Shifting Responsibility

• Grin Fake—Appearing to take responsibility
• Obligate You—Shifting Responsibility
• Range Chicken—Shifting Responsibility, waiting for others to accept responsibility for the group's failure
• Blame the Scapegoat
  • Blaming the Victim
• Taunt and Ridicule (Provoke and Blame)
• Dupe and Dodge—Promise to deliver all they ask for, then move on before the shortfall is apparent.
• Chill out—Conspiring to abdicate responsibility
• Waffling—equivocation avoids responsibility; trying to have it both ways.
• Power of Absence, Authority in absentia—deferring a decision to someone who is absent. Using a messenger to convey bad news.

Manipulating Information, Facts, and Focus—Contempt for Voracity

• Power-over—Using power to defy fact and reason.
• Deceit—Counterfactual declarations
  • Disingenuous Messages—calculating, misleading, and insincere
• Bullshit—Say anything; disregarding accuracy
• Intimidation—Using fear to suppress or alter information
• Marginalizing Dissention—Diminishing critical people.
• Need-to-Know—Restricting access to information
• Preemptive dismissal—Suppressing inquiry and dialog
  • Mocking Rigor—Dismissing thoughtful analysis as "nerdy"
• Bogus Issue—Focusing attention on interesting but irrelevant topics.
• Blowing Sunshine—Passing on only the good news, censoring the bad news.
• Just So Stories—Warm, comforting, and convenient stories displace cold facts, harsh realities, and inconvenient truths.
• Grabbing the Contingency—
• Swashbuckling—Exploiting chaos
  • Twist and Shout—Distracting us from the relevant evidence
  • Munchausen at Work—Creating the problem you heroically solve.

Shifting Authority

• Who Decides—Exploiting ambiguous governance models

Shifting Power

• Consent and Extort—Buying Dominance
• Kiss up, kick down, terrorize
• Decline and Disparage (Playing the martyr)
• Pulling Rank—Exploiting positional power
• Empire Building—Accumulating and hording resources beyond the value they add.
• Defying gravity—Ignoring the limits of power.
• The Wizard of Oz—Invoking Phantom Authority.

Influencing Perceptions

• Credit Me—Looking good
• Gotcha!—Exploiting anecdotal information and human fallibility
  • Literal truth, false message—Misleading . . . with immunity

Manipulating Time

• Procrastination by Obfuscation—Prolonging the status quo
  • Attrition by Bloviation
• The Elusive Decision Meeting—Delaying, distracting, diverting, and discouraging before deciding.

Also

• Squeeze and Shout
• Tit for Tat
  • Sniping

References

The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work, by Peter Block