Dealing with a workplace bully?

Photo by Dee @ Copper and Wild on Unsplash

Is there someone at your workplace who makes you feel anxious, frustrated or angry? Does this person seem to be controlling your behaviour against your will? Does he embarrass, belittle or humiliate you? This person seems intent on intimidating or controlling you. He will support you one day and undermine you the next. His behaviour confuses you and you feel manipulated and alone in an increasingly painful struggle against his clever, self-serving destructive behaviours. The job you love becomes a chore you don’t like but you seem unable to get out of it.

If this is your situation, then you are probably dealing with a workplace bully.

Workplace bullying refers to repeated inappropriate behaviours, direct or indirect, whether verbal, physical or otherwise, conducted by one or more persons against another or others, at the place of work, which is intended to intimidate and create a risk to the mental and physical health and safety of the individual(s).

Workplace bullying often involves an abuse or misuse of power. Bullying includes behaviour that intimidates, degrades, offends, or humiliates a worker, often in front of others. Bullying behaviour creates feelings of defencelessness in the target and undermines individual’s right to dignity at work.

Workplace bullying can come in different forms:

• Verbal: includes mockery, humiliation, jokes, gossip, or other spoken abuse
• Intimidating: includes threats, social exclusion in the workplace, spying, other invasion of privacy
• Related to work performance: includes wrongful blame, work sabotage or interference, stealing or taking credit or ideas
• Corporate/Institutional: occurs when a workplace accepts, allows and even encourages bullying to take place. This could manifest in different ways:

1. Placing unreasonable expectations on employees, where failure to meet those expectations results in dismissal or unfavourable working conditions
2. Dismissing employees suffering from stress as “weak” while ignoring or denying work-related causes of the stress
3. Encouraging employees to fabricate complaints about colleagues with promises of promotion or threats of discipline.

ESSENTIALLY, BULLYING:

• Isn’t limited to managers targeting staff or staff targeting managers — it can also happen between coworkers, and between coworkers and other people at workplaces, such as clients, customers or visitors
• Can occur when behaviour that offends or unduly stresses or unreasonably burdens workers without concern for their wellbeing (e.g. unrealistic deadlines) occurs because of how an organization operates
• Can be carried out by one or more persons
• Can be directed at a single person or a group
• May occur outside normal work hours

BULLYING IN THE WORKPLACE IS DIFFERENT FROM SCHOOLYARD BULLYING

While both forms involve victimizing another person and using power to do so, school bullies (sometimes cheered on by other students) do not have the support of teachers and school administrators. In contrast, workplace bullies, often hold positions of authority, do have the support of peers, HR, and even upper management (especially in the case of corporate/institutional bullying).

BULLYING IS NOT HARASSMENT

It is also important to note that bullying is different from harassment. Harassment is one type of illegal discrimination and is defined as offensive and unwelcome conduct, serious enough to adversely affect the terms and conditions of a person’s employment, which occurs because of the person’s race, religion, national origin, sex, marital status or sexual orientation.

WORKPLACE BULLYING IS NOT:

• One-off or occasional instances of forgetfulness, rudeness or tactlessness
• Setting high performance standards
• Constructive feedback and legitimate advice or peer review
• A manager requiring reasonable verbal or written work instructions to be carried out
• Warning or disciplining workers in line with the organization’s code of conduct
• A single incident of unreasonable behaviour
• Reasonable management actions delivered in a reasonable way
• Differences in opinion or personality clashes that do not escalate into bullying, harassment or violence.

That being said, you need to keep an eye out for some behaviours and patterns that may indicate bullying. Bullying can be carried out in a variety of ways including through email, text messaging, internet chat rooms or other social media channels (cyber bullying).

Common bullying behaviours fit into two main categories. Remember that these behaviours have to be repeated behaviours:

Attacks that are directed and personal:

• Belittling remarks, undermining integrity, lies being told, sense of judgment questioned, opinions marginalized
• Ignoring, excluding, silent treatment, isolating
• Attacking a person’s beliefs, lifestyle or appearance, gender references, accusations of being mentally disturbed
• Ridiculing, insulting, teasing, jokes, “funny surprises”, sarcasm
• Being shouted at or yelled at
• Threats of violence
• Insulting comments about private life
• Physical attacks
• Humiliation in public or private
• Persistent and/or public criticism
• Using obscene or offensive language, gestures, material
• Ganging up, colleagues/clients encouraged to criticize or spy, witch hunt, dirty tricks campaign, singled out
• Intimidation, acting in a condescending manner
• Intruding on privacy (e.g. spying, stalking, harassed by calls when on leave or at weekends)
• Unwanted sexual approaches, offers, or physical contact
• Verbal abuse
• Inaccurate accusations
• Suggestive glances, gestures or dirty looks
• Tempering with personal effects, theft, destruction of property
• Encouraged to feel guilty

Indirect and task-related:

• Giving unachievable tasks, impossible deadlines, unmanageable workloads, overloading, setting up to fail
• Meaningless tasks, unpleasant jobs, belittling a person’s ability, undermining
• Withholding or concealing information, information goes missing, failing to return calls or pass messages
• Undervaluing contribution, no credit where it is due, taking credit for work that is not their own
• Constant criticism of work
• Removing responsibility, unreasonable demotion
• Unreasonable or inappropriate monitoring
• Offensive sanctions (e.g. denying leave where there is no reason to do so)
• Excluding, isolating, ignoring views
• Changing goalposts or targets
• Not giving enough training or resources
• Reducing opportunities for expression, interrupting when speaking
• Supplying incorrect or unclear information
• Making hints or threats about job security
• No support from manager
• Scapegoating
• Denial of opportunity
• Judging wrongly
• Forced or unjustified disciplinary hearings
• Lack or role charity
• Not trusting
• Sabotage

Workplace bullying has a major impact on employees and organizations. Looking at the effects of workplace bullying, one survey showed that about 46% of people say that bullying has an adverse effect on their performance at work, and another 46% believe it has a negative effect on their mental health. 28% say it has a detrimental effect on them physically, and approximately one in five (22%) have to take time off work as a result of being bullied and almost 36% leave their job as a result of bullying. This shows the impact of workplace bullying.

Workplace bullying severely affects the mental and physical health of employees, and negatively impacts the organization. Find out how in our next article.

If you notice you are dealing with a workplace bully and you need professional help and advice, be assured that we are here to support you through the process. Please reach out to us. We provide counselling services and we are happy to help you. Send an email to info@patnigeria.com

#PATCares