Feeding our dialogue about workplace bullying

Hello dear readers, I’ve collect some of my recent contributions to the dialogue about workplace bullying and related topics. I’m including several that I wrote about in earlier posts in case you missed them.

Article excerpted in popular law school casebook

I’m happy to share that my first law review article about workplace bullying and U.S. employment law, “The Phenomenon of ‘Workplace Bullying’ and the Need for Status-Blind Hostile Work Environment Protection” (Georgetown Law Journal, 2000), has been excerpted in the new edition of a leading employment law casebook used in law schools, Mark Rothstein, Lance Liebman, Kimberly A. Yuracko, Charlotte Garden & Susan E. Cancelosi, Employment Law, Cases and Materials (10th ed., 2024).

In U.S. law school courses covering specific areas of law, casebooks usually comprise the main reading assignments. A typical casebook is a mix of edited judicial decisions, statutes, and regulations, often framed by the editors’ own commentaries and excerpts from legal treatises and law review articles.

This excerpt (see photo above) is part of a modest milestone of sorts. You see, the Rothstein casebook is, by my estimation, the first to include a standalone subsection on workplace bullying. Whereas major U.S. textbooks in fields such as organizational psychology and organizational behavior have included coverage of workplace bullying for some time, those in the legal field have lagged behind — in part because of the resistance of American legal jurisdictions to enact express protections against workplace bullying.

This means that law students assigned the Rothstein casebook will likely be introduced to the topic of workplace bullying, even as advocacy efforts to enact the workplace anti-bullying laws such as the Healthy Workplace Bill continue.

Although the Rothstein casebook is not freely accessible online, you may download a pdf of my 2000 Georgetown Law Journal article without charge here.

Call for amending OSH Act to include risks of serious psychological harm at work

Last fall, my essay “Expanding Coverage of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act to Protect Workers from Severe Psychological Harm” (freely downloadable pdf here) was published in the Suffolk University Law Review.  I used the opportunity to propose that we have a serious conversation about expanding the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) to cover workers from workplace hazards that are causing or likely to cause serious psychological harm. Here’s the abstract:

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act) was designed to safeguard workers from hazardous working conditions that can cause serious physical harm and death. Since becoming law, the ongoing toll of physical injuries and fatalities at work reminds us of the compelling need for the OSH Act and its many state equivalents to protect workers. In addition, various research and public education initiatives are now spotlighting workplace hazards that severely threaten the psychological health of today’s employees. Toxic work environments generally, the extraordinary workplace stressors prompted by the COVID pandemic, and workplace bullying and abuse, among other concerns, have underscored the human costs of trauma, fear, anxiety, and stress.

Against this backdrop, this essay encourages a needed conversation about extending the regulatory reach of the OSH Act to cover severe psychological harms at work and to anticipate the impact of added enforcement responsibilities on the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Most significantly, it will examine two potential policy responses: First, applying the current OSH Act to workplace bullying, pursuant to a theory first advanced by Professor Susan Harthill; and second, amending the OSH Act to expressly cover workplace hazards that may cause severe psychological harm.

Four basic postulates about women and workplace bullying

Recently my law review essay, “Four Basic Postulates Concerning Women and Workplace Bullying in the United States” (freely downloadable pdf here), was published in the FIU Law Review (2023), based at the Florida International University College of Law. It appeared as a collection of invited responses to FIU law professor Kerri Lynn Stone’s excellent book, Panes of the Glass Ceiling: The Unspoken Beliefs Behind the Law’s Failure to Help Women Achieve Professional Parity (2022).

I wrote the essay to propose and expound upon four basic postulates concerning women and bullying in the American workplace:

• First, “women are likely to be disproportionately targeted for workplace bullying, a reality that carries multifaceted implications.”
• Second, “men are disproportionately the perpetrators of workplace bullying, another reality that carries important significance for understanding relational workplace mistreatment.”
• Third, “complicated dynamics are in play when women are alleged perpetrators of workplace bullying.”
• Fourth, “the enactment of workplace anti-bullying laws can help to fill some of the legal gaps confronted by women who face both bullying and discriminatory harassment at work.”

Podcast episode about HR and workplace bullying

Last fall, Dr. Gary Namie (founder, Workplace Bullying Institute) and I jointly appeared on a podcast episode, “Wiping Out Workplace Bullying,” as part of HRMorning‘s “Voices of HR” series. The series is hosted by Berta Aldrich, a high-ranking senior executive turned author, executive trainer, and coach who engaged us in a very lively conversation.

