Gunnysacking is a term for storing up hurt feelings, anger, affronts, and unresolved conflicts, and, when the weight of the psychological gunnysack becomes too heavy to bear, unloading it, often to an inappropriate degree in an inappropriate context. I have discovered that a surprising number of managers operate for many years under the oppressive burden of a heavy bag and use a crisis mode of operation as an authorization to unleash long repressed feelings of anger and frustration by figuratively beating their fellow employees about the head with their overloaded gunnysacks. In an environment of layoffs and downsizing, this takes the form of those in power “getting” both functions and people that frustrated them in the past but were protected by a more tolerant organizational culture.
Gunnysacking is unhealthy for the leaders who practice it, for layoff survivors, for the prognosis of organizational continuity, and certainly not useful for healing the wounds. Leaders who see it happening need to move quickly and stop it. They need to help those wielding those heavy bags find better ways to lighten them. If that won’t work, they need to carefully consider the costs in terms of productivity and morale, of retaining people who are more concerned with pursuing a personal vendetta than helping the organization recover. If, in the heat of the battle for organizational survival, you are tempted to form a coalition to “get” a person or a function for the wrong reasons, resist it. It won’t help you, the person you are targeting, or, most importantly, the organization. If you find yourself the victim of gunnysacking, don’t try to get even, that only compounds the problem. Try to discover what past event lies unresolved in the other person’s bag and muster up the courage to directly confront the issue. Gunnysacking is alive and well in today’s downsized organizations. Effective leaders need to move rapidly to confront it and personally refuse to succumb to its temptations.
