Workplace Bullying Institute on Bullies in the Workplace

This episode of Workplace Fairness and Dignity is about bullying behavior: How it’s viewed by organizations; the role of Human Resources (HR) and the limited role HR may play in addressing the behavior; the reasons people bully at work and why they get away with the behavior. The information is from the Workplace Bullying Institute at https://workplacebullying.org.

Additional topics covered:

From the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI):

·       How to recognize bullying, including the various tactics used by perpetrators 

·       WBI on what workplace bullying is, and what it is not 

·       The story of how the Institute came to be from the bullying experienced on the job by one of the founders, a clinical psychologist, by her boss who was also a clinical psychologist

·       Profile of bullying targets

The story of the Chief Executive who kept his word and fired an employee who directed inappropriate, abusive behavior at another professional;

A reminder of Professor David Yamada’s writing about how bullies can escape management notice by their learned skill at kissing up and kicking down;

Abusive people in the workplace could quite possibly be garden-variety psychopaths – there’s mention of “The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson;

How to talk about your former employer after you have left the bullying organization.

MUSIC: Happy, Groovy Power Pop, by Bobby Cole; Slap It All Around, by Neil Cross; Orchestral Final, by Tencher Music; Swing Days, by Bobby Cole; Adventures in Fine Dining, by Julian Mogavero; Midnight Instrumental, by Paul Mitchell Beebe; Swing Days, by Bobby Cole. 

Transcript

 MUSIC: Happy, Groovy Power Pop, by Bobby Cole

Hello, and welcome to Workplace Fairness and Dignity!  My name is Cecilia Akuffo, and I am from the Boston area.  My first podcast, From Fired to Fired Up, gives the background to my story. The short version is, I worked in Human Resources for approximately 10 years as a staffing recruiter, until I was fired … by WebEx … from a job I loved. I was fired because I spoke up about bullying behavior at work. I created this podcast as a platform to promote the normalization of workplace fairness and dignity, and to promote organizations that are committed to employee dignity and fairness.   

I have a two-part podcast today.  On part one, which is this episode, I’ll have a follow up from a dedication I made in a previous podcast. Then we’ll talk more about bullying, based on information from the Workplace Bullying Institute, including how to recognize bullying. Part two will be for the next episode and will cover who are the bully’s targets, how organizations respond to employees raising concerns about bullying, and navigating how to address it with future employers after leaving the bullying environment. 

About that previous dedication, I sometimes end my podcasts with a dedication. On the podcast “Workplace Abuse and Creating Accountability, which I posted on January 24th I dedicated the podcast to a Chief Executive who told his staff on national television that he would fire any employee he heard treating another employee, regardless of level or position, with disrespect or talking down to them. 

That executive was President Joe Biden who made that statement as he swore in hundreds of his administration officials on January 20th. He also said a couple of other things worth mentioning as he talked about the workplace: He said, The only thing I expect with absolute certitude is honesty and decency in the way you treat one another. Everybody, everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity. 

Mr. Biden was true to his word. Here’s what happened as was widely reported by multiple media outlets. A White House Deputy Press Secretary was dating a reporter that had covered Joe Biden’s campaign. A reporter from another outlet who was doing some reporting on the story about the relationship heard from the Deputy Press Secretary who threatened to quote, “destroy” her, and said some unprofessional personally offensive things to this reporter. 

To get the backstory, Google “White House Deputy Press Secretary Relationship with Reporter” and you’ll get the whole back story.  The reporting says that the White House aide did apologize to the reporter at least a couple of times. And, initially, the White House Press Secretary disclosed on Friday, February 12th that the aide received a one-week suspension for his unprofessional behavior toward the reporter. 

By Saturday, February 13th the White House had “accepted” the aide’s resignation. I strongly believe the President had something to do with that after his pledge on national television. (While yes, a chief executive has other things to do than get involved in staffing affairs, he would have had to have been aware of the situation as it was a prominent topic in political news outlets.) 

Regardless of how employment termination happened, it sent a message underscoring how serious the President was about his statement of the importance of respectful interactions as the standard in his workplace. To the aide’s credit, in his resignation statement he acknowledged that his actions were terrible and intolerable. 

3:42 MUSIC: Slap It All Around, by Neil Cross

Let’s talk more about bullying. 

For this week’s episode I spent some time on the Workplace Bulling Institute’s website at workplacebullying.o-r-g. The founders of the Workplace Bullying Institute or WBI are Drs. Ruth and Gary Namie, both of whom have PhDs in Psychology.  The landing page says the institute exists “To research & understand, to educate the public, and to teach the prevention and correction of abusive conduct at work." 