The episode runs for almost an hour, but for those interested in a more pro-active role for HR in addressing workplace bullying, I think it is useful. Here are the links:

• Apple podcasts (audio), click here.
• Spotify (audio), click here.
• YouTube (video), click here.

Podcast episode about personality characteristics associated with bullying

Earlier this week, I was interviewed about bullying generally, and workplace bullying specifically, by the Breakfast Show of the Voices of Islam podcast, based in London. Most of the questions surrounded personality traits associated with bullying and bullies, which gave me an opportunity to discuss how both qualities of empathy and Adverse Childhood Experiences can elevate the risks of someone becoming a bully or a target.

You may access the podcast episode from SoundCloud click here without charge (free registration necessary). My segment starts at the 1:28 mark (1 hour, 28 minutes) and runs for about 12 minutes.

Expertise matters (but how one obtains it, much less so)

Posted to the Bring Evidence Facebook Page

The cartoon pictured above shows an airline passenger claiming that “smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us,” therefore justifying his call for a show of hands from fellow passengers who think he should fly the plane.

It’s a spoof that hits home at a time when a lot of people are falling for baseless online “information” that purports to portray an alternative truth, often one that mainstream powers-that-be allegedly have been denying or concealing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for questioning conventional wisdom, as John Kenneth Galbraith urged us to do in his 1958 classic, The Affluent Society.

Questioning conventional wisdom and suggesting new approaches can lead to positive change. For example, in U.S. health care, acupuncture was once regarded as pseudoscientific nonsense. Today, major health care institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Johns Hopkins Hospital offer acupuncture treatments.

Similarly, in mental health care, EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) was once dismissed as hocus pocus. Today, well established institutions such as the American Psychological Association, the National Center for PTSD, and the World Health Organization recognize EMDR as a valid therapeutic tool for treating trauma, anxiety, addiction, and other conditions.

If we’re going to create new things, develop new treatments, write new laws, build new institutions, and the like, it often means challenging established shibboleths. To do so, it helps to have information and evidence to back up our critique or support our call for change.

Very American traits

Alas, distrust of expertise and research, and avoidance of deep intellectual discussion and analysis, are very American traits. Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his influential 1963 book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, articulated a public regard of intellectuals as being “pretentious” and “snobbish,” ultimately presenting as being immoral and subversive. By contrast, the “plain sense of the common man” is regarded as “altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise.”

Some 54 years later, international affairs expert Tom Nichols sounded a similar note in The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (2017), claiming that “(n)ever have so many people had access to so much knowledge, and yet been so resistant to learning anything.” Nichols cited several factors in undermining the authority of experts in the U.S., including the internet, media outlets promoting anti-intellectual beliefs, and indulgent educational systems fueling students’ overly generous beliefs in their competencies.

It may be worth noting that in 1963, Hofstadter was coming more from the left, and in 2017, Nichols was coming more from the right. But they ultimately sounded similar concerns.

Degree or diploma not necessarily required

I believe in both respecting and challenging expertise. I also believe in creating new experts, including those who may bring very new perspectives to well-trodden areas of knowledge.

There are multiple paths toward acquiring knowledge, understanding, and insight. With the possible exceptions of highly specialized and complex subject matter areas, as well as vocations requiring some type of licensing, it’s not necessary to pursue a formal degree or credential if one is sufficiently curious, disciplined, and intelligent to engage in independent and experiential learning and continuing and adult education offerings.

Among my favorite exemplars of self-made expertise are the Wright Brothers and Jane Jacobs.

Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with inventing and flying the first successful airplane, starting with their historic flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. Their expertise was self-taught. As I wrote here in 2015:

The brothers were smart and eager to learn. Wilbur, especially, demonstrated qualities of genius. Their accomplishments were especially remarkable given that, as McCullough writes, they had “no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own.

At the time Orville and Wilbur were reading the existing scientific studies about the prospects of manned flight and conducting experiments with homemade wind tunnels in their bicycle shop, other more prominent, well-funded inventors and scientists were also trying hard to become the first to achieve motorized flight. But this did not dissuade them from their goal. In fact, they largely rewrote the book on the science of flying. and in the process refuted the previous findings of many “experts” on aviation.

