Outbursts become rude reminders of Kevin Rudd's past

Published in : The Australian    
Date: August 23, 2013 12:00AM

Written by: Rachel Baxendale, Reporter, Melbourne and Sid Maher, National Affairs Editor, Canberra

A RETIRED air vice-marshal has accused Kevin Rudd of "bully standover tactics" and a make-up artist has declared he was rude as she prepared him for the people's forum debate, reviving questions about the Prime Minister's character that emerged in his first stint in the role.

Air Vice-Marshal Peter Criss revealed Mr Rudd had warned him in a private meeting that funding for veterans would be at risk if he "bagged" the Labor government. He accused Mr Rudd of using "classic bully standover tactics" and threatening veterans with getting nothing if they criticised Labor's military superannuation indexation policy.

The air vice-marshal's comments came to light as Brisbane make-up artist Lily Fontana posted a message on Facebook that suggested Mr Rudd had been rude to her in the lead-up to Wednesday night's people's forum in Brisbane.

The revelations blunted Labor's attacks on Tony Abbott's character, after the Opposition Leader snapped during the forum debate, asking of Rudd "does this guy ever shut up?"
Ms Fontana, who lives in Mr Rudd's electorate of Griffith, wrote in her post: "Just finished doing Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott's make-up for the People's Forum at the Broncos Leagues Club. One of them was absolutely lovely, engaged in genuine conversation with me, acknowledge (sic) that I had a job to do and was very appreciative. The other did the exact opposite! Oh boy, I have ever (sic) had anyone treat me so badly whilst trying to do my job. Political opinion aside ... from one human being to another ... Mr Abbott you win hands down."

The post echoed claims that Mr Rudd had been rude to air force staff during his first term as prime minister. In the lead up to his failed February 2012 leadership challenge against Julia Gillard, an expletive-laden video was leaked of him losing his cool as he prepared a Chinese-language video.

As news of yesterday's Facebook post spread, prompting a string of government ministers to have to defend Mr Rudd's character, the Prime Minister's office was confronted with fallout from Air Vice-Marshal Criss's revelations in an interview on Brisbane radio on Wednesday.

The retired airman alleged that at a meeting in the Prime Minister's office on July 11, attended by Mr Rudd, Defence Force Welfare Association national president David Jamison, DFWA executive director Alf Jaugietis and Defence Materiel Minister Mike Kelly, Mr Rudd warned the DFWA against bagging the Labor government.

"I told him I was going to have to point out to our members that what Labor is offering is not a good deal," Air Vice-Marshal Criss said.

"I'm the national media manager, so I told him I would be putting together policy comparisons of what each party is offering. Rudd said, 'That's fine, but don't bag us, because if you bag us, we'll pull up the drawbridge and you'll get nothing'."

Air Vice-Marshal Criss told The Australian yesterday he had been intending to stay quiet about the incident, but chose to speak out after becoming infuriated with what he termed Dr Kelly's "untruths" about military superannuation indexation during an interview with ABC News Breakfast's Michael Rowland on Monday.

On July 30, the government announced it would boost the military pension of more than 26,000 retired Australian Defence personnel by indexing their payments in the same way as aged and service pensions from next July. But the measure only applies to those aged 65 and over, which according to the DFWA leaves more than 200,000 servicemen and ex-servicemen on insufficient payments.

Dr Kelly said the way Air Vice-Marshal Criss had characterised the meeting was "absolutely untrue". "He's basically saying that the Prime Minister was threatening," Dr Kelly said.

"That's completely untrue. He was there to engage and support (the DFWA representatives) and they were very happy that they were there having the meeting.

"The only way he could have construed that was perhaps that we emphasised the importance of acknowledging the changes to the system that had been made by Labor."
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said he did not accept Air Vice-Marshal Criss's characterisation of the meeting.

"The Prime Minister had a productive meeting with members of the Defence Force Welfare Association, including Air Vice-Marshal Peter Criss," the spokesman said.

"The outcome of the meeting was that the Prime Minister agreed to support the next step of the DFWA's proposal for indexation and we look forward to ongoing constructive engagement with the DFWA on this matter."

