Is Your Workplace Full Of Corporate Bullies?

Published: FORBES.COM , 5 January 2016 @ 05:03PM
Writer: Dan Pontefract

I remember a period in my life as a 10 year-old when one of the neighborhood boys was being a bully. He was four years older than me—roughly 20 pounds heavier and four inches taller—and for a few months seemed to amuse himself by picking on me any chance he could get. If there was a road hockey game being played on the street with the neighborhood children, he’d purposely check me hard into the ground chuckling to himself afterward. The game was supposed to be contact free.  Wayne Gretzky he wasn’t.

One day during a game of hide and seek, he snuck up behind me and shoved dirty, wet leaves in my face. Shenanigans continued like this until one day I snapped. While playing with him and a few other kids in our backyard, unprovoked, I calmly walked up to him and said, “You’ve had this coming for a while now” and proceeded to punch him square in the nose. I was channeling the pent up frustration and anger of the previous weeks into an almighty wallop. It was the first, and to this day, the last time I ever hit anyone. It felt good, too.

Similar experiences to my encounter with the neighborhood bully seem to be cropping up in today’s workplace. According to Dr. Carroll M. Brodsky in The Harassed Worker, workplace bullying refers to “repeated and persistent attempts by one person to torment, wear down, frustrate or get a reaction from another. It is treatment which persistently provokes, pressures, frightens, intimidates or otherwise discomforts another person.” It sounds a lot like my former neighbor.

Researchers published an influential paper titled “Metaphors of Workplace Bullying: Nightmares, Demons, and Slaves” where they surfaced further ammunition to our already loaded gun of workplace bullying as a cause to employee disengagement. In it the authors note:

"Based on qualitative data gathered from focus groups, narrative interviews, and target drawings, the analysis describes how bullying can feel like a battle, water torture, nightmare, or noxious substance. Abused workers frame bullies as narcissistic dictators, two-faced actors, and devil figures. Employees targeted with workplace bullying liken themselves to vulnerable children, slaves, prisoners, animals, and heartbroken lovers."

This sounds even worse than my former neighbor.

In the January-February 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review, authors Christine Porath and Christine Pearson published data on the topic of workplace bullying or as they elegantly define it: “workplace incivility.” Through research and the collection of data points—after polling thousands of employees concerning the manner in which they are treated at work—Porath and Pearson found 98% of employees at some point in their working life were a victim of uncivil behavior while on the job. More distressing is that over a thirteen-year period between 1998 and 2011, the percentage of workers who reported being treated rudely at least once a week while at work rose from 25% to 50%. It’s not quite like my childhood bullying example, but a lack of civility in your place of work is the modern-day adult equivalent.

What happens to workers who are impacted by bullies and incivility in the workplace? Much like the bottom-line consequences of a disengaged organization—where disengaged and not engaged employees hamper profitability and customer satisfaction—there are performance and productivity related issues.

As a leader, you no doubt see the financial implications to such a predicament. Those factors uncovered by researchers include:

•   47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work
•   80% lost work time worrying about the incident
•   66% said their performance declined
•   78% said their commitment to the organization declined
•   25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers

What’s the bottom line?

Workplace bullies are not only causing employees to be disengaged, they are creating performance and productivity related issues that are likely causing harm to one’s career development. What occurs when an employee feels threatened at work? It accentuates the negative aspects of the organization and does nothing to help the employee see the positives of the role or situation. As a leader, you might want to observe and pay attention to the bullies in your organization. Those bullies may be part of the reason employees are disillusioned with their prospects of finding meaning or purpose in their place of work.

That stated, leaders are capable (and culpable) of bullying as well. To me, bullying is simply another term for “command and control” when that method of leadership is employed by the leader. Leaders who believe it’s their managerial right to flash the “I have a more senior title than you” card to ensure a decision goes in their favor or who aim to demonstrate to a larger audience that they are “the boss” are, in fact, another version of corporate incivility.

For example, a few years ago, two different members of a team separately approached me one week, asking for help. Their boss had decided to publicly berate both of them at different points during an all-hands team meeting. There were roughly 50 people in the meeting. The individuals were humiliated. One cried uncontrollably to me over the phone as he/she wondered aloud why the verbal lashing was necessary in the first place. In fact, this particular person felt as though the negative feedback was completely unfounded. The other wanted to take vengeance with some form of a smear campaign.

In this case, and many more, a formal complaint sent into the HR department (or the Workplace Discrimination Officer, if there is such a bureau in one’s place of work) is the first course of action, and one I suggested. Leaders who ridicule or admonish employees in open meetings—whether on a conference call or face-to-face—are no different than my old neighbor. They’re a disgrace, and should be reported. (I don’t advise the knuckle sandwich approach of my youth to combat your corporate bully problem.)

