Sarcasm: an essential element for ‘a toxic team culture’.
Okay, I’ll admit, the title sounds a bit too extreme. But please hear me out…
Sarcasm: A handsome devil
Sarcasm is attractive. It requires high intelligence to pull it off. People utilize it in everyday life to often express feelings of frustration, anger, or distaste by stating one idea but meaning another. Here is what google has to say about sarcasm —
Well, this doesn’t sound dangerous! It isn’t (arguably) unless it stays away from a professional setup. Imagine a situation where a colleague has feedback to share but instead he chooses indirect comments in form of sarcasm. Despite me being a big fan of Chandler Bing, over the years I have started realizing, sarcasm is a cheap replacement for an honest dialog.
Don’t get me wrong, it is not a victim’s rant, on contrary, I have been rarely a victim myself. I love to use sarcasm, it requires the least guts to say things and you always have a backdoor to escape the outrage you might receive because you rarely say things that you mean, sounds perfect — isn’t it?
As the god of sarcasm himself puts it rightly,
So —
If sarcasm makes you intelligent. It also makes you gutless.
Specially, at workplace, as soon sarcasm introduced, a discussion becomes about one or more people rather than the topic being discussed. It is almost impossible to be sarcastic about just things, without targeting people involved.
What sarcasm does to your meetings?
In my experience, sarcasm is highly unproductive.
- It derails your team from meeting agenda.
- It makes receiving people feel worthless.
- It leaves scar in people and no matter how insignificant that scar might be, it eventually closes them down to future discussions.
What do you do when this handsome devil is in your team?
Option 1: Make sure it is NOT you.
I get it! It is tempting and due to years of habit, it comes easily to us. The first step can be to identify all the situations that tempt us to use sarcasm and just keep quiet to start with and slowly replace sarcasm with something useful that you can add-on to the conversation. Aaa aan! Sarcasm isn’t useful. Otherwise it is okay to keep quiet.
Option 2: When someone else uses it in the team.
Most common and easy to spot scenario is when one of our team members painting sarcasm all over the place. I would start with not entertaining any form of sarcasm — do not smile, laugh or support it in any other form. This shows you’re not in support of it.
The second step can be to setup 1:1 to discuss this with the Chandler or Dr. House of your team. It can be scary and dangerous at the same time but convey your intent explicitly. Try telling how it is not helping the team spirit. Plan meeting with them, practice it. See what might work with that person.
This has been my experience with sarcasm. Share your own encounters with sarcasm at workplace and how it impacted you or your team.
Also, you can connect with me on LinkedIn.