Ms Fontana's Facebook post yesterday was shared more than 1000 times on the social networking site before Sky News ordered the freelance make-up artist to take it down.
She contacted Mr Rudd's office and offered an apology to the Prime Minister. By mid-morning, Ms Fontana had posted a new, regretful message.

"Didn't think my personal page/opinion of my day would get so much attention," she wrote. "What a lesson to learn. I've removed the post and regret making the comments I did."
Another Brisbane-based make-up artist, Abigael Johnston, who has worked for the Nine Network, had posted on Ms Fontana's wall about a "similar experience" with Mr Rudd, noting John Howard and Peter Costello were "gentlemen". "The other, I could not even face book (sic) how he treated the crew. Just abhorrent!" she wrote.

When contacted, Ms Johnston said: "That post has been taken down. I have no comment."
Employment Relations Minister Bill Shorten defended Mr Rudd's character, saying he believed the Prime Minister had changed. "I have no doubt that not only is Kevin Rudd a more consultative person, but he is the right leader for these times," he said.

Former prime minister Bob Hawke, in Adelaide for a state Labor event, said voters did not care whether Mr Rudd was rude.

"If you're an intelligent voter, what's going to be more important to you: the fact that, under a great deal of pressure, the Prime Minister was just in passing a bit rude to a person, or that he is going to have for you and your kids and your grandchildren, a better education policy, a better health policy a better economic policy?" Mr Hawke said. Asked about the Facebook post, Mr Rudd said he understood "the person concerned has withdrawn their remarks from Facebook, and they regretted making those comments".

"When you are preparing for a debate with two or three minutes to go and someone walks in and puts stuff on your face, you smile, you are in the zone, you're ready to go," the Prime Minister said. "I don't know about you folks, but I'm not happy about having make-up put on at the best of days.

"You smile, then two or three minutes later out on the stage to participate in the debate - I think a misunderstanding has occurred and I have no hard feelings in terms of the comments which this person has now withdrawn."

Mr Abbott fumbled Ms Fontana's name - calling her "Tilly" - but he praised her professionalism and said the pair had an enjoyable conversation prior to the contest.
He played down his "does this guy ever shut up" remark during the people's forum. "Look, one contest that I can never win against Mr Rudd is a talkathon," the Opposition Leader said.

Mr Abbott said Mr Rudd suffered from being "all talk and no action".
Mr Albanese said Mr Abbott's response to Mr Rudd was "aggressive, was angry, and it reminded me of a leader we used to have, Mark Latham".

"I thought his handshake during the first debate was his first Mark Latham moment, and last night we saw his second Mark Latham moment ... People are right to be worried about this bloke, about whether he is up to the job," Mr Albanese said.

Additional reporting: Sarah Elks
Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/outbursts-become-rude-reminders-of-pms-past/story-fn9qr68y-1226702470808

A precursor to Bullying.... Rudeness At Work: On the Rise, And Coming With A Big Cost

Just because you’ve developed a thick skin for rude, discourteous behavior, doesn’t mean workplace incivility is not hurting you–and your family.

A new Baylor University study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that workplace rudeness can follow you home, causing you to unleash “incivil” behavior on your loved ones.

That’s disconcerting news for the 43% of Americans who have experienced incivility at work, according to the report, Civility in America, 2011. To be clear, incivility is different from aggressive bullying, which usually carries the intent to harm someone. With incivility, the intent is ambiguous, and it’s less intense and characterized by demeaning remarks, showing little interest in a worker’s opinion, acting rudely or with poor manners, among other uncivilized behaviors.

The Baylor study found that those who experienced workplace incivility had lower levels of marital satisfaction and greater family/work conflict, particularly for the partner. It also found that stress from incivility was contagious to family members.

Whose to blame?

When asked to name some of the top causes for the growing incivility problems, 65% of workers blame their company’s leaders and 59% also blame employees, while 46% list the lagging economy as a cause. Interestingly, 34% blame younger employees for incivility and only 6% blame older employees. But incivility at work, many agree, is an artifact of life in America. More than 70% of Americans consider political campaigns, pop culture, the media, government and the music industry hubs of incivility, according to the Civility in America Report.

