Sarcasm: Where intelligence meets passive aggression

For the leader who sees her team interacting in a sarcastic manner, the typical approach is to let it slide.

Sarcasm can be incredibly entertaining, and sharp-witted teams often believe this particular brand of humor to be harmless.

However, in our work at Nikoleta & Associates, we emphasize to leaders that sarcasm often comes at a very high human cost, both for the person making the sarcastic comment and the person on the receiving end of it.

What do we mean by this?

Frustration and anger arise regularly throughout the course of a standard working day. No one is immune to these baser emotions. They exist in all human beings. In our work, we encourage individuals to become curious about their own frustration – observing it as an experience of themselves, rather than acting upon it. Where self-awareness decreases, aggravation typically increases, fueling aggression which cannot be acted upon – obviously – within the social norms of the workplace.

In such cases, sarcasm may become the outlet.

Although aggressive at its core, sarcasm is socially acceptable violence – albeit verbal, disguised in humor and often unintentional. Two things occur in this scenario. To use sarcasm to criticize or point to a perceived flaw in a work colleague or policy can mean you don’t feel authorized or empowered to speak your truth – or more importantly – sense that your truth may not be appreciated in the professional environment. So, you deliver it as a ‘joke’ – a mean one. There’s no risk of being taken seriously, since you were ‘only being sarcastic,’ and theoretically, you have made your point.

But have you? Here’s the rub.

What you have to say might actually be an astute insight that could assist the team. However, since it’s expressed via sarcasm, it will likely be dismissed. Secondly, immediately labeling a fellow employee’s behavior as a ‘problem’ rather than an opportunity for the whole team to grow quickly stifles innovation and poisons workplace culture, since no one feels safe to ‘ask stupid questions’ or ‘fail.’

Those on the receiving end of sarcasm – particularly when embedded in a culture – become accustomed to it, often ‘laughing it off.’ Again, the recipient feels powerless – not only to address the sarcastic comment, but also to encourage his colleagues to develop a different way of interacting with one another. Recipients will tend to dismiss their team and simply leave the moment another opportunity arises.

Again, the value of that team member to the organization is irrevocably lost. Leaders remain wholly responsible for creating and maintaining a space of mutual respect, and not simply to make work life tolerable or to ensure everyone ‘plays nice’. Rather, to provide full, reciprocal benefit for the investment an organization makes in its employees and employees make in their organization, teams need to feel that they can share authentic feedback.