Leaders who poach internal employees from another team—without being proactive and discussing the opportunity or situation in advance—are another type of corporate bully. It’s a form of peer-to-peer bullying, as often the individual thinks he/she can use pure, unadulterated force to get what they want to build their own team.

Leaders who make impossible demands on deadlines, who set up their staff for inevitable failure, and who take credit for the positive results an individual or team created without said leader’s involvement, are also facsimiles of corporate bullies.

Leaders who cancel a meeting at the last minute, never to reschedule again, are inflicting another form of hierarchical bullying. We might call this calendar bullying.

If any of the examples mentioned ring a bell, perhaps it is time to come face to face with the possibility you (or your leader) may possess characteristics of workplace incivility, if not bullying outright. Unfortunately, this is leading to the potential for workplace dissatisfaction. It most certainly is not paving a way towards a purposeful and engaged mindset for many employees at work.

Workplace incivility and corporate bullies can be a problem. If you are in such a scenario, it just may be time to turn inaction into action.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2016/01/05/is-your-workplace-full-of-corporate-bullies/#2fffe8e77aa1

Workplace bullying can wreak havoc on the job, sapping productivity, devastating morale and increasing absenteeism.

You should know it when you see it....

Verbal harassment at work, practical jokes, threats, intimidation, and even sabotage, are all the hallmarks of a workplace bully.

As opposed to tough management, "bullying is a level of misery that falls disproportionally on the few," said Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Bellingham, Wash.

A 2007 survey by the institute and Zogby International found that 37 percent of American workers have been bullied at work. Nearly three-quarters, 72 percent, of the bullies are bosses, the survey said.

And as companies struggle, experts say workplace bullying has grown as people fear job loss.

"It is just really out of fear. Where there is fear there is a need to control," said Terri Dawe, employee assistance coordinator at CPC Behavioral Healthcare, which has centers around Monmouth County. "It is escalating in these economic times and jobs being tenuous."

The tight job market has compounded the problem, Namie said. "It's a buyer's market. Now the attitude is, "I can treat you however I want and you can leave and I can find more like you.' "

Like the school yard, bullies cause problems at work.

"In terms of overall morale, it is horrible," said Alan Cavaiola, an associate professor at Monmouth University and co-author of "Toxic Co-Workers: How to Deal With Dysfunctional People on the Job." "Everyone kind of tiptoes around this person. It is very much like walking on egg shells."

In one case, Cavaiola said a female worker was harassed by two male supervisors, who made sexually demeaning remarks. Her boss didn't take her complaints seriously, she quit her job and sued.

"They are very narcissistic. They are very self-centered," Cavaiola said of workplace bullies. "They lack empathy. They lack compassion."

But unlike schoolyard bullies, bullies at work tend to target people who are a threat to them, said Namie. Their victims may be stronger performers or better liked.

"The bully is a political animal and knows how organizations run and knows that aggression pays off and is rewarded," Namie said. "You have a player against a person who is basically a do-gooder, someone with a social orientation who (keeps) their nose to the grindstone."

A bully is different from a hard-charging boss, said Red Bank workplace coach Donna Coulson, owner of Donna Coulson & Associates. A hard boss may not smile and give a lot of work to people, but they tend to challenge employees, she said.

"A bully will bully you whether things are good or bad or indifferent," she said.

So what's a worker to do?

If possible, talk to the person later in private, Coulson said. "If you stand up to the bully, they will eventually stop," she said.

Dawe said a worker has to recognize bullying which can be hard to define. But once they do, they should make a diary of what they experience, including dates and times, so they can bring it to human resources, she said.

Namie recommend that workers take a three-prong approach. "You have to recognize that it's happening to you," Namie said. "In a way, that takes a long time. They can't believe it is happening to them, so they are in denial themselves."

They should take time off from work to check their physical and mental health, and look for violations of company policy, he said. Consult a lawyer, he said.

"You need to start to build a business case, the unemotional case, that the bully is too expensive to keep," Namie said.

Take the case to the highest level position who is not pledged or not related to the bully, he added.

Namie said he supports a bill in the state Assembly, called the "Healthy Workplace Act." It would make abusive conduct in a workplace — repeated use of derogatory remarks, insults and epithets that are intimidating and humiliating — illegal. Employers violating that standard could be fined up to $25,000. The bill is currently before the Assembly Labor Committee.

"Workplace bullying is an underappreciated problem," said Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein, D-Middlesex. "Studies have shown that workplace bullying occurs much more frequently than sexual harassment, yet has not received nearly as much attention."

Kathleen M. Connelly, a lawyer at Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper in Rumson, said employers have to recognize the need to address the problem.

"Employers have dropped the ball in not recognizing that an essential element of being a supervisor is managing people, and that means being able to do that in a respectful manner."

But legislation is not the answer, she said.

"This statute would basically give every employee in the workplace a vehicle to commence litigation," she said. "Do we want to be in a situation where our court systems become overwhelmed with burdens with every employee grievance?"

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