How to tamp down rudeness

In the words of Aretha Franklin, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The authors of the Civility in America report write:

Johns Hopkins Professor Pier M. Forni, co-founder of the Civility Project, defines the basics of civility as the Three R’s: Respect, Restraint and Responsibility. When Americans were asked to define “civility,” the words “respect” and “treating others as you would want to be treated” predominated.

And rather than shrug off rudeness, name it, because the more you become inured to it, the more normal it becomes.

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7 Deadly Sins of BAD MANAGERS - What Managers & Supervisors Must Avoid in the Workplace

Every supervisor has his or her flaws, some more egregious than others. Here we look at a few of the most pervasive mistakes that bosses make, plus how to avoid them.

No boss is perfect, but some are less perfect than others. While it is impossible to satisfy every employee's needs throughout their career, certain types of managerial behavior are almost guaranteed to rub workers the wrong way. Whether it's seizing undeserved credit, imposing unrealistic workloads or simply failing to listen to employees' concerns, a pattern of bad management can lead to significant declines in performance and may even cost a supervisor his or her career. This makes it vital to promptly correct such mistakes or, better yet, avoid them in the first place.

"Few things incite a frothing, wild-eyed rage like asking people to talk about bad bosses. People aren't just annoyed by poor leadership — they sputter and snarl as they describe their superiors, lusting for the chance to hit that bad boss with a perfect, withering insult," CNN.com explains. "It's a little scary, then, to realize that we're all likely to occupy a leadership role, from motherhood to mogulhood, at some point in our lives. When we blow it, our imperfections will be magnified by our authority."

A surprising number of managers display archetypal forms of bad behavior. According to a Florida State University survey last month, many employees believe their superiors embody one of the seven deadly sins:

• Wrath — 26 percent said their boss has trouble managing anger;
• Greed — 27 percent said their boss pursues undeserved rewards;
• Sloth — 41 percent said their boss lazily pushes work onto others;
• Pride — 31 percent said their boss craves undeserved admiration;
• Lust — 33 percent said their boss needs to have his or her ego stroked every day;
• Envy — 19 percent said their boss is jealous of others' successes; and
• Gluttony — 23 percent said their boss hoards resources that could be useful to others at work.

"Employees with leaders who committed these 'sins' contributed less effort (40 percent less), felt overloaded as a result of forced responsibility for their supervisor's work (33 percent more), were less likely to make creative suggestions (66 percent less) and received fewer resources to effectively do their job (60 percent less) than those without this negative type of leadership," Christian Ponder, a research associate at Florida State's College of Business who worked on the survey, said.

While the most common faults seem to be obvious, it can be surprisingly difficult to recognize bad managerial qualities in oneself. Cultivating a sense of discernment to better spot negative employee reactions is an important skill that can distinguish a good boss from a mediocre one.

"The most crucial test of a boss is self-awareness. The best bosses are in tune with how the little things they say and do impact people, and they are adept at adjusting to bolster both performance and dignity," Bob Sutton, a professor in Stanford University's department of management science and engineering, notes at AMEX OPEN Forum. "Several studies, including one by the College Board, suggest that the more incompetent a boss is, the more out of touch he or she is likely to be."

There are several signals in the workplace that can point to bad tendencies in a manager. BNET lists some of the common signs of a managerial problem, including:

• Your team is underperforming. Bad management trickles down and eventually affects the rest of the organization, causing your workers' performance to deteriorate.
• Your own boss is putting on the pressure. When a senior manager notices a subordinate manager is having trouble, he or she might start paying a lot more attention to that person. If your supervisor turns on the heat, it may be a sign that something is wrong with your management style.
• Your allies start to drift away. When your work friends or supporters start distancing themselves from you, it's a strong signal that things are not going well for you at the company and others know it.
• Your employees are miserable. A group of consistently unhappy employees usually means a bad manager is in their lives. Pay attention to how your workers are doing to get a clear gauge of your own performance.

