Toxic workplaces: the “tall poppy” problem in conservation and academia

Are you in conservation or academia and have noticed these things happening?

• The person doing the most work somehow becomes “difficult.”
• The researcher publishing the most papers is suddenly accused of not being a “team player.”
• The scientist who actually talks to the public is dismissed as a “self-promoter.”
• The conservationist who gets attention for their work is quietly left off the next grant proposal.
• The person who brings in funding, publishes, gives talks, communicates science, works with policymakers, and generally appears to have misplaced the memo explaining that they were supposed to stay quiet suddenly discovers that their colleagues have concerns about their “collegiality.”

Somehow, those concerns never seem to involve the actual quality of their work. Welcome to the wonderful world of “Tall Poppy Syndrome”, where the flower that stands out above the others must be cut down. It is the peculiar phenomenon in which someone who is doing exceptionally well becomes a problem. Not because they are doing their job badly, but because they are doing it too visibly. If you work in conservation, science communication, or academia, there is a good chance you have seen the tall poppy syndrome in your workplace. You may have even experienced it yourself.

Cut down the tall poppy

The basic idea is simple. A group has a baseline. But then someone starts performing well above that baseline. They publish more, they win grants, they get invited to give keynote talks at conferences. They become good at communicating with the public. They build an impressive conservation program. They get media attention. But instead of asking, “How can we support this person and help them succeed?” the group starts asking:

“Why does this person think they’re so special?”

They then get subjected to a subtle type of bullying called “academic mobbing”, in which high-performing individuals can be criticized or deliberately undermined by multiple ‘colleagues’ who perceive their success as threatening. But the important thing is that the attack, or bullying, doesn’t necessarily look like an attack. Nobody stands up in the faculty meeting and shouts, “WE MUST DESTROY THE PRODUCTIVE PERSON.”

Instead, it is usually much more insidious, devious, and much more effective. Comments start to be muttered. “They’re not a team player,” is one of the classics. You may be productive and you have your own ideas, but you don’t spend every waking moment participating in departmental politics. Perhaps you even (horrors!) disagree with senior people when you think they are wrong. Suddenly, your actual performance becomes secondary to the wonderfully vague characteristic “collegiality”. Whispers start that you aren’t “collaborative” and you are deemed “difficult”, “arrogant” and, of course, “not a team player.” Accusations that are very difficult to quantify, measure or directly counter.

Publications? These are countable. Grants? The dollar value speaks for themselves. Students trained? Easily tallied. Conservation outcomes? A bit more difficult, but also potentially measurable.

However, when it comes to “people find you difficult”? That’s wonderfully vague and squishy. It creates a situation where objective and quantifiable achievements can be overwhelmed by “vibes”.

Then comes the nitpicking…

When someone has a long list of achievements, attacking the achievements themselves can be difficult. So, you attack the minutiae. For example:

• They didn’t say “good morning” to their class but said “hello everyone”.
• Their mentored student only won a lesser scholarship or published in a lower tier journal.
• Their publications were in a high tier journal in their field but not in Science or Nature.
• The research was “applied” and not “real science”.
• They make pop culture references in their classes, or crack jokes, instead of being serious.
• Their research is in the field, or in a foreign country, and they grant money isn’t going into keeping up university labs.
• They are “inter-disciplinary” and that means they are not focused.
• Conversely, they are simultaneously not interdisciplinary enough.
• They got the largest grant in their field, but it wasn’t as large as the grants the cancer researchers on campus got.
• They do (horrors!) social ‘science’. 
• They train too many students, so they can’t be doing good research.
• Their teaching scores are too good, so they can’t be rigorous enough.
• Students want to take their classes and there are waiting lists, so they must be giving out “easy As”.
• They have too many “co-authors”.
• They don’t have enough ‘co-authors”.
• They do “popular science” not “real science”.

These are all accusations that I have personally heard come from so-called ‘colleagues’ about my research and teaching. The hundred things you did exceptionally well disappear. The focus is on one or two nitpicking issues that then get traction and become inflated into critical faults.

Then comes exclusion…

This one can be almost invisible. You aren’t invited to the meeting. You don’t hear about the grant opportunity. Your name mysteriously disappears from a collaboration. Someone “forgot” to include you on the email. You discover that your colleagues have been discussing a project in your area of expertise for six months…without you.

This sort of “insidious exclusion” is on of the forms academic mobbing or the “tall poppy syndrome” can take. It also results in a nasty little feedback loop.

If you exclude someone from opportunities → their productivity falls → colleagues point to their reduced productivity → they declare that they aren’t sufficiently engaged.

Conservation has its own version of this problem

The conservation field may be particularly vulnerable to this issue. Because conservation isn’t just about science. It is about politics, funding, public opinion and relationships with communities. It is about communicating why some obscure amphibian, wetland, forest, fish, bat, insect, or marine mammal actually matters.

