Divide and Conquer
One-liner: Deliberately sowing rivalry or distrust between colleagues so they never compare notes, unite, or notice the same pattern is happening to more than one of them.
Also known as / related terms: Divide and rule, playing favorites, inner-circle politics, pitting people against each other.
What it is: Divide and rule (divide et impera) is a long-documented power strategy: create or exploit divisions between people who might otherwise unite against a common source of the problem, so no coalition can form. In organizations, this shows up as a boss or colleague who deliberately creates rivalry, unequal treatment, or an “inner circle,” so subordinates compete with each other instead of comparing experiences. Workplace bullying researcher Dorothy Suskind, Ph.D., writing in Psychology Today, describes how bullies create an inner circle of compliant colleagues who will not threaten their reign, while purposefully excluding talented and curious employees who could question them, a mechanism she frames as calculated exclusion rather than accident. The Workplace Bullying Institute’s survey data on bully tactics found that 55 percent of targets reported the bully had encouraged people to turn against the person being tormented, making active recruitment of coworkers against a target a measured, common tactic rather than an edge case.
What it looks like (workplace): A manager praises one team member in front of others while criticizing a second, privately tells two colleagues different, incompatible versions of who is responsible for a problem, or rewards whoever “gets there first” on overlapping projects so teammates start guarding information from each other instead of collaborating.
Why they do it: If colleagues compare notes, they may realize the same treatment is happening to more than one of them, which is the first step toward a shared, credible complaint. Keeping people rivalrous, or simply too busy competing with each other, prevents that comparison from happening.
How to protect yourself:
- Talk to coworkers directly about your actual experiences rather than relying on what you’ve been told secondhand about them.
- Notice when you’re being told a private, flattering version of events that doesn’t match what a peer is being told.
- Resist competing for scraps of favor that come at a colleague’s expense. That competition is the mechanism, not a side effect.
- If you suspect a pattern, ask one trusted colleague a specific, neutral question (“How did that meeting go for you?”) rather than a leading one.
Cross-links: Coalition-Building/Mobbing, Triangulation, Workplace Ostracism/Social Exclusion.
Sources:
- Bully Types & Tactics, Workplace Bullying Institute, survey data on bully tactics, including turning coworkers against a target.
- Pushed Outside the Inner Circle at Work, Psychology Today (Dorothy Suskind, Ph.D.), on the “inner circle” exclusion mechanism used to prevent solidarity among colleagues.
Label note: Divide and rule is a long-established term in political and organizational-power literature, applied here to a specific workplace mechanism documented separately in workplace bullying research. It is distinct from Coalition-Building/Mobbing (a group organized against one target) and Triangulation (routing communication through a third party): divide and conquer is specifically about preventing multiple people from comparing notes and recognizing a shared pattern.