“I’m not going to tell you, you’ll find out for yourself.” A manager said it to me years ago. He wanted a project proposal from me and my colleagues, and I politely inquired by what criteria that plan would be judged. Seemed like a logical question to me. But he responded as if I was asking about his bank balance.
Researchers call this intentional withholding of knowledge knowledge hiding. The Canadian professor Catherine Connelly has been researching this for about fifteen years. According to her, it is a common and serious problem.
Why is it so important? A large part of our work revolves around knowledge. When people deliberately do not share the most important ‘raw material’ at work with colleagues, it is bad for performance and relationships. This negative effect becomes even greater if many new colleagues or temporary workers join a company. They are often dependent on the knowledge of the old guard for the performance of their tasks.
Of all the times someone asks for knowledge at work, at least 10 percent of the time knowledge is deliberately withheld from colleagues, Connelly and her co-researchers say. This happens roughly in three ways.
1. Playing dumb (playing dumb): a colleague pretends that he simply does not have the answer to a question.2. Show evasive behavior (being evasive): a colleague gives you wrong information. Or just a little bit and falsely promises to come back to it in more detail later.3. Hide rationalized (rationalized hiding): a colleague tells you that he unfortunately cannot or is not allowed to share the information he has.
Why do people do this? Two recent review studies, from Greek and of Chinese researchers, show numerous reasons. Properties of the knowledge hider can play a role. Think of cynicism, narcissism or competitiveness. But characteristics of the working environment also have an influence. Mutual distrust, internal politics and bad examples are important factors.
Good. What are you doing? You can’t force people to stop withholding knowledge, say Connelly and other researchers. Anyone who wants colleagues to help each other more must give them the opportunity to trust each other more. For this, for example, it is necessary that people get to know each other personally. In an environment where people are busy, this can feel like a waste of time. But according to the researchers, this investment in mutual relationships pays for itself over and over.
In addition, managers must lead by example. And it helps if you pay attention to personal characteristics when recruiting employees, such as a competitive drive, which can hinder knowledge sharing.
What can also work is rewarding knowledge sharing. People who really go out of their way to help colleagues could receive recognition and possibly extra compensation for this.
What does not help in any case is setting up formal knowledge programs and digital systems. Computers do not solve human software problems.
The absurdity of the old example of the grumpy manager I started my story with is that this project revolved around setting up such a digital internal knowledge system. In retrospect, it’s actually a good thing that he – unintentionally – undermined this plan so rudely.
Ben Tiggelaar writes weekly about personal leadership, work and management.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 22, 2023.