Kiss Up and Kick Down

“Jack is a kiss-up and kick-down kind of guy.” The first time I heard this phrase it puzzled me. The meaning wasn’t completely clear. Plus, Jack seemed like a pleasant guy. It wasn’t until I saw him in action that I began to understand him and the phrase.

Jack was nice to anyone in the organization that outranked him or might eventually do so. He laughed at the bosses’ jokes and complimented them on their wise decisions. He did it so smoothly that it didn’t seem like overt kissing-up. Jack was cordial to me and other engineers, even those of us who weren’t in his chain of command. I eventually learned that his behavior, which could have been simply a reflection of an easy-going personality, was calculated, since any one of us might get promoted into a position above him.

It was Jack’s treatment of those he outranked that helped me fully understand what a nasty character he really was. He didn’t see me the day he stalked into the copier room and ordered a technician to stop her work and copy something important for him. I heard her say, “Sure. Just as soon as I’m finished.”

Jack said, “I’m pulling rank on you. Make me a copy or I’ll make sure your supervisor gives you a bad performance rating.”

I was about to intervene when I heard Jeannie, the technician, say, “You’ll have to pull something bigger than rank to get me to stop what I’m doing.” I was proud of her and pleased that she didn’t need my help in squashing Jack. He slunk away.

The incident solidified my low opinion of Jack. It also explained why the secretaries, clerks, and technicians disliked him. He epitomized Kiss-up/Kick-down behavior. I remembered it a couple of years later when I became his boss. I never again trusted his affirmations and always distrusted his motives.

Don’t Get on Their Bad Side

“If you get on the wrong side of these fellows, they take it out on you in other ways,” explains Lieutenant Hooper of the British army to Captain Ryder as to why he treats enlisted men very gently. The scene occurs early in Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel, Brideshead Revisited. Moments later Captain Ryder is admonished by his Sargent-Major, “If you get on the wrong side of senior officers, they take it out on you in other ways.”

I had just recently read those fictional exchanges when a fellow engineer at my new workplace said, “Be careful how you talk to the draftsmen. Get on their bad side and they’ll take it out on you in other ways.” I burst out laughing, offending my coworker, and no amount of explaining could set it right. He shunned me for as long as I worked at Corollo Engineers in Phoenix, proving that engineers will get back at you if you laugh at them.

The irony didn’t end there. I heard similar sentiments many times in my Corps of Engineers career and while teaching at Mississippi State University. You had to be careful to stay on the good side of the engineers, technicians, secretaries, officers, enlisted men, professors and administrators. Everybody was afraid of each other. Most of those I worked with were great people and it was easy to stay on their good side. A few were so nasty that I wondered what happened to people who got on their bad side. Maybe the nasty ones broke into their enemies’ houses and crumbled crackers between the bed sheets.

I experienced the phenomenon. For example, I once recruited an engineer from Portugal with an internationally recognized expertise in river sedimentation. When I told my boss about it, he said the Corps of Engineers could hire only U.S. citizens. When I asked Jim, our Human Resources office point-of-contact, he told me the same thing, so I asked to see the Army regulation that prohibited hiring a non-citizen. But when I read the regulation, it didn’t prohibit hiring foreign nationals at all; instead it provided a procedure for hiring them. My boss and Jim in HR were either misinformed or blowing smoke.

I followed the prescribed procedures and hired the Portuguese engineer, encountering “You can’t do that,” at every step. So, at every step I brandished the Army regulation and Department of Labor rules to overcome resistance. I definitely got on the bad side of Jim, the HR guy, and he did take it out on me in other ways, but it was worth it. An outstanding engineer joined my team and Jim stopped making up imaginary regulatory blockades, at least with me.

In a previous blog, “Plays Well with Others,” I suggested that being pleasant at work paid dividends. It does. But we shouldn’t avoid necessary disagreement out of fear of retribution. As long as we argue calmly and avoid incendiary language and insults, most people will accept disagreement, even serious disagreement, without holding a grudge. If they do take it out on us in other ways, as Jim did, then we can deal with that as just another disagreement to be resolved. Avoiding all conflict doesn’t eliminate disagreement, it just puts us at a permanent disadvantage.