Meredith Farkas has some sound observations on the highly dubious matter of “fit” in hiring. The Loon could be wrong about this, but she senses in that post a certain amount of sensemaking with respect to past unhappy experiences. That is usually healthy; she hopes, if that is indeed what is happening, it is healthy this time as well.

A few dilatory Loonish notes on the theme of poor fit with unsalubrious environments.

Staff review and assessment, like hiring, is an all-too-easy weapon maladaptive work cultures use to perpetuate themselves by repelling and abusing those they fear. As with hiring, the less clear and strategy-supported review processes and criteria are, the easier it is to abuse the Other with them. Indeed, the most maladaptive work culture the Loon endured had no formal review processes whatever. This hardly meant no one had any opinions about the Loon’s work. It meant, in a variant on the tyranny of structurelessness, that those opinions were ceaselessly negative because the (unspoken and unwritten; this lack of accountability on the part of assessors is a key part of the strategy) goalposts set for the Loon kept moving, in capricious directions but always, always away. Whatever skills the Loon brought to bear, they weren’t the right skills; whatever tactics she employed, they weren’t the right tactics; whatever she managed to accomplish, they weren’t the right accomplishments. Oh, but the catalog of the Loon’s deficiencies was ever endless!

(The Loon is currently watching the same moving-goalpost tricks deployed against her replacement in that job. It is frankly maddening to witness. Though the Loon is not fond of filling out the annual progress report that her current workplace requires of her, she does so each year fairly cheerfully, in full awareness that the questions on it are indeed tied to her workplace’s larger goals and strategies, and she herself is being assessed kindly and fairly on clear and generally stable criteria, not random hateful whim.)

Surviving as the Other in a maladaptive culture is no easy feat. The Loon did not escape unscathed, far from it. Her coping style in a sick culture is that of the immortal Quixote faced with giants: charge with lance high, get tossed cloaca over teakettle, pick oneself up and attack again even harder, repeat until too damaged to move. She does not recommend this approach. It is ineffectual. Moreover, the ill effects of the mounting damage last a long time, persisting long after escape to healthier climes.

Farkas suggests another common coping mode: conforming. The Loon has known a very few people able to conform on the surface to a sick culture for a long time without losing their souls. It takes considerable perspective, rare strength of character, and (sine qua non) the sort of people-handling skills that are one of the Loon’s major workplace weaknesses. It also requires a willingness to let go of many hopes regarding professional achievement—not personal ambition necessarily, or not solely personal ambition, but a calm acceptance that merely getting things done is usually not on the horizon:

The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing—for the sheer fun and joy of it—to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.

I.F. Stone

(The Loon tried, she truly, truly did. She couldn’t manage to teach herself to enjoy it.)

More commonly, though, the sick culture infects both Quixotes and conformers, though perhaps in different ways. Quixotes turn mean, as the Loon herself did, when our legitimate frustrations turn inwardly toxic. Like caged animals, we bite to the bone given the least opportunity; what else is there to do, when we can realistically expect neither compassion nor aid nor freedom from those caging us? Quixotes do tend to bite upward or at least laterally, avoiding cheap bullying; that is the best that can be said of our behavior. We do not limit ourselves to biting only those who deserve it most, unfortunately, and the longer we persist in a sick culture, the more indiscriminately and often we bite.

(The Loon’s not-a-boss was not shy about correcting the Loon’s biting habit early on in the Loon’s tenure in her current position. The Loon is grateful, and aware that the example has indeed led her to bite far less often than was her wont.)

Conformers without extraordinary strength of character more commonly come down with a sort of Stockholm Syndrome: the sick culture around them infects them with itself, perhaps via utter despair of change. Many sick systems in academia perpetuate themselves exactly this way, scholarly communication hardly least. One symptom of conformance illness is punching in all directions but especially down (tenure systems commonly aid and abet this behavior), often while proclaiming virtuously that the purpose of the abuse is to acculturate the Other and protect the Other’s interests. Another is the Calvinist impulse to divide everyone around into the Elect and the Damned—the criteria need not be consistent, indeed may change daily, nor need they be the same criteria the surrounding culture uses; it is the impulse to condemn out of hand, to destroy rather than build, that betokens the illness.

When this illness becomes chronic, sufferers become indistinguishable from the rest of the sick culture surrounding them—indeed, they have internalized that culture such that they inflict it on newcomers without question and will defend (or at least not question) it when speaking with outsiders. Weirdly, the Loon has seen at least one conformer defend a sick culture while still professing hatred for it!

The third mode of coping the Loon has seen is… not exactly coping. Sick workplaces can make the Others among them individually sick, physically and/or mentally (and let us recall please, pain that is “psychosomatic” is still pain). This can be the end state for Quixotes and conformers, to be sure (it was for the Loon, a couple of times), but that need not be the road; some Others possessing neither the innate irascibility of the Quixote nor the chameleon-nature of the conformer succumb early.

The best advice the Loon has for Others who recognize themselves in the Quixote, the conformer, or the non-coper is: get out of your workplace if at all possible. Get out, get out, get out out out. Sick culture infects and damages Others far faster than those Others can heal it. Even those few the Loon knows who survived sick cultures without succumbing to them never managed to heal them and eventually left them. The Loon is sorry to be this discouraging, but she agrees with Farkas about the immutability of sick workplaces.

For what it is worth, the Loon opines that the best writing on changemaking from an Othered position in academe specifically is by Adrianna J. Kezar, particularly her work on grassroots leadership. Now, Kezar’s work is not solve-all-your-problems-in-five-easy-steps pop-psych or pop-business guano; it is qualitative research presented as such. It is not, therefore, always heartening reading. (When the Loon read it, she had to step away every now and then to let old bad feelings of frustration and helplessness described in and validated by the text wash over her.) Kezar makes no bones about many change efforts failing and even successful efforts taking many years and outrageous amounts of energy, and she is always careful to note that strategies that increase the odds of success cannot be relied upon as sure things. Still, the Loon learned about one or two habitual gambits of hers she needs to avoid in future, as well as a few tactics she did not try that might help her, and she found that worthwhile knowledge.

A reminder for any who need it: the MLS should be a key, not a cage.

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