What does passive aggression look like? It is the person who says, “Oh I’m fine,” while seething on the inside; it is the “friend” who gives you a box of chocolates when you’re on a diet; it is the employee who says, “Sure, I’ll get that done!” and then “forgets.” It is the person who demeans or degrades you but adds a quick, “Just joking!” Dr. Lorna Benjamin of the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, says that passive aggressive people “are full of unacknowledged contradiction, of angry kindness, compliant defiance, covert assertiveness.” They are hurricanes of negativity that kill projects and programs faster and more effectively than anything else.

There are the exceptional people who work 18 hour days, make time to meet with team members, and perform incredibly well for the duration of the project (and after!) – and then there’s these people. They sit on the sidelines, second guessing what everyone else is doing and generally making life miserable – often with a smile on their faces. You might see people:

• Agreeing with you in a meeting but failing to act.
• Missing or “forgetting” deadlines or meetings.
• Hoarding necessary information and isolating coworkers.
• Producing sloppy, incomplete, or otherwise subpar work.
• Gossiping excessively, often pitting one coworker against another.
• Using sarcasm to demean, degrade, or humiliate others.
• Sabotaging other people’s tasks.
• Subtly politicking against you behind the scenes.

Passive aggressive people are destructive because they undermine morale, actively sabotage projects, and – when they’re really good at being negative – they make others feel insane. Experts have described passive aggression as “crazy-making” behavior, and it really is. These people tend to be very angry and hostile, but rather than expressing it openly, they do it covertly. With sarcasm, with gossip, with broken promises, with snide comments.

According to Booz Allen Hamilton, more than 30 percent of executives, managers, and employees believe they work in an unhealthy, passive aggressive organization. It is poison to any work environment and needs to be confronted head-on. The problem is that passive aggressive people tend to display “ineffectual compliance.”  To best manage passive aggressive resistance in your project(s):

• Document everything from missed meetings to poor performance. You want to create a paper trail. If you have private meetings with this person, have a neutral witness there as well.
• Make sure expectations are clear and written and stick to consequences. Don’t let anyone give you excuses – “Oh, I thought you said that was due Friday” or, “You didn’t give me enough time for this assignment.”
• Don’t gossip with these people. You can and should be friendly, but don’t be friends with someone like this.
• If someone bends the truth, call him/her on it. Don’t let their behavior go uncontested because it will only continue.
• Stay calm and try not to fall into their traps. Often, they will bait you to get you to react with anger or hostility so they can then be the injured party.
• Set expectations at the beginning of the project that passive aggressive behaviour will not be tolerated
  and is grounds for dismissal from the project.
• Ensure this expectation is clearly communicated and understood by all project team members and sponsors.

Passive aggression is a silent killer; it works its way into teams and rots them from the inside out. These people hate their behavior to be spotlighted, and this may be the best way to stop the sabotaging.