An outsider praises a rival's direct reports where the rival will hear it, implying the rival fails to recognize their own team and loosening that team's loyalty over months.
An example
Over one winter at a medical device maker, the head of the cardiology business made a habit of praising the senior specialists who reported to the vice president of regulatory affairs, his rival for a seat on the executive committee. At a product review he said one specialist's clearance file was the cleanest he had seen in ten years. At the sales kickoff dinner he toasted another by name. Each time, the vice president was in the room. She had not run a recognition cycle for her team in two years and had been meaning to. In March one specialist asked her, half joking, whether cardiology was hiring. By June two of her five senior people had asked to be seconded to cardiology projects, and fewer of the rest were volunteering for her own priorities.
Why it works
Recognition from someone outside the reporting line feels like high-status praise, so being well disposed toward the flatterer looks better to the people praised. By implication their own leader does not see what an outsider can, and loyalty to that leader, which rests partly on feeling recognized, looks worse. Staying loyal also starts to carry a moderate cost: they look like people working uphill for a boss who has not noticed. It needs praise that is credible (generic flattery reads as instrumental and backfires), an existing recognition gap between the leader and the team, channels where both hear it, and patience, since the effect builds over months of exposure.
The thinking behind it
Leon Festinger Festinger's A Theory of Social Comparison Processes (1954) holds that people evaluate their abilities by comparing themselves with others, especially when no objective standard exists. Praise from an outsider gives a team member a comparison point their own leader has not supplied, and the gap between the two becomes a verdict on the leader. That is why the defense is to close the gap with frequent, specific recognition of your own.
Robert B. Cialdini Influence (1984) describes reciprocity: people feel obliged to repay what others give them, including favors they did not ask for. Public recognition is a gift, and people who receive it from their boss's rival feel well disposed toward the giver and inclined to repay the regard, by volunteering for that person's projects or asking to be seconded. Recognition from their own leader creates the same obligation in the other direction.
Warning signs
Praise for your direct reports from a peer or rival comes in rooms you are in, such as product reviews, committee meetings, and receptions, and keeps coming over months. It names people specifically and accurately, and it often lands on people who already felt overlooked. Your team members start mentioning the praiser's projects, asking about secondments, or repeating the compliments. No single instance looks like anything but collegiality.
How to defend yourself
Work on the gap the praise is exploiting. Confronting the flatterer achieves little, because each compliment is easy to explain as collegial.
- Credit your people often, specifically, and in public: in reviews, in updates to your own boss, and in the rooms where the outside praise has been landing.
- Hold regular conversations with each person about growth and recognition, and act on them with promotions, stretch work, and visible ownership.
- Ask the people who have been praised what work they want next. Some of the pull toward the other leader may be about the work itself, and you may be able to offer it.
A team held together by a shared mission is harder to pull apart this way than one held together by recognition alone, so keep the purpose of the work in view.
How a leader shuts it down
Build recognition into the routine for every leader, with peer and skip-level input, so no team depends on one boss noticing. When two executives are competing for the same seat, watch for a contest fought through each other's teams. Leaders who are known for generous recognition of their own people give this move nothing to work with.