Jane Jacobs had no formal training as an authority on city planning and urban living, but she wrote a signature treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), which fought back against predominant notions of city planning that emphasized access for automobiles, even at the cost of destroying neighborhoods. The Center for the Living City describes her influence this way:

Jacobs saw cities as integrated systems that had their own logic and dynamism which would change over time according to how they were used. With an eye for detail, she wrote eloquently about sidewalks, parks, retail design and self-organization. She promoted higher density in cities, short blocks, local economies and mixed uses. Jacobs helped derail the car-centered approach to urban planning in both New York and Toronto, invigorating neighborhood activism by helping stop the expansion of expressways and roads. She lived in Greenwich Village for decades, then moved to Toronto in 1968 where she continued her work and writing on urbanism, economies and social issues until her death in April 2006.

But you have to do the work

However one acquires expertise, is necessary to do the work. The world has no shortage of fakers and imposters, as well as those who exaggerate their mastery and try to claim authority status. Some fall prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which, as explained by The Decision Lab, “occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area cause them to overestimate their own competence.” These folks don’t even know what they don’t know.

Spoof ad on social media

Gaining genuine expertise typically requires a lot of learning, often over extended periods of time. And once someone gains a deep grounding, they usually realize that there’s even more to learn. Here, especially, is where a committed practice of lifelong, self-guided continuing education becomes part of a natural growth process.

Workplace bullying and mobbing: Annotated recommended book list for 2022

 

This is an updated and revised annotated list of books on workplace bullying and related topics, following up on earlier lists published here in 2011 and 2018. This list now sorts recommended volumes into categories, while recognizing there is considerable overlap among them.

Here are several preliminary points before I jump into the list itself:

• First, this list emphasizes books that are primarily about workplace bullying, mobbing, and related behaviors, as well as the organizational cultures that fuel them. It also adds books that bring important contextual understanding to this subject matter.
• Second, I have not included several valuable books that look at bullying in specific occupational fields, such as education and health care.
• Third, there is a strong U.S.-based focus here, with a healthy sprinkling of international perspectives. That said, important work on this subject continues to expand on a global scale, and I won’t even try to capture all of it here.
• Fourth, with one exception (okay, a two-volume book set I co-edited!), I have emphasized single-volume works that, at least for more recent titles still in print, are relatively affordable.
• Fifth, I have not included the many treatments of workplace incivility or bad management, or books touting best practices in management generally. While important and related to workplace bullying, I needed to cabin in the scope of this list.
• Sixth, I have not covered the growing number of self-published titles on these topics, including first-person accounts of those who have experienced severe workplace mistreatment. These works contain useful insights and stories, but regrettably I have not been able to review them closely for this list.
• Finally, some acknowledgements: I have been involved in this work since the late 1990s. Accordingly, I have contributed to books about workplace bullying and been discussed and cited by colleagues who have authored some of these volumes. It is impossible for me to be objective in making this selection, so for the sake of full disclosure I mark books to which I have contributed content with a double asterisk (**); and books where my work is discussed in a more focused way and/or where I provided a promotional “blurb,” with an asterisk (*), in both instances following the date of publication.

ESPECIALLY FOR WORKERS

Gary Namie & Ruth Namie, The Bully at Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job (2nd ed., 2009)* — A seminal work by the individuals most responsible for introducing the concept of workplace bullying to a North American audience. It remains the most readable, accessible book for targets of workplace bullying. (Disclosure note: I have worked with the Namies and their Workplace Bullying Institute on a pro bono basis for almost two decades, and my work is discussed in this book.)

Maureen Duffy & Len Sperry, Overcoming Mobbing: A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying (2014)* — For both a comprehensive examination of workplace mobbing and valuable guidance for individuals, employers, and other workplace stakeholders, this is the best one-volume treatment of the topic.

ESPECIALLY FOR EMPLOYERS

Gary Namie & Ruth F. Namie, The Bully-Free Workplace (2011)* — The Namies’ step-by-step program for employers that want to pro-actively address workplace bullying, drawing upon many years of research and consulting.

Teresa A. Daniel & Gary S. Metcalf, Stop Bullying at Work: Strategies and Tools for HR, Legal, & Risk Management Professionals (2nd ed., 2016)* — A valuable “inside the fish bowl,” management perspective on preventing and responding to workplace bullying, with guidance for different levels of organizational leadership.