While there's no single measure that can turn someone into a good boss, recognizing negative behaviors and working to mend them can be a crucial step in rebuilding employees' confidence in your abilities and providing a better work environment for your colleagues.

"Who you are shows up most clearly in the relationships you form with others, especially those for whom you're responsible," Harvard Business Review explains. "It's easy to get those crucial relationships wrong. Effective managers possess the self-awareness and self-management required to get them right."

This means that spotting when you're engaged in one of the "deadly sins" of bad management and paying close attention to your workers' needs, your own boss's expectations and the way others treat you within the company are necessary stages in becoming a better manager.

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STUDY - The Calculated Tactics Revealed In How People Climb To The Top - Brown Tongue, Sucking Up, Bosses Pet, Manipuator

Flattery will get you far

Research by Assistant Professor Ithai Stern suggests that corporate leaders are more likely to win board appointments at other firms when they use subtle forms of flattery and conformity within their organizations.

New research reveals seven types of ingratiation that increase boardroom prospects for top executives

In the corporate world, board appointments are typically perceived as markers of success. However, new research from the Kellogg School suggests boardroom entrance strategies are rarely based on merit alone.

According to the study, “Stealthy Footsteps to the Boardroom: Executives’ Backgrounds, Sophisticated Interpersonal Influence Behavior and Board Appointments,” corporate leaders are more likely to win board appointments at other firms when employing subtle, but sophisticated, forms of flattery and opinion conformity within their organizations.

“Past research has demonstrated the effects of corporate leaders taking part in ingratiation and persuasion tactics,” said Ithai Stern, assistant professor of management and organizations and co-author of the study. “However, our study is the first to look at the effectiveness of specific tactics in increasing the likelihood of garnering board appointments at other firms, as well as which types of executives are most likely to effectively engage these tactics.”

As part of the study, Stern and his co-author James Westphal, strategy professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, drew from theory and research on interpersonal attraction, as well as interviews with 42 managers and CEOs of large U.S. industrial and service firms, to identify a set of tactics that are less likely to be interpreted as manipulative or political in intent, and are therefore more likely to bring about social influence.

The researchers identified seven effective forms of ingratiation most likely to help executives win board seats:

• Framing flattery as advice seeking: Occurs when a person poses a question seeking advice as a way to flatter the subject (i.e. “How were you able to close that deal so successfully?”).
• Arguing prior to conforming: Instead of agreeing immediately, a person will yield before accepting his/her manager’s opinion (i.e. “At first, I didn’t see your point but it makes total sense now. You’ve convinced me.”).
• Complimenting manager to his/her friends: Praising manager to his/her friends or social network with hopes that word gets back to manager.
• Framing flattery as likely to make manager uncomfortable: Positioning a remark as likely to be embarrassing (i.e. “I don’t want to embarrass you but your presentation was really top-notch. Better than most I’ve seen.”).
• Engaging in value conformity prior to flattery or opinion conformity: Expressing values or morals which are held by one’s manager (i.e. “I’m the same way. I believe we should increase minimum wage.”).
• Conforming to opinions expressed by one’s manager to a third party: Covertly learning of manager's opinion(s) from his/her contacts, and then conforming with opinion(s) in conversations with manager.
• Referencing social affiliations held in common with one’s manager prior to flattery or opinion conformity: Mentioning an affiliation, such as a religious organization or political party, shared by both individuals. (i.e. “I watched the Republican National Convention last night. The keynote presented some great points.”).

As part of these findings, the authors also discovered that managers and directors who have a background in politics, law or sales are significantly more likely to engage in sophisticated forms of ingratiation. Similarly, managers and directors who have an upper-class background are more sophisticated in their ingratiatory behavior than individuals with a middle- or working-class background. The authors argue that this proclivity is consistent with social norms in these environments. These findings shed new light on why there are only a few top managers with backgrounds in engineering, accounting or finance, as compared to top managers with backgrounds in politics, law or sales.

