Hidden Knife

I am really shocked, or amused, or puzzled when I heard something today. How could I summarize quickly what happened?

Well, a group of people make some observations about somebody (obviously not something to their tastes) and form an opinion or judgment about that somebody. This has been taking place for a long time. The interesting thing is the very person has not been informed, communicated in any way.

It is common and natural for every one to find somebody not to his or her taste, live up to his or her expectation, or simply having different style, personality. In most cases, when such remarks are made among people who think alike,there is good consensus and agreement among themselves, although not to the awareness of the person they criticize. I suppose it is alright if that person has no particular relationship with them. For example : the person is a film star, singer, or government head, or president.

However, it is a different matter if that person is a friend, a staff, a customer or even competitor. As this can be construed as character assassination.

I still feel a sense of shock and amusement, as the group of people happens to be a management committee, passing their collective judgment against a staff, who does not know a single bit the dis-satisfaction against him or her. And such judgement becomes an offical record of that person.

I believe when an organisation exercises a lot of transparent communication, a lot of issues can be resolved. It is difficult to expect the staff to be pro-active if the staff does not even know there is such "closed door judgment" on him or her.

Next related article "Group Think Symdrome"
In another forum we will disucss how we go about coaching the organisation and the "victim"