FOR RESEARCHERS GETTING STARTED

Stale Einarsen, Helge Hoel, Dieter Zapf & Cary L. Cooper, eds., Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace: Developments in Theory, Research, and Practice (3rd ed., 2020)** — Latest edition of the best one-volume, multidisciplinary, international collection of research and commentary on workplace bullying, with contributions from leading authorities.

Maureen Duffy & David C. Yamada, eds., Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States (2018)** — A two-volume, encyclopedic, multidisciplinary examination of workplace bullying and mobbing from an American perspective, featuring the work of over two dozen contributors.

Maureen Duffy & Len Sperry, Mobbing: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions (2012)* — A thorough, scholarly examination of mobbing behaviors and dynamics and how to respond to them, co-authored by two leading authorities on the subject.

EARLY, FOUNDATIONAL WORKS

Andrea Adams, with Neil Crawford, Bullying at Work: How to confront and overcome it (1992) — A pioneering work by a BBC journalist whose investigations helped to launch the workplace anti-bullying movement.

Carroll M. Brodsky, The harassed worker (1976) — Perhaps the earliest book to document and analyze these behaviors, this out-of-print and hard to find volume is worthy of mention for serious researchers and scholars.

Noa Davenport, Ruth Distler Schwartz & Gail Pursell Elliott, Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace (2002) — An early, important work built around the European conceptualization of mobbing and the vitally important research of the late Heinz Leymann.

Tim Field, Bully in Sight (1996) — One of the first works on workplace bullying by an early U.K. anti-bullying movement advocate, it remains an important commentary for serious students of this subject.

Marie-France Hirogoyen, Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity (English ed., 2004) — Important analysis of emotional abuse in private lives and in the workplace by a French psychiatrist and therapist.

Gary Namie & Ruth Namie, BullyProof Yourself At Work! (1998)* — The Namies’ pathbreaking first take on comprehending and responding to workplace bullying.

Charlotte Rayner, Helge Hoel & Cary L. Cooper, Workplace Bullying: What we know, who is to blame, and what can we do? (2002) — An early examination by three leading authorities on bullying and stress at work.

Judith Wyatt & Chauncey Hare, Work Abuse: How to Recognize and Survive It (1997) — One of the earliest books about psychological abuse at work, this is an important piece of the literature.

ALSO HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Judith Geneva Balcerzak, Workplace Bullying: Clinical and Organizational Perspectives (2015)* — Written by a clinical social worker and published by the National Association of Social Workers, this book is helpful to anyone who wants to understand workplace bullying and is especially useful for those in the social work field.

Carlo Caponecchia & Anne Wyatt, Preventing Workplace Bullying: An Evidence-Based Guide for Managers and Employees (2011) — Brisk overview with thought-provoking case studies, and applying research and analysis to practices and responses.

Ellen Pinkos Cobb, Workplace Bullying and Harassment: New Developments in International Law (2017)* — A handy and thorough global compilation and summary of laws and regulations pertaining to workplace bullying, mobbing, and harassment.

Lynne Curry, Beating the Workplace Bully: A Tactical Guide to Taking Charge (2016) — Authored by a management and human resources consultant who has experienced workplace bullying, this book takes a helpful, systematic, coaching-based approach for those who are dealing with bullying at work.

Suzi Fox & Paul E. Spector, eds., Counterproductive Work Behavior: Investigations of Actors and Targets (2005) — Very useful collection of chapter contributions that includes considerable research and commentary on bullying.

Harvey Hornstein, Brutal Bosses and Their Prey: How to Identify and Overcome Abuse in the Workplace (1996) — This work by a social psychologist examines bad boss behaviors, with especially relevant research findings and commentary about abusive supervision in the midst of difficult economic times.

Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik, Adult Bullying: A Nasty Piece of Work (2013) — A leading researcher on workplace bullying and related topics has gathered her journal articles, many of which are co-authored with other experts, into a single volume helpful to both scholars and those dealing with bullying at their workplaces.

Robert I. Sutton, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (2007) — While the title alone guaranteed this book a fair amount of attention, its discussion of bullying and incivility at work is noteworthy in its own right.

Noreen Tehrani, ed., Workplace Bullying: Symptoms and Solutions (2012)— A thought-provoking collection of chapter contributions from an international group of scholars and practitioners, with an emphasis on European perspectives.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC PERSPECTIVES

Paul Babiak & Robert D. Hare, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (rev. ed., 2019) — A revised and expanded edition of this informative look at the very worst types of workplace abusers, authored by two leading experts in psychopathic behavior.

