How to Deal With ‘Weaponized Incompetence’ at Work

We’ve all dealt with co-workers who are bad at their jobs, but very good at making their incompetence your problem—from the boss who over-promises, (only to expect you to do all of the work) to the co-worker who can’t quite do their job, (but is all too happy to pass their work off to you).

This habit of feigning incompetence at a task, so as to make it someone else’s responsibility, is called “weaponized incompetence,” and can show up at work in a number of different ways. Sometimes the co-worker may be genuinely incompetent; other times, they are capable of doing the work—they just don’t care to. Either way, their refusal or inability to do the work properly ends up becoming your problem as you are blamed for their failures or forced to take on work they will then take credit for.

How to recognize (and deal with) a boss’s weaponized incompetence 

One major sign of weaponized incompetence in a boss is when they seem clueless about what it actually takes to finish a project. They might assume a particular a task takes 2 hours to complete, rather than the more realistic 12 hours. Or they don’t having a good sense of what their employee’s workload actually looks like. For some bosses, this cluelessness may be genuine. For others, this incompetence is strategic, as they’ve learned they can make a whole bunch of big promises, the hard work of which will get passed off to their employees, who then have to scramble to get the job done, which the boss will get credit for pulling off, when in reality, they offered very little support.

“A lot of leaders get this way because organizations encourage this and reward it,” said Tessa West, a social psychologist at NYU and author of the book Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them.

This then turns into a self-repeating cycle, where the incompetent boss will make promises, force their employees to carry it out without offering much support, and then reap the rewards of their accomplishments, counting on the fact that they’ll be promoted into a different group before higher-ups realize just how little they did.

“The higher and more powerful someone is, the easier it is for them to get away with not doing what they should, often because they don’t want to do it and know that they can get away with it,” said Daphne Jones, a breakthrough career coach and author of the book Win When They Say You Won’t.

There is strength in numbers when dealing with a boss like this: “Their kryptonite is having their targets discover each other,” West said. If people can get together and show a pattern of incompetence, it’s easier to show upper management what is really going on, and how it is affecting productivity. “Widespread problems are scarier to a boss than one-off conflicts between two people,” West said.

How to recognize (and deal with) a co-worker’s weaponized incompetence 

Similarly, if a co-worker can’t (or won’t) carry out a number of tasks that would be expected of them, given their position, that is a red flag. “In certain positions, people are expected to have certain broad or specific capabilities and competencies,” Jones said. “If you have them, your coworker likely should, too.”

If they don’t have these skills, they could either be in an ill-fitting role or their incompetence could be their way of passing off these responsibilities to others. When it comes to dealing with co-workers like these, Jones recommends assuming good intentions, but to try and find a way to address the situation, either with your co-worker or with your boss. “It starts with good communication,” she said.

If your relationship with the co-worker is good, you can try asking them if they are aware of any blind spots they might have. If not, it can help to bring up your contributions with your boss, as a way of ensuring that you are receiving proper acknowledgment for your work. “Let [your boss] know in a matter-of-fact way, not as a complaint, of the status of your project achievements and also how you assisted the other person who has deployed weaponized incompetence,” Jones said.