Humans have some surprisingly sophisticated cognitive strategies. At work, we all try to put our best foot forward. But along the way, certain survival mechanisms can take hold—often without us even realizing it. Here are three particularly irritating behaviours that can undermine workplace dynamics.
1. Strategic incompetence
Strategic incompetence is a “persuasion technique” in which someone deliberately acts as though they are unable to perform a task properly, with the aim of getting someone else to do it for them.
“It is used by people who don’t want to take responsibility for a particular task. There is an element of bad faith, but there is also a self-protective dimension: it’s a way of avoiding a workload they don’t want to take on,” psychologist Claire Petin explained in Psychologies magazine.
Red flags include:
- Proudly declaring an inability to do the task without making any attempt to learn. For example: “There’s no point explaining it to me. I’ve never been good at this.”
- Highlighting a colleague’s superior abilities: “Why don’t you do it? You’re so much better at this than I am.”
- Offering to “help” rather than taking full ownership of the task, a convenient way to avoid ever learning how to do it independently.
2. Selective absenteeism
To keep your job, it helps if your managers have a positive impression of you. Some employees have therefore mastered the art of looking good in meetings.
They are energetic, proactive, and quick to suggest solutions. They volunteer for tasks and make commitments. But once the meeting is over and they are out of the manager’s line of sight, they seemingly shift into neutral.
In the scientific literature, this behaviour is explored through the concept of impression management: the ability of some employees to deliberately choose highly visible tasks—such as participating in brainstorming sessions—while avoiding less glamorous, low-visibility work, such as actually producing the deliverables.
In other words, they make sure they are seen doing the work, rather than necessarily doing the work that needs to get done.
3. The “humblebrag”
The term “humblebrag”, loosely translated as “modest boasting,” was coined by American comedian Harris Wittels in 2010. He created a Twitter account called “@Humblebrag,” where he reposted examples he considered particularly representative of the phenomenon. A column on the website Grantland followed in 2012, as did a book, Humblebrag: The Art of False Modesty.
The basic idea is simple: you announce an achievement you are proud of, but frame it as though it were a complaint or a failure.
For example:
- “I’m so disappointed. I didn’t get 100% on the exam,” when you actually scored 90% and the class average was 50%.
- “I hate having to get up at 5 a.m. to finish the quarterly report,” when the results are excellent and everyone is grateful for the work.
- “There’s nothing I hate more than having to travel across three different time zones,” when you were actually lucky enough to be chosen to represent the company at an international meeting.
American researchers Sezer, Gino and Norton studied this strategy and reached a fairly clear conclusion:
People primarily resort to false modesty when they want to appear likable while also impressing others. Although we might assume that combining a boast with a complaint would allow us to reap the benefits of both strategies, research suggests that humblebragging delivers the advantages of neither. Instead, it can backfire because people tend to perceive it as insincere.
Consider yourself warned.
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