There’s a menu of choices for where you can go on the site, and that menu includes information for those being bullied, for professional training, and also for employer services.  The selection that says, “Start here if you are bullied”, gives 15 steps, including:

·      Recognizing what happened, or is happening to you

·      What is workplace bullying 

·      What workplace bullying is not 

·      Calculating costs to employers 

·      Action steps for bullying targets

·      Checking legal options

The WBI had its origin in the bullying that Ruth Namie experienced while practicing as a clinical psychologist. She received bullying treatment at the hands of her supervisor, who was also a clinical psychologist. The saga of her experience ended up with her leaving her job. In their work the Namies say they have listened to thousands and thousands of employees across industries tell their stories about bullying behavior in their workplace. 

5:05 MUSIC: Orchestral Final, by Tencher Music

Based on what I’ve seen with how Human Resources can work with other institutional systems of power, one of the many things about Dr. Ruth’s story that fascinates me the most and that strikes a chord with me is how the people with seeming power to remedy the situation reacted when Dr. Ruth brought the issue to their attention. 

·    She spoke with the confidential EAP program or Employee Assistance Program – that’s a program that’s offered as a benefit at many organizations. The Namies say it was a one-way street, communicating with EAP. They received no information or feedback from EAP.

·    Human Resources, aware of the situation, did nothing of consequence, as they were also afraid of the bullying psychologist.

·    After the Namies increased the pressure for the administration to act, eventually the HR Coordinator resigned, and the Administrator at the clinic retired early. 

·    The clinic hired a law firm and Dr. Ruth negotiated a severance, and quote, “effectively ended her clinical career”. 

The Namies in 1997 started their organization which became WBI and they have written extensively on bullying in the workplace and they have created training programs through the WBI Workplace Bullying University listed on their site. 

6:20 MUSIC: Swing Days, by Bobby Cole         

How do you recognize if you are being bullied:

WBI says first, the bully tests you, to see how you react, and people are usually shocked and then they want to leave the job. Often people will blame themselves, and try to make sense of the inexplicable behavior. But, says WBI, this misses recognizing the behavior for what it is; they call it “malicious psychological assaults planned and perpetrated by the bully”. Some things that can indicate that you’re being bullied:

·      You’re kept from doing your job correctly

·      Although you do excellent work you are accused of incompetence 

·      HR agrees that while you are being harassed it isn’t illegal so you are left to work it out with the harasser or abuser

·      It’s understood that the abuser is a problem but no one does anything 

·      With constant anxiety you sense a feeling of doom; this is what I personally would say, it’s like living in a state of constant anxiety.

WBI says you may blame yourself because you’re operating from a different world view and different standards of behavior. But they say to realize this, “Most bullies are better at being cleverly deceitful and at being the destructive person they are than you are at catching them. WBI says there’s a difference between an abrasive management style and bullying. An abrasive management style is distributed evenly among employees. In bullying, the application of misery is dumped disproportionately on the targeted person – and sometimes the targets are rotated, monthly or yearly. The coworkers not being targeted are treated with respect and kindness which truly demonstrates the intentional cruelty. 

7:59 MUSIC  Adventures in Fine Dining, by Julian Mogavero

Targets of bullying are prone to ignore the physical signs of the harm to their psychological and physical health caused by bullying. They say hypertension is the first indicator of your level of stress from bullying. 

WBI talks about bullying as the following: 

·      Repeated, harmful mistreatment of an employee by one or more employees; abusive conduct takes the form of verbal abuse 

·      Physical, and nonverbal behaviors that are threatening, intimidating or humiliating

·      Work interference or sabotage or a combination of the above

 WBI says bullying can start with a single instigator but the person recruits allies and soon the employing institution circles the wagons to defend the bullies. Bullying can quickly become a case of being ganged up on. 

So, here’s how the bullies operate…

Bullying can happen behind closed doors, they say. That can become a case of “he said she said”. However, when one person is the manager that person is believed without question, and the targets are not believed.

In my own personal observation, when bullying allegations are lodged about a manager, the authorities side with the manager, but it’s not because the bullying target isn’t believed. Often, the bully is well-known, but it’s easier to protect a manager as they are considered a representative of the organization. It’s easier to dislodge the lower-level employee. I have seen human resources people of good conscience try to work with the bullying target, and even make efforts to engage in conversation with the bullies. The bullies may then operate with some restraint after the conversation, because they have come to the attention of HR. But the change in behavior is usually temporary.   

9:40 MUSIC: Midnight Instrumental, by Paul Mitchell Beebe

In my first podcast, From Fired to Fired Up, I quoted Professor David Yamada as he described how some in management escape censure for bullying. This is what Professor Yamada described: The bully is often someone who has become skilled at the “kiss up, kick down” strategies and able to “hide his abusive side from superiors who review his performance”. He can also be popular with management “including those who will determine his fate”. Even so, Yamada says corrective actions such as coaching and counseling tend to yield changes that are only temporary.  

Again, he also made this important point, workplace bullying is not a single issue, it is not a, quote, “isolated” problem: “Workplace bullying, he says, is strongly associated with other forms of aggression and misconduct at work.” He says the idea that people are “entitled to be treated with dignity at work remains a somewhat revolutionary concept.” 