“Lawyers, politicians and salespeople routinely take part in flattery and opinion conformity to complete their jobs, similar to those operating in an upper-class social environment,” said Stern. “Ingratiatory behavior is a form of interpersonal communication that is acceptable and expected in both arenas.”

Stern and Westphal note that acts of flattery are successful in yielding board appointments at other firms if the influence target doesn’t recognize these acts as a favor-seeking motive.

“To tap into the corporate elite’s inner circle, a person cannot be too obvious,” Westphal said. “Being too overt with one’s intentions can be interpreted as manipulative or political. The more covert the ingratiation, the more sophisticated the approach and effective the outcome.”

Source
The study, “Stealthy Footsteps to the Boardroom: Executives’ Backgrounds, Sophisticated Interpersonal Influence Behavior, and Board Appointments,” appears in the current issue of Administrative Science Quarterly.

THE ART OF SUCKING UP
This kind of subtle flattery can also help employees climb up the corporate ladder. The more you disguise the sucking up to bosses and managers, the less likely you will be seen as manipulative and scheming. According to one study quoted here, managers were more likely to come down hard on people they see as sucking up to them, who are not being subtle and who are going over the top. But the study notes that when managers are fooled into believing the compliments are sincere, they are more likely to rate that person’s performance highly.
In other words, you have to do it right. It takes practice and skill the fool the other person.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Andrew O’Connell says flattery appeals to people on an unconscious level. When people are gushing all over you, you don’t believe it. But on an unconscious level, he says, you want to believe it. So the trick is getting the person on an unconscious level. “Persuade a customer or colleague on a conscious level, and he or she will retain that conviction only until a better counterargument comes along … Persuade a person on a gut level, and the feeling will last and last. And last.”

NEW ZEALAND rated worst in world for Workplace Bullying

New Zealand has some of the highest rates of workplace bullying in the world

• One in five employees being subjected to overbearing or belittling behaviour at work, new research shows.
• A survey of 1728 workers in the health, education, travel and hospitality sectors found 18% had been bullied, while 75% had suffered workplace stress.

The figures are revealed in a university survey released today.

A joint university research team – from Auckland, Waikato, Massey with London's Birbeck University – polled more than 1700 workers from the health, education, hospitality and travel sectors asking how frequently they were exposed to "negative acts" at work.

Overall 17.8 per cent of respondents were identified as victims of bullying.

The international range was between 5 per cent and 20 per cent.

Higher rates of bullying were found in the education and health sectors and also in kitchen "hot spots" within the hospitality industry.

Bullying included bosses picking on workers, workers harassing colleagues and workers intimidating bosses.

Lead researcher Professor Tim Bentley said the cost of bullying had been estimated in Britain at $NZ2165 per person each year and almost $NZ5.23 billion per year in Australia.

Bullying hit costs because of decreases in productivity due to worker absenteeism, staff turnover, lower staff satisfaction and time spent investigating bullying.

He said workplace bullying in New Zealand could be "a billion-dollar problem".

"Who knows how much this is actually costing organisations? It must be a terrific amount ... Minimum it's a multimillion-dollar problem, it could easily be a billion-dollar problem in New Zealand. That's not taking into account all the indirect costs."

He wants changes to health and safety laws to combat workplace bullying alongside harassment and discrimination.

The report was commissioned by the Labour Department.Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson said it was "an interesting piece of research" but employment courts were able to deal with bullying through personal grievance claims.

"Producing some sort of definition in legislation would be complex and more than likely ineffective," she said.

David Lowe, of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, was sceptical of the survey, saying the "negative acts" research question was too wide.

"What people would normally describe as bullying and `two negative acts in the workplace' are not one and the same," Lowe said.

"If somebody had said to the person, `you're not doing well enough, you need to do it better', and told them that twice in one week, that might amount to bullying under this survey, but it is not bullying, it is simply running your business."

The survey also posed a more direct "self-report" question asking whether respondents felt they were being bullied either "several times a week" or "almost daily" which yielded a smaller figure of 3.9 per cent.

Wilkinson said it was naive to believe bullying did not occur "quite regularly" in workplaces.

Lowe agreed if bullying existed it needed to be addressed.

