The Emotionally Intelligent Office

When we give up on teaching (and therefore, on those we need to teach), we tend to manoeuvre around the objects of our despair. We tell them their work is fine, but silently redo it with other colleagues. We set up secret side groups. It is meant to be collaboration between twenty equals, but we go out and hire two external consultants. It might sound Machiavellian, but it's merely the outcome of a nervous personality with low faith in others and in the chances of working through problems. Secret manoeuvring is a vote of no confidence in the possibilities of persuasion or education. It is the result of a big conclusion somewhere in the mind: that nothing good can come of dealing with people directly.