Unmasking the Psychology Behind Weaponised Incompetence: how it Sabotages Organisational Behaviour.

Abstract

Weaponised incompetence is a form of passive-aggressive behaviour where an individual deliberately performs tasks poorly or pretends to be incapa- ble of completing certain tasks (Austrew, 2022). 1986 issue of Harvard Business Review magazine discusses skilled in- competence in the workplace, where people skillfully avoid conflict only for it to eventually blow up and create larger or- ganisational chaos than it would have if the conflict had been addressed earlier. Hence, this is a deliberate avoidance of accountability by the use of deception, such as portraying incapacity or incompe- tence, to enable someone else to assist,

assume control, or cease assigning work to them. In this sense, the imbalance progressively solidifies. To illustrate how weaponised incompetence plays out in a workplace, let’s consider the following example.