Sheila M. Keegan, The Psychology of Fear in Organizations (2015) — An insightful book by a British consultant and psychologist that links the experience of fear at work to organizational cultures, and suggests solutions for moving forward. Includes a chapter on workplace bullying.

Ronald Schouten & James Silver, Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy? (2012) — Examines the characteristics and behaviors of those who may not meet the strict clinical criteria for psychopathy, but who demonstrate associated qualities such as pathological lying and lack of empathy, including scenarios such as workplace bullying.

Robin Stern, The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life (2018 ed.) — Explores the complicated dynamics of gaslighting, with the Introduction to the 2018 acknowledging the link between gaslighting and workplace bullying.

Martha Stout, Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door (2020)* —  A followup to the author’s earlier groundbreaking work The Sociopath Next Door (2006), this accessible and gruesomely fascinating exploration about how to respond to sociopaths includes considerable discussion of work situations, including workplace bullying.

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014) — Though not specifically about bullying, this is the most lucid, accessible, and hopeful book about psychological trauma and possibilities for successful treatment that I’ve encountered, authored by one of the pioneering experts in the field.

BROADER CONTEXTS AND FRAMES

Emily S. Bassman, Abuse in the Workplace: Management Remedies and Bottom Line Impact (1992) — Early and valuable examination of the organizational costs of emotional abuse at work.

Ellen Pinkos Cobb, Managing Psychosocial Hazards and Work-Related Stress in Today’s Work Environment: International Insights for U.S. Organizations (2022)* — Explores how employers can recognize and respond to psychosocial hazards, including workplace bullying, to prevent physical and psychological injury and stress.

Randy Hodson, Dignity at Work (2001) — Broad examination of dignity at work, including bullying behaviors, from a sociological perspective grounded in human dignity.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance — and What We Can Do About It (2018) — Examines how modern management practices, including workplace bullying, are contributing to toxic workplaces that inflict significant harms on both worker health and organizational performance.

Peter Schnall, Marnie Dobson & Ellen Rosskam, eds., Unhealthy Work: Causes, Consequences, Cures (2009) — Occupational health experts analyze the psychosocial aspects of work, public health impacts, and possible stakeholder responses.

Feedspot tags MTW a top workplace and bullying blog

Feedspot, a popular online content reader, has named Minding the Workplace a “Top 75 Workplace Blog” and a “Top 20 Bullying Blog.” MTW was listed 39th among the top 75 workplace blogs and websites and 9th among the top 20 bullying blogs and websites.

I’m very grateful to be included in both of these listings. This is my ninth year of writing this blog, and it remains one of the most rewarding parts of my work. Over the years I’ve received very positive feedback on many articles. I’m especially aware that MTW has helped many  targets of workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse to understand their experiences and, when possible, develop strategies for responding.

I didn’t know what to expect when I began this blog, but the experience has been very meaningful. Of course, it all starts and ends with you, my readers, and I thank you for your ongoing interest.

“Post-truths” at work and management messaging

Alison Flood reports for The Guardian newspaper that “Oxford Dictionaries has declared ‘post-truth’ to be its international word of the year.” She continues:

Defined by the dictionary as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, editors said that use of the term “post-truth” had increased by around 2,000% in 2016 compared to last year. The spike in usage, it said, is “in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States”.

I couldn’t help but think of popular “post-truths” circulated by some employers to their rank-and-file workers:

• “We’re all in this together.”
• “Each and every employee matters to us.”
• “We’d hate for a union to come in and interfere with the direct communications we enjoy with our valued employees.”
• “We’re absolutely committed to equal opportunity.”
• “Don’t worry, you can trust the HR office with all of your concerns.”
• “Think of us as one big family here.”

I’m sure that readers can add their own post-truths to this list.

Of course, at some workplaces, many of these statements actually apply. But in too many places of employment, the more you hear them, the less truth they happen to carry. 

Conversations and the construction of knowledge

(image courtesy of ClipArtBest.com)

Okay, dear readers, I’m about to get a little academic geeky on you, but please stick with me on this: In InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing (3rd ed. 2014), co-authors Steinar Kvale and Svend Brinkmann examine the notion of “conversation as a construction site of knowledge.” Invoking this phrase in the context of conducting formal research interviews, they posit that the interactive nature of good conversations can create new knowledge.