The Labour Department said it would use the findings to produce fact sheets and other "guidance material" to help employers and staff deal with bullying.

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Workplaces Against Violence in Employment director Hadyn Olsen, said workplace bullying was a huge stress factor for many people - the majority of whom chose not to make a complaint or bring up the issue, out of fear of being bullied further.

Mr Olsen said studies by his organisation showed up to 53 per cent of people who do report being bullied got bullied even more.

"And so the stress factor is huge because they don't know when the next situation will be and they don't feel safe," he said.

Mr Olsen said he had dealt with many types of bullying, which include intimidation, behaviour that offends, makes fun, undermines or excludes.

The more severe cases of workplace bullying include sexual harassment.

In one case, a victim decided to make a formal complaint.

A meeting was arranged where the victim and the bully met senior staff, who then went on to reveal in front of the two that a complaint had been made by the victim, against the bully.

When the bully denied the accusation, the victim was not believed by management staff.

The victim suffered more bullying as a consequence.

The research study, funded by the Department of Labour and Health Research Council, also found that employers across all those sectors surveyed did not understand, or know how to address the problem of workplace bullying.

Professor Bentley said there needed to be a cultural change within New Zealand workplaces, with a zero-tolerance policy on bullying.

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Office Rage : What to do when your boss is a bully?

A new book accuses British Prime Minister Gordon Brown of throwing temper tantrums.

How can employees deal with bullying in the workplace?

He’d punch walls and angrily stab chairs with pens. Frequently, he’d yell at his staff, once pulling a secretary out of her chair for typing too slowly.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has a volcanic temper, according to a new book, The End of the Party, in which political journalist Andrew Rawnsley describes a series of tirades during Mr. Brown’s second and third terms in office.

The book was excerpted in Sunday’s Observer, the same day Christine Pratt, the head of the National Bullying Helpline, revealed that Mr. Brown’s staff had called her service .

In the Prime Minister’s defence, Secretary of State for Business Peter Mandelson told the BBC that Mr. Brown is a leader who “gets angry, but chiefly with himself.” Downing Street staff have described a leader who is simply passionate about his work.

The allegations have stirred experts in the growing workplace-bullying industry, and some say “passion” is the cop-out du jour for intimidating bosses.

“Passion can justify any over-the-top emotion. The message is that everyone else should learn to live with it. That’s what it’s like in a bullying environment: Everyone walks on egg shells, but all cater to the Grand Poobah,” said Gary Namie, founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute.

Dr. Namie, who works with WAVE, a human resources company that deals with workplace bullying, describes the behaviour as “health-harming mistreatment” and “psychological violence.”

According to a 2007 study by the institute of 7,740 Americans, 37 per cent had been bullied at work, and 39 per cent of bully targets suffered clinical depression.

Bullies are often bosses: 72 per cent, the study said. Forty per cent of those are women who target other women; men appear to split their bullying evenly between the sexes.

It seems the man has a temper,” said Gerard Seijts, professor of a leadership course at Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ont.

Prof. Seijts said hotheads can get far in leadership because no one stands up to them.

“Often times, it requires a lot of courage for people around a leader to speak up. … But every time we don’t correct people on their behaviour, we raise the bar for our moral outrage. If we treat this as acceptable, what becomes unacceptable? Maybe slowly, [Mr. Brown's] behaviour became unacceptable.”

Valerie Cade, a Calgary-based workplace bullying expert and author of Bully Free at Work, said that unlike bullying, Mr. Brown’s explosive tantrums may not be deliberate, but they are “unwanted.”

She said bullied employees need to be able to name the behaviour as such, or else they end up viewing the scenarios as a sign of their own shortcomings.

“This is where people get stuck the most. Naming it as bullying lets you separate yourself from the situation. In the absence of doing that, you’re powerless because you’re trying to figure out what you could do differently.”

Ms. Cade suggests employees confront their bosses in person, with direct language, then follow up via e-mail if the behaviour persists.

“In a corporate environment, now, you’ve made a record of that. Now you’ve got grounds to go to that boss’s boss,” Ms. Cade said.