Back to whether bullying occurs in the open or behind closed doors. WBI says, the most covert tactic is to deploy others to do the dirty work against the target making it difficult to pin responsibility on the architect of the attacks. They say this is the most subtle form of bullying. 

Now, this tactic is what I call, leaving no fingerprints. If you want to operate a culture of fear, you push your direct reports to be punishing to their direct reports, but that cruelty is not linked to you. I have seen that aspect of what I call employee abuse from afar, in operation. 

WBI says the overt bullies operate in front of witnesses, seeking to control the emotional climate by instilling fear in the target and the witnesses, who tend to comply and do nothing. They say that doing nothing is not a neutral act, that doing nothing condones the bullying.

What I would say is everyone has a different comfort level with confrontation. Often the people witnessing the bad behavior are other people who are also lower on the administration ladder. People who are bullies almost without exception put on their bad behavior in front of those with less power than they have, they don’t do their performative theatrics in front of those with power to affect their employment. Like Professor Yamada wrote, they kiss up and kick down. And, they tend to know what they can get away with, especially if there are not rules or policies addressing the type of behavior they exhibit. 

WBI says that in the draft legislation for the Healthy Workplace Bill that Professor Yamada was an author of, he incorporated abusive conduct in the draft legislation. The intent was to include the concept of an abusive work environment beyond the, quote, “hostile work environment” description that’s part of the nondiscrimination laws. 

Now, listen to this, it’s very significant. WBI says: 

What workplace bullying has in common with other forms of interpersonal abuse, and that includes – child abuse, partner violence and domestic violence – is that the dominating perpetrator seeks to create in the target or victim a sense of worthlessness. They list the ways in which bullying is most “akin to domestic violence”, they say, and here are the similarities:  

·      The abuser’s motive is control and domination

·      The perpetrator dehumanizes the victim

·      Witnesses choose not to intervene

·      There is emotional harm that can evolve into physical injuries

·      Institutions fail to adequately protect victims

This is how they say bullying is most similar to domestic violence. WBI also talks about how whistleblowers who want to protect a larger group, are persecuted. The organizations often resent the message about the bullying. WBI says often whistleblowers show how the organization has supported and sustained a cruel person whose personal agenda of domination prevented good work from being accomplished. For all their work bringing this destructive behavior to light, WBI says HR will show bullying targets the door. But, leaders who do want to learn and prevent future problems would take the time to see how bullies are too expensive to keep when you account for turnover and absenteeism stemming from bullying. 

13:52 MUSIC: Get Outen Mine Face Der Funk, by Patrick Smith

I have long held a personal theory about bullies and workplace abusers. My theory is that people who bully in the workplace likely mistreat others in their private lives, and they are likely those people who we see abusing the cashiers or customer service person at the supermarket or some other public place. There are also those who have little power in their personal lives, and where they lack power there, they employ the little power they have in the workplace. Sometimes, people are just psychopaths of a certain level and they get away with bad behavior in an organization and so they just keep going. Now, I am not talking about the people who throw in their lot with a bully and replicate the behavior because they lack courage, these people who act badly and bury their conscience while having regret at some later time. I’m talking about people who have no regrets, they truly enjoy making other people miserable. These are the people with psychopathic tendencies.

With this interest I am reading a book about Psychopaths. It’s called The Psychopath Test, and was written by a Journalist by the name of Jon Ronson. It’s J-o-n, and then R-o-n-s-o-n. One of the people he gets to spend time with as he studies Psychopaths and how they operate is a guy he calls a “legendary CEO who took joy in shutting down factories and firing people”. Business magazines have written articles about this guy, about literally, the joy he took…  in just… just firing folks. Yeah, some people just enjoy causing fear. Ronson spoke with clinical psychologist Martha Stout, then of Harvard Medical School and who published , The Sociopath Next Door. For the record, sociopath and psychopath are often used interchangeably. Stout told Ronson about sociopaths, “They’re the boss or the coworker who likes to make other people jump just for the pleasure of seeing them jump.” 

You know the term “personality clash”? Well WBI calls this HR-speak for when the HR organization doesn’t know how to deal with the bullying or they don’t want to admit they lack the power to do anything to managers above the HR rank. Often the issue is relegated to a matter of “he said/she said”. As WBI acknowledges, if the bully is of a higher organizational rank most often they will be believed or at least supported, by the institution, over the target’s portrayal of events. And, that’s what they refer to as the “clash”, one person versus the perpetrator who’s backed by the institution. 

16:21 MUSIC: Swing Days, by Bobby Cole

Thank you for listening. Tune in for the next podcast where we’ll talk about who are the bullies’ targets; how organizations respond to employees who raise concerns about bullying; and navigating how to address it with future employers after leaving the bullying environment.