Drama Belongs in TV Shows, Not Organisations



Drama Belongs in TV Shows, Not Organisations

Feb 2010  Print

The popularity of TV shows that have lots of drama is ever present. People get hooked on the characters and their overly dramatic behavior. While drama is good for TV shows it’s not so good for organizations. It tends to waste people’s time, weaken relationships, and diminish overall employee morale. Getting work done and completing projects on time is hard enough when individuals are focused; but, it becomes downright impossible when drama steals people’s attention and time.

Dramatic behaviour tends to play out through people in organisations in three different ways:


1. Overly sensationalising problems
Problems get overly sensationalized when people first intensify the shock of encountering a problem. Phrases like “Did you hear what happened?” and “Can you believe it?” often accompany this phase of the drama. Then they move on to finding the persons who were at fault. It is not hard to see how detrimental this is to organizations. Lots of energy is wasted, individuals get beat up and reputations are destroyed.

Strategy: Management needs to focus first on what needs to be done to correct the problem and then take steps to resolve it. They then need focus not on who was at fault but what caused the problem and how to avoid it in the future.


2. Habitual opposition to ideas
A major symptom of this type of drama is when people leave meetings worn out as though they just went through three rounds in a boxing ring, but accomplished very little. It takes a long time to see this trend but people who do this are basically playing tug of war with ideas and opinions. If someone presents their idea then this person will take a counter view and question the validity of the other person’s idea. While organisations need opposing views to flesh out the best ideas they don’t need to waste time arguing for arguing sake.

Strategy: When you experience this kind of behaviour from someone let go of the rope, so to speak, by saying “I disagree” and nothing more. It doesn’t give the other person anything to react to or the ability to continue the argument.


3. Sharing of secrets
Another name for this is covert gossip. It always starts with the person saying “I’m going to tell you something but you have to promise not to tell anyone else.” What follows is some privileged information not about them but about someone else. Plus, it most likely has been shared with multiple other people in the organization. This creates a buzz that everyone is aware of but can’t talk openly about with each other. It undermines trust and relationships.

Strategy: When someone comes to you and says “I’m going to tell you something but you have to promise not to tell anyone else.” Tell them you will promise to not tell anyone only if what they are about to say involves them and no anyone else. Otherwise you do not want know what they want to tell you.


Once these strategies are in place you will see a significant decrease in the level of drama in your organisation and an increase in productivity. If people want drama in their lives tell them to watch more TV. Drama’s not fit for organisational life.