But she added that most bosses deny the behaviour, and then minimize it with comments such as, “You don’t know the pressure I’m under.”

Dr. Namie noted that human resources staff can only go so far to resolve the conflict.

“Bullying is not an HR problem. It’s an executive-team, administrative, leadership problem, and unless and until they want it to stop, it’s not going to. HR hears all the complaints but they don’t have the power to create a new policy and to enforce it.”

Dr. Namie said the biggest mistake that bullying targets make is to let “the bully sink the claws in” the first time around.

“The bully is testing the water. The failure to confront that is what convinces the bully you’re an easy mark. Unfortunately, what makes a target a target is they didn’t see it coming. They’re constantly surprised.”

Asher Adelman said one way to avoid bosses with volcanic tempers is pre-emptively.

“It’s very rare for a workplace to improve it’s culture. Usually, when things go bad, they only get worse. For the most part, aggressive, abusive managers don’t change their behaviour,” said Mr. Adelman, founder of eBossWatch.com, which lets job seekers troll a database of anonymous posts about bad bosses.

The site has rated the top worst bosses for 2009, including a water distribution superintendent who held a four-hour, profanity-laced meeting and instructed employees to hit each other, a football head coach who broke another coach’s jaw during training camp, and an airline CEO who screamed at his employees in front of hundreds of customers lined up at the airline’s check-in counter, ignoring a sign that warned passengers: “Abusive behaviour towards staff will not be tolerated.”

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RESEARCH - Inside the Brain of a Bully

What goes on inside the brain of a bully?

Researchers from the University of Chicago used brain scan technology to find out. They wanted to learn whether the brain of an aggressive youth responds differently to violence than the brain of someone who is not a bully. In a chilling finding, the researchers found aggressive youths appear to enjoy inflicting pain on others.

In the study, the researchers compared eight 16- to 18-year-old boys who were unusually aggressive to a control group of adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression. The aggressive boys had been given a diagnosis of aggressive conduct disorder and had been in trouble for starting fights, using a weapon and stealing from their victims.

The youths were tested with functional magnetic resonance imaging to see how their brains reacted while watching video clips. The clips showed people in pain as a result of accidents — such as when a heavy bowl dropped on their hands. They also showed intentional acts, like stepping on another person’s foot.

When the aggressive youths watched people intentionally inflicting pain on another, the scan showed a response in the part of the brain associated with reward and pleasure. The youths who were not aggressive didn’t show the same brain response.

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Biological Psychology, suggests that the brain’s natural impulse for empathy may be disrupted in the brain of a bully, leading to increased aggression.

“This is the first time that f.M.R.I. scans have been used to study situations that could otherwise provoke empathy,” said Jean Decety, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, in a press release. “This work will help us better understand ways to work with juveniles inclined to aggression and violence.”

While the study is small, the striking differences shown in the brain scans suggests that bullies may have major differences in how their brains process information compared to non-bullies. Dr. Decety said the aggressive adolescents showed a strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum, areas of the brain that respond to feeling rewarded. The finding “suggested that they enjoyed watching pain,” he said. Notably, the control group of youths who weren’t prone to aggressive behavior showed a response in the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction, areas of the brain involved in self regulation.
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Agressive and abusive employees and how to handle them

Dodging Landmines

How to Handle an Abusive Coworker




Deal with objective data. Ed Muzio, President and CEO of Group Harmonics, suggests applying the "video camera test." Can you describe the person's behavior as though you're watching it on a TV? Once you can be specific you should approach the coworker in private and discuss ways to improve the situation together.


Coping with an Aggressive Employee



Fear and anxiety can make an otherwise rational employee overreact. Ed Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics, says to stay issue focused when talking to them--avoid being emotional. Move the discussion to a productive environment so you can offer the employee information, help, and support.


Confronting a Manager who Undercuts your Authority



Ed Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics, says to approach your manager in private with a specific incident and then turn the conversation into a discussion about how decision-making should work around the office. Although your manager has the ability to fire you, if you let the behavior turn into a pattern, it will get more and more difficult to change.