At the very beginning, anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively, without reflecting, to a new situation.
What happens when people obey in advance?
Billy knew the boys standing over there by the slide had it in for him. He had run into them before. Three sixth graders—a full year older than Billy and all much bigger.
That last time, these boys made fun of Billy and pushed him around. They laughed when he started crying, seasoning his terror with the briny humiliation of tears.
This time, again they zeroed in on Billy. He glanced around for help but was all alone. Instinctively backing up, he smacked into a chainlink fence, which gave way a bit and then held firm with a soft metallic rattle. The solidity of the fence turned his legs to jelly as fear radiated up and down his spine. His vision blurred.
The boys drew near, mocking him. “Hey, remember this guy? Here’s the crybaby!” Billy pressed even more into the fence, his fingers desperately gripping its links. He wished he could pass through its openings.
Then the tallest of the three—taller than Billy by a head—pointed to Billy’s brand-new baseball cap. The bully smirked and, with a cocky tone, growled, “I really like your hat.” Billy’s dad had surprised him with that cap just last week. He radiated pride when he first put it on. He loved that hat.
But, his pride quickly gave way to his fear. “Maybe,” Billy thought, “if I just gave them something they want, they’ll go away.” Billy swallowed hard and pulled the cap off, mustering a weak “here” as he handed it over to the tall bully. The bully looked shocked for a moment before shrugging as if to say, “Don’t mind if I do.” He grabbed the cap and adjusted the size before crowning himself like Napoleon at his coronation.
“Thanks for the hat, crybaby,” he chuckled.
The boys laughed and scoffed as they shoved Billy against the fence and then pushed him to the ground—hard. Billy knew to stay down until they wandered off in search of their next victim. When it was safe, he rose, wincing as he brushed away the sharp gravel embedded in his palms. Billy could hear the bullies cackling with delight as they tried to snatch the cap—his cap—away from each other.
It happens in the playground. It also happens in the workplace and even in the halls of government—perhaps most notoriously when Britain’s Neville Chamberlain did it in the face of Nazi aggression. Chamberlain was the Billy of modern world history.
Call it what you will—“anticipatory obedience” or “preemptive appeasement”—giving into a bully before they’ve actually bullied you is the first craven step down the slippery slope of oppression. In his book On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder warns, “Do not obey in advance.” A quick scan of current world events will demonstrate that too few heed his warning.
Readily adapting to the oppressor, as Snyder writes, “is teaching power what it can do.” Billy learned his lesson that day in the schoolyard: that cowering in the face of aggression will buy you little. But, he also taught his sixth-grade bullies a much more powerful lesson: They could take from him at will without even asking.
The thing is, the bullies probably never intended to steal from him, there being a leap from schoolyard sadism to schoolyard mugging. Moreover, by giving in, Billy set himself up for all sorts of future capitulation, placing himself—voluntarily, no less—under their control.
Political tyrants behave much the same as Billy’s tormentors: Terrify innocent people and watch as they give you concessions you never even asked for or dreamed of. You want to subdue your political enemies? Just send some paramilitary thugs to stomp down the street shouting slogans. Then marvel as common people start informing on their neighbors. Similar intimidation-capitulation scenarios have played out many times and will happen again. We live in a world populated with Billys who typically give up much more than a treasured baseball cap.
As it is with monstrous autocrats and schoolyard punks, so it is with bully bosses.
Once such bosses establish themselves as the alphas, many—even most—employees will submit in advance with little prompting, attempting to accommodate the boss’s demands even before they’re uttered or maybe even conceived. Capitulators compromise their values, betray loyalties, and even sacrifice their own most fundamental interests to cater to a boss’s whims.
But, preemptive submission almost always backfires. Employees who surrender themselves, others, and the organization reshape themselves into the boss’s patsies. Rather than forestalling the boss’s bad behavior, obeying in advance emboldens and empowers bully bosses to do far worse.
Color-Coded Accommodation
When I was a university dean, my fellow deans and I were one day surprised by an abrupt directive to cut our individual school budgets. We learned on a Thursday that we had until the following Monday to either identify items to be eliminated or suffer some unknown across-the-board reduction. We had no other instructions. My head swam and my heart dropped at the prospect of having to make drastic cuts.
In frustration, I reached out to our boss for guidance or maybe some parameters—such as what percentage to cut or priorities to consider—but he never responded. His conspicuous silence bellowed that he had nothing in mind at all. I knew we were truly on our own.
