Grooming is a methodical preparation for the future. Parents groom their children to be sports stars or, perhaps, world-famous pianists, doctors, or lawyers. In wealthier areas and in some countries, such as Japan, the process of grooming their students for academic, and networking, success starts at birth or before. They are set up to be in the best nursery, the best kindergarten, the best elementary school, the best preparatory high school, and the best college to allow for greatest potential heights. Whenever there is a specific future envisioned, dedicated focused attention and training can facilitate that goal. It is to be hoped that the person being groomed will have the same goals as that of the person doing the grooming -- but that is definitely not always the case. Children rebel once they have grown and decide to be artists instead of lawyers. But, in many cases, that backlog of direction will achieve the groomer's goal.
The same types of processes occur in business. We often call these processes mentoring and counseling. However, it may also include active placement into positions, carefully choosing assignments, choices for visibility and experience which interconnect between the mentoring and putting them on a "fast track" towards a goal.
These are all instances of grooming for what most would consider a positive result but people can also be groomed for failure. At one place where I worked, a restructure of the organization, moving from a hierarchical structure to an Agile one, meant that a considerable reduction of management would be needed. Although I had trained for both Product Owner and Scrum Master positions, it was decided that I would be one of those let go rather than moved into one of the newly created positions. In order to achieve that, it was necessary to create a paper trail to justify it. So, no new assignments were made and, each year, it was written down that I was underperforming. Then another year of requests for assignments and no assignments given and more paper trail comments. A transfer would have been useful but there were no such posts available. It happens.
It isn't just paper trail justifications that can be set up for grooming for failure. A long-term teacher was making a reasonable amount of money because of their seniority. If the school district got rid of them they could hire two novice, inexperienced, teachers (with a bit of change) for the same amount. But, in theory, the union did not allow a "tenured" teacher to be fired just because the district wanted to save money. But what the school administration COULD do was to withdraw all support services to the teacher. No bathroom breaks. No support for discipline for misbehaving students. Students are, in general, very aware the situation in a classroom and could recognize that the teacher was being left to survive. Thefts in the classroom went up. Accusations of the teacher and of other students went up. The union, being afraid of doing anything in a period of budget crunches, would not help. The teacher "volunteered" for the early retirement being offered by the school district.
I will repeat the beginning sentence. Grooming is a methodical preparation for the future. Most would think that that would be towards a mutually beneficial future. But it can be a situation where it is NOT mutual -- where one person wants the outcome and the other not. And it can be preparation for other outcomes not known or desired.