Increasingly, conservation is about being able to communicate outside the scientific community. Which means that the person who can do the science and communicate it effectively can become extraordinarily valuable. But that visibility can also create resentment.

Someone who becomes the public face of a conservation issue may start attracting attention that previously belonged to the institution. Someone who is good at fundraising may bring in opportunities that other people don’t have. Someone who writes popular articles may reach hundreds of thousands of people who will never read the peer-reviewed paper. Or someone who can translate complicated science into something the public understands may, suddenly, become much more influential than someone who has spent twenty years communicating almost exclusively with other people who already agree with them.

This should be celebrated, but it often isn’t. For example, the late, great, Jane Goodall, frequently, had detractors saying that she was a poor scientist, or an attention seeker, or her conservation work was over-hyped.

The “Sagan effect“

Cosmologist and science communicator Carl Sagan is a famous example of the tension between scientific achievement and public communication. Where academia frequently pillories scientists who become prominent science communicators, because they are somehow doing something less rigorous or less serious.

As a young assistant professor at Harvard, Sagan was incredibly productive, publishing a high volume of papers and actively worked with NASA. However, he also gave public lectures and frequently appeared on television. When it came time for him to be reviewed for tenure the faculty turned him down – essentially firing him in a potentially career killing decision. They justified it by claiming he lacked “scientific responsibility” and he was chasing celebrity rather than “hard research” – despite his publication list providing evidence that this was not the case. His experience was so distinct that it spawned its own academic term: “the Sagan effect.” This is systemic bias against researchers who are science communicators or engage in public outreach and education. These researchers are viewed by their peers as less rigorous or less knowledgeable, regardless of their actual scientific output.

As it turned out, Cornell University saw Harvard’s massive error and immediately snapped Sagan up, where he spent the rest of his career. However, the bias continued.  By 1991, Sagan was a global icon. His television series Cosmos had been watched by hundreds of millions, he was a regular on late-night talk shows, and he had secured a record-breaking $2 million book advance for his sci-fi novel “Contact”. But the bias continued. When Sagan was nominated for membership into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, an influential group of academics launched a coordinated campaign to blackball him. He was rejected in the first round of voting. Insiders described how he was rejected simply because his colleagues looked down on his television work as “fluff” and envied his fame. This was despite the fact that his actual scientific publication record remained superior to many sitting members of the National Academy of Sciences.

The moral of Sagan’s story is that: scientists can be punished professionally for being good at communicating science. Which is a profoundly stupid incentive structure. Because if we want people to care about biodiversity, climate change, endangered species, ecological collapse, or conservation policy, we need scientists and conservationists who can communicate beyond the boundaries of their own professional communities. If we want Congress to fund these things, we need people who can communicate their importance. We shouldn’t be treating public engagement as evidence that someone isn’t a serious scientist.

The uncomfortable truth

Tall Poppy Syndrome isn’t necessarily about incompetent people being jealous of brilliant people. Sometimes the situation is much more complicated.

Because in both academia and the wider field of conservation organizations have limited money, there are few grants available, there are limited jobs and promotions are rare. This leads to a lot of unpleasant competition for jobs, promotions and resources. Moreover, academic and conservation institutions are made up of human beings, which means that ambition, insecurity, status, ego and institutional politics are always going to be present.

The ingredients lead to a culture where standing out becomes dangerous. Then either you are punished for being productive, or you learn the lesson don’t publish too much, get too much attention, become too successful, or become well known. Instead keep your head down and stay approximately average. Whatever you do, don’t stand out. This ultimately leads to a culture where institutions become conservative, mediocre, and unproductive.

So, what should you look out for?

If you work in conservation or academia, pay particular attention when criticism suddenly shifts away from measurable performance and toward vague complaints about your personality. If your accomplishments are routinely minimized while tiny mistakes are magnified. If you start being excluded in where you should have been invited. When you start hearing rumors about your “arrogance” or your “lack of rigor” or your lack of “collegiality” or “fit.”

None of these things, individually, prove that you are a tall poppy in danger of being cut down, because sometimes people are difficult and sometimes collaboration really does matter. But when a consistent pattern emerges (particularly when strong performance is repeatedly reframed as a personality problem) it is worth asking the question:

Is the problem actually my performance, or is my performance making someone else uncomfortable?

Because conservation desperately needs people who stand out.  We need: the scientists who refuse to shut up about disappearing species; the communicators who can make people care; the researchers who keep producing evidence; the conservationists who are willing to challenge bad policy. We need people who are ambitious enough to try something new.

But we certainly don’t need an institutional culture that responds to exceptional performance by reaching for the lawnmower. Let the poppies grow. The world has quite enough mediocre lawns already.