After some stomach-churning consternation, I had a revelation. I figured since our boss obviously had no preferences or ideas whatsoever, I’d be best off just rolling the dice and waiting for the across-the-board cut. In other words, I took a calculated risk and did absolutely nothing—neither insubordinate nor utterly submissive.
In contrast, one of my colleagues saw our boss’s silence as an opportunity to accommodate him in advance in hopes that he would go easy on her budget. She spent her weekend slaving away at her proposal rather than relaxing with her family. That Monday morning, she excitedly shared her solution with me.
“Elegant” describes it perfectly: an attractive color-coded chart of her entire budget. Her voice chirped with smug satisfaction as she described her design to me.
Items highlighted in green meant she could do without the budget item—Come and get it, no big deal. Yellow indicated she could spare the item but preferred not to—I’d rather you didn’t take this one, thank you. Red, of course, offered a gentle warning—I need this, so please don’t touch it.
I have to admit, seeing my fellow dean’s fancy chart really gave me pause. What if she got it right? She seemed so confident. Plus, her chart looked great, what with the colors and the beautiful layout. Maybe I had erred.
But, I also knew intuitively that handing over an itemized list to a guy who had no clue just invited him to do his worst.
What do you think happened? Do you think maybe our boss took one look at her chart, yelled “hallelujah,” and called her in to congratulate her on a job well done? Do you imagine he singled her out for recognition at our next deans’ meeting, passing her color-coded Mona Lisa around so we could all coo in envy? Or more to the point, do you suppose he spared her budget because of all the effort she put into crafting an easy-on-the-eyes chart?
No-sir-ee-bob. Appeasement worked for her about as well as it did for Billy and Neville.
Predictably, our boss pulled out his big-ol’ budget machete and slashed all of her green items. Then he amputated all of her yellow items. Finally, he hacked off a chunk of her red items. Ouch!
For me, though, he reserved his harshest penalty: dropping a huge percentage cut—25%. That was the bad news. The good news? As I expected, I could reallocate at my discretion. While the overall cut seemed large, I had no problem absorbing it without compromising a single priority or exposing the soft underbelly of my budget to his butchery. Moreover, the total hit to my colleague’s budget was about the same, so she sacrificed her autonomy—and her weekend—for nothing.
The consequence? From then on, because she had offered up specific items, she struggled to meet her needs. Faculty and students had to make do without necessary equipment. Events were cancelled. And, forget about any discretionary perks. Even worse, she sent the message to our boss that she would happily offer up whatever he wanted and more without even having to be asked.
Meanwhile I went merrily on my way. A tweak here and a tweak there, and my faculty and students never felt the pinch in the least. Plus and more importantly, I had proven I was no easy mark.
Whether in the schoolyard, world politics, or the workplace, it’s all the same. Obeying in advance—giving up and giving in—always fails because it just empowers bullies to do as they please. Problems go unsolved and only one message is sent: “Here’s a sucker waiting to be taken.” True leaders, in contrast, make the bully boss at least work for it.
Leaders understand that preemptive accommodation only condones and encourages bullying. It transforms victims into apologists or even accomplices and inevitably leads to worse bullying behavior.
As for Billy, maybe he spent the rest of his days giving into oppressors. Or, maybe eventually he learned that most basic of schoolyard lessons: appeasing bullies just sets you up for more bullying. Whether Billy learned that truth or not, his bullies certainly did.
Let’s resolve to not be like Billy in the schoolyard. Let’s not be like my former colleague. Let’s not be like Britain’s Neville Chamberlain. We truly have a choice to be an accommodationist or not.
Which leaves us with a rather simple rule to apply to every situation—at work, at home, or in the world: True leaders never obey in advance.
Have you ever observed preemptive appeasement? What resulted from accommodating in advance?
True leaders wisely never obey in advance, and I can help.
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I’m Dr. Jim Salvucci, an author, keynote speaker, coach, and consultant. I served higher education for 30 years as an English professor, dean, and vice president before founding Guidance for Greatness to guide young bosses to become the next generation of great leaders. I’m a certified Tiny Habits coach as well as a certified Thrive Global coach and life coach and hold leadership certificates from Harvard University and the Council of Independent Colleges in addition to my Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Central to my leadership philosophy is that all great leaders are decent humans as well as great teachers, guiding their people and their organizations through values toward success. My goal is to guide today’s young leaders to become the next generation of great leaders by offering practical strategies on values-driven leadership.
Look for my new book, Greater than Great: How to Excel in Leadership through Learning, Logic, and Life to Make a True Difference in the World, in early 2025!
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