Lead/Architect: Tell him/her that this immature behavior will not be tolerated and if this continues, you will take your own direction and won't require his/her services as your lead.
However, sometimes ahole Lead/Architect are too powerful/influential and can actually impact your career. In such cases, don't waste time and apply elsewhere.
"Never-ever (NEVER EVER!!) let anybody (ANYBODY!!) shape your career."
Um... How does one do that exactly? I think you mean: Never-ever form a concept of how much other people actually do shape your career. Which is obviously stupid advice. Not that I don't find obsequiousness as annoying as you apparently do.
Bosses, Execs, middle manager, Team Leads etc can always throw a tantrum, but only with those directly under them.
So, your if team lead can throw a tantrum and get away with it, they will only do so with no one above them present.
It's about status and power. If they cannot get away with a tantrum, ask yourself why? Possibly it's because their underlings perform the same things as your advice advocates. What would such a boss do in this situation to consolidate their status?
Even something like having an entrepreneur stand and present in front of a group of seated money men. They sit in judgement of him, they are comfy and he stands, they relax and he works and struggles to please them.
Or, when bosses make weird symbolic work demands that don't actually make sense. Sometimes there's the idea that they're just looking out for the product and are wrong about something, but there's also often an element of 'I sense some disturbance in the status hierarchy so I'm going to make you do this task we both know is useless just because I say so to remind you that I can'.
Or 'I'm going to be unreasonable to demonstrate that I can'.
Or 'I'm not going to give this question the think-time it really needs; to demonstrate my superior value I'll save myself five minutes while costing you two days to remind everyone that I'm above you'.
A lot of this is subconscious. The people with the power don't always do it intentionally, thinking "I'm going to signal status today." It's just what feels good and intuitive to them, so they execute these status-signalling behaviours without conscious intent.