A man sits down next to you in a coffee shop while you are reading a book and begins watching a movie without earphones. Those, including yourself, who can hear the movie and would like to say something choose instead to ignore the behavior in order to maintain order. Perhaps you fear a negative response from the movie-watcher. Maybe you do not want to create a scene. So you and all the others in the coffee shop act as if you cannot hear the movie or are not bothered by it.
You find yourself back in the coffee shop a few weeks later and the same man walks in and sits next to you. He begins watching his earbuds-free movie, but this time you notice the volume is louder than before. What has happened? Since nobody said anything during prior visits, the movie-watcher has created a buffer around himself as he has learned what he can get away with. He can now cite past precedent if someone objects to his behavior. Everyone has worked together, knowingly or not, to redefine boundaries that communicate which behaviors are tolerated and which are confronted.
You whisper your frustration to someone who looks similarly perturbed and are informed of the movie-watcher’s identity: a well-respected and powerful leader in the community. The people’s agreement to allow the behavior is undoubtedly influenced by the identity of the movie-watcher. You now realize that speaking up will probably incur rejection from the movie-watcher’s followers.
You engage others in hushed conversation and slowly come to the realization that confronting the rude movie-watching will not only be viewed as a threat to the movie-watcher’s freedom, but as a threat to the community’s values, values that have been inculcated over the years until people believe their goodness is measured by their compliance. The community has implicitly granted the movie-watcher the right to cross boundaries while implicitly removing from you the freedom to object to his boundary-crossing behavior.
Since the coffee shop customers have been conditioned to remain silent, you decide to appeal to the staff and management, only to discover the coffee shop is owned and operated by the movie-watcher! It becomes immediately clear to you they will avoid doing anything that could threaten their own position.
The Problem of Tactful Inattention
The late sociologist Erving Goffman used the term tactful inattention to describe a phenomenon in which everyone works together to maintain order despite the existence of questionable behaviors knowing that speaking up about the violations will likely cause a disruption.
Consider this when applied to abusive situations.
Abusive people, like the rude movie-watcher, will test boundaries to discover what can be done without objection. They often use tactics of manipulation (excessive gifts, helps, favors, special attention, etc.) to win people’s favor and trust. They then exploit that trust by crossing boundaries that would ordinarily be met with resistance if trust was not present. Others who observe, hear about, or suspect these violations might choose tactful inattention to protect themselves.
We are also more likely to ignore boundary-crossing when the person engaging in the behavior has been iconized to any degree by the community. Choosing tactful inattention is easier than considering that someone you respect and admire, perhaps even model your own life after, is potentially abusive.
Boundaries can easily be crossed by those who hold positional power. Those with less positional power might fear some kind of loss or retaliation if they address the abusive leader’s behavior, even from the community itself. The person who chooses to cross into the buffer protecting the abuser will be seen as a threat to the abuser, and can be rejected by those who want to maintain those buffers because they benefit in some way from the abuser’s life and work.
The Importance of Boundaries and Enforcers
My primary work and experience is with those in leadership. Such roles are often governed in part by policies – boundaries that communicated what is not permitted. These policies should be enforced by those who have the authority to check to make sure they are being followed. But many who owe it to their stakeholders to monitor leadership behavior stop doing so in the name of “trust.” They fail to realize that what matters most is the trust the organization is forming with its members, members who expect that the board is doing its job, and one of their principle functions is to keep watch on boundaries.
The abusive leader demands loyalty and trust. The trust is granted. Then exploited. Boundaries are crossed. Tactful inattention creeps into the board. New boundaries are negotiated. Again and again until they are caught in a cycle that simultaneously enables freedom to cross boundaries while disabling freedom to speak truth. Knowing this motivates them to reject any who cross into the buffer that protects the abusive leader.
In other words: the abusive leader slowly wins trust and crosses boundaries while the board slowly grants trust and renegotiates boundaries to accommodate the abusive leaders’ wishes. Simultaneously, victims of the abusive leader’s harmful behavior or concerned advocates face an increasingly fortressed protection around the abuser that prevents them from speaking out. Sadly, that fortress is often a compromised and compliant board.
Organizations and communities must change the broken systems that have allowed for abusive situations if they are to be a fortress of truth, not lies, and a shield to its members, not a threat. This usually only happens with new leadership that is able and willing to establish or reestablish appropriate boundaries and change the culture so that boundary-crossing is not permitted and truth-telling is invited.