Public Grilling – Please Don’t, Not Since 1724!

With the grilling season upon us, what else could we talk about if not workplace barbecues? A shared cookout with colleagues and managers can be a genuinely pleasant, teambuilding experience… except when we end up like Saint Lawrence, and the colleagues start grilling each other instead of the food.

If you type public grilling into a search engine, you’ll find countless cheerful ideas on how to organize a fun barbecue with friends or family. You’ll even get practical advice on how to grill properly in a park or other public space without disturbing others: bring goodquality charcoal or briquettes so you’re actually grilling and not just smoking, always have water on hand to extinguish the fire, and of course, never leave trash behind.

Some people, however, find an entirely different kind of public grilling even more entertaining — not when chicken wings, skewers, ribs, or pork neck are on the grate, but when a colleague or subordinate is roasted to perfection over the glowing embers of everyone else’s gaze.

Saint Lawrence is the patron saint of cooks (and all professions working with fire). He earned this honour in ancient, “enlightened” Rome, where political disputes were sometimes settled by burning people alive — in his case, not tied to a stake, but literally “grilled” on an iron grate.

How can an execution be compared to workplace tension? In my view, in today’s civilized world, destroying someone’s selfrespect and dignity can be just as fatal as a real execution two thousand years ago. And beyond the personal damage, it poisons the entire company culture.

What Is Public Grilling?

In psychology and workplace culture, public grilling refers to a situation where someone is publicly insulted or attacked because of a mistake (including a workrelated one), a perceived or actual action, or some personal trait. This is not gossip — gossip happens behind someone’s back, and the person targeted may never even hear the accusations directly. In a public grilling, everyone is present: the person delivering the criticism, the person being criticized, and the

audience.

What Motivations Might Drive the Active Party?

The active party is the colleague who publicly voices blame, criticism, or disparagement toward another person in that person’s presence. The motivation behind such behaviour can stem from many sources — some intentional, others entirely unintentional. Possible underlying motivations include:

Corrective Intent

Let’s assume innocence and suppose that the grilling colleague or manager is driven by good intentions. Under this banner, they may believe that a mistake made during work should be discussed in front of the whole team so that others can learn from it. While this may sound logical in theory, we are not machines — the person being criticized will inevitably experience the situation emotionally. The audience may indeed learn something, but unfortunately they may also learn that next time they could be the ones standing on the scaffold.

Thoughtlessness

The crime: grilling by negligence.

Sometimes the active party feels that a situation (for example, a customer complaint)

requires immediate action, and the moment they encounter the colleague involved,

they fire off the question. If this happens next to the fridge in the office kitchenette,

the passive party gets away lightly. But if the criticism hits them in the middle of an

open office, in front of fifty people, their human dignity has just been shoved into an

industrial convection oven.

Deliberate Power Play

And of course, we cannot ignore intentional humiliation — when a colleague or superior uses public grilling to assert dominance. When the subconscious lets the inner Chimp step forward, carried by the winds of millions of years of evolution, and dominance is asserted through verbal aggression (Peters, 2015).

The ugly truth is that this behaviour can appear effective up to a point: fear is a powerful binding force, and people often tolerate a predictable bad situation more easily than uncertainty with no real hope of improvement (Belkovszkij, 2014). However, such an organisation will always hit a glass ceiling — fear kills creativity.

What Processes Can a Public Grilling Culture Trigger Within an Organisation?

Rejection (Expulsion)

In the bestcase scenario, the company’s positive internal culture is strong enough to expel those who behave aggressively. This may take the form of active rejection, where colleagues with a different mindset put pressure on the employer, who is then forced to dismiss the griller.

A more difficult situation arises when the griller is otherwise successful or financially valuable to the company.

There can also be passive rejection, where the positive internal morale and the majority’s different attitude create such an uncomfortable environment for the griller that the air slowly disappears around them — and they eventually choose to leave on their own.

Spread

Serious negative dynamics can unfold when others begin to imitate the griller’s behaviour. Seeing that this approach appears effective for a while, noticing that management or ownership tolerates it, and feeling their own inner Chimp breaking free from the subconscious, more and more people start copying the example. Eventually, the entire organisation becomes permeated by aggressive communication, leading to an irreversible cultural collapse.

Apparent death

We can speak of a state of apparent death when one or a small number of grillers operate within a corporate group, and the system is unable to expel them. Their slow, corrosive influence blocks the possibility of progress within the company, department, or division. From the outside, the organisation appears healthy, and even employees may only gradually sense—through a thin layer of tracing paper—that something is not right. Many may not even be able to articulate at first what exactly causes the discomfort in the workplace environment. The company becomes semialive—or, if you prefer, semidead. It looks functional at first glance, yet it does not truly function.

What Can We Do Against a Grilling Culture?

As leaders, we must always pay attention to proper communication. We should observe whether verbal and written communication between colleagues is courteous, in good faith, and solutionoriented. If any of these three qualities is missing, it is already a sign of deteriorating internal relationships, and the issue must be addressed early, before it takes root.

And not least, as leaders, we must continuously monitor ourselves as well. Our own subjective experiences can distort the picture we have of ourselves. We must be selfcritical and ask whether our leadership communication is truly assertive, supportive, and effective. What matters is not our internal intention, but how our communication is heard and interpreted by others.

A Lesson From History

From the 15th century onward, darkness fell over Europe. Witch hunts overshadowed the ideal of civilized humanity for more than 300 years. In 1724, the last “Sárrét witch” was burned at the stake in Szeghalom (note: Hungarian city) — an event considered the end of Hungarian witch trials.

Let us learn from this example and refrain from “burning” colleagues, employees, subordinates, or even superiors in public. There are civilised and effective ways to resolve even the most serious conflicts or problems.

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