Given what we know about the nature of bullies (Type A, a predominance of female-to-female aggression, bullies prone to escalating abuse when victims refuse to be intimidated), given what we know about the nature of many victims (capable, confident and experienced), and given the cost of bullying to both victims and in the workplace, how do we stop this destructive behaviour?
We Know What Doesn’t Work
How do we stem the loss to the workplace of the best and the brightest, end the emotional assault upon victims, and bring bullying to a dead stop?
Revenge by victims, while an understandable response to being bullied, will not bring about an end to bullying behaviour. Rather, it starts a cycle of one-upmanship: the victim digs in and becomes more obstinately independent, determined to not be intimidated. The bully is just as determined that his strong-willed victim will be cowed, and the war is on.
Higher management and/or Human Resources personnel will often either look the other way until the worker provides a temporary solution by quitting the job, or terminate an employee who protests a co-worker’s or superior’s abusive behaviour. (If you rock the boat, don’t be surprised if you end up overboard!)
Again, this may provide a temporary solution. The potentially trouble-making victim is gone. But the bully is still on the scene, and may just find another victim. And the workplace may lose still more of its best workers.
So What’s To Be Done?
The Canada Safety Council recommends that businesses and governments develop an effective strategy that includes education—teaching both bully and victim that bullying behaviour is costly to and wrong in the workplace—and develop conflict resolution mechanisms.
Employers must make it clear to both bully and victim that the workplace has zero tolerance for this costly and hurtful behaviour. All employees must see that the workplace takes seriously any hint of bullying, and acts to protect all members of the bullying triad (victims, witnesses and accused bullies themselves) while investigations are ongoing.
Candidates for leadership positions should be thoroughly screened for their people skills, and required to undergo leadership training, before being promoted to positions of authority over others in the workplace.
Governments must enact tough anti-bullying legislation, publicize it, and provide clear guidelines so both worker and boss know what behaviour will be heavily penalized by law.
And the courts, when they become involved, must take the issue seriously, and not turn away complaints on the basis of “it's just a personality conflict.”
And After That, We’re Good?
Not all workplace bullying involves a superior-to-subordinate relationship. Some of the worst workplace bullies are co-workers, mates, comrades-in-arms. What will help there?
Simply put, the work world—perhaps the world in general—needs better people. Until better people arrive at the desk or assembly-line spot beside ours, or in the corner office, we’ll have to wing it.
Workers and management both would benefit by a return to the rules of kindergarten, as presented in the blockbuster All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Robert Fulghum gives us some simple guidelines as useful in the workplace as they are in kindergarten:
- Play fair
- Don't hit people
- Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody
- Take a nap every afternoon
- When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together
- Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you
Playing fair and sticking together sound to me like good guidelines for the workplace. If enough workers stand up for themselves and for co-workers against an environment that tolerates bullying, and if the workplace watches out for traffic—i.e. pays attention to and respects it workers—then we’re good.
From home to daycare, playground to classroom, workplace to battlefield...if cookies and milk are served at 3 in the afternoon, followed by a couple of hours rest under a warm blankie—then we’re good.
If you are guilty of bullying behaviour, stop it right now. If you are the victim of repeated abuse in the workplace, or a witness to it,call it what it is: It's bullying! Demand that it stop right now.
The workplace must learn to play fair. Then we’re good.
To read about the groups that perpetuate the bullying cycle, click to read Workplace Bullying—The Triad: Bullies, Victims and Bystanders. For a definition of workplace and why workplace bullying matters, read Workplace Bullying: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
Sources
Fulghum, Robert. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. 2004 Random House Publishing Group
The Canada Safety Council. Targeting Workplace Bullies
Williams, Ray. Workplace Bullying: North America’s silent epidemic.
