Stir up waters to catch fish
Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance, find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.
I am color blind to a vast range of interpersonal interactions, the fact that people have a vocabulary/taxonomy of interactions which includes or can generate - "micro sabotage"... hints at a world too exhausting to imagine
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...
You probably won't thank me if you do read it - it changes the way you evaluate people...
At the best places, I assume this happens a bit, but it's pretty easy to ignore it completely and still do well by being a good employee.
At the worst places, it's apparent even to someone unaware that something is up, because people will make comments that are totally nonsensical unless you're neck-deep in the politicking. It also shows when smart people make obviously awful decisions - they're probably getting something out of it other than the good of the company.
Micromanagers and other really nasty people to work for are usually compensating for their own lack of power or security by making your life as miserable as possible.
The existence of people like this is a red flag for the organization because it always leads to negative outcomes.
It does it by getting the micromanaged fired.