This brilliant turn of words was introduced to me by Dr. Maureen Duffy, a leading authority on workplace mobbing and most recently co-author, with Dr. Len Sperry, of the deservedly praised Overcoming Mobbing: A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying (2014). I’m probably guilty of oversimplifying, but in essence Drs. Kvale and Brinkmann are wrapping some theory around how conversations over ideas, information, insights, and experiences can build and expand our understanding of the human condition.

I have found this to be profoundly true when it comes to learning about the nature of work, workers, and workplaces.

The “new math” of conversation

I’m no math whiz, but I do understand that one plus one equals two. However, a good conversation may yield a different, more powerful equation, whereby one plus one may equal three…or five…or ten, at least when it comes to potential new understandings. And when even more people get into a good mix of conversation, then all bets are off.

My recent phone conversations with Maureen have centered on a book project (see below), but because we’re both immersed in the world of workplace bullying and mobbing, we sometimes discuss our work generally. I can attest that sharing our respective expertise has led to knowledge constructing moments for both us, with insights emerging from the back and forth of attentive conversation.

This is among the reasons why I have written in praise of conferences and workshops that allow for genuine exchanges during formal sessions, break times, and enrichment events. As frequent conference goers know well, there’s a huge difference between gatherings that are interactive, friendly, and engaging, and those that are stuffy, hierarchical, and pretentious. With the former, you wish it could go on for a few more days. With the latter, you can’t wait for it to be over. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts on this stuff, here are several blog posts of possible interest:

Conferences as community builders (2015)

Workshopping human dignity (2014)

Inspiration in Amsterdam (2013)

Why conferences? (2013)

Stay tuned: A cool book project is in the making

I’ve been on the phone with Maureen a lot in recent months because she invited me to join her as co-editor of an exciting book project on workplace bullying and mobbing. The two-volume book set will feature a comprehensive, multidisciplinary collection of chapters by leading and emerging U.S. experts on bullying and mobbing at work, with a focus on American employment relations. We have a very supportive publisher and a great team of chapter contributors, and we’re looking at a 2017 publication date. I’ll be sharing more news about the project in the coming months.

Workplace bullying: From target to subject matter expert

Part of your homework

On occasion I receive inquiries that go something like this: I’ve been a target of workplace bullying. I’ve learned a lot from this experience and want to help make sure that others don’t go through what I did. In fact, I’d like to do some work in this area. How can I go about this?

Typically such inquiries come from folks who would like to be more deeply involved in public education, consulting and coaching, and advocacy work about workplace bullying. They run the gamut of professional backgrounds and age ranges. Although I’ve written about how people can respond to workplace bullying as individual activists, I haven’t fully explored this question for those who want to pursue a vocation or serious avocation in this realm. For purposes of discussing possible roles, I will use the term “subject matter expert” (SME), the specifics of which, of course, will vary with individual circumstances and interests. 

The transition from workplace bullying target to SME is a challenging one. Some who want to make this transition proceed under two misconceptions. First, they overgeneralize from their experience, sometimes to the point of regarding themselves as an expert on workplace bullying because of what they endured. The experience of being bullied at work may yield many valuable (albeit very difficult) lessons that can benefit others. But one’s own experience of work abuse is not necessarily universal or even representative. Variations on bullying are seemingly endless. Thus, I wince when I read or hear bullying targets offering what I believe is questionable advice, drawn largely from their own experiences.

Please don’t get me wrong: Experience can be a great teacher, and many people who are doing research on workplace bullying and who are taking active roles in the workplace anti-bullying movement were informed and inspired to move in those directions by personal experiences. However, workplace bullying is a complex and complicated topic, and gaining both a depth and breadth of understanding about it requires time and effort. (Indeed, even after some 15 years of being immersed in this general subject area, I’m still learning.)

Second, some targets seeking to transition into SME roles may enter the fray when their own bullying experiences are still too raw. Emotionally, they aren’t ready. Perhaps they will never be, and there is no shame in that. Some are empowered by becoming change agents regarding bullying at work; others are re-traumatized. My observation is that those who use their experiences as their primary “texts” for understanding bullying at work and who dive into various SME roles before they’re ready may give bad guidance and advice to others, may overlook evidence-based findings about workplace bullying, and may embroil themselves in an emotional stew that consumes them from the inside.

With that said, here are two general clusters of advice for people exploring these possibilities:

1. Get schooled

Above all, a serious course of study — independent or formal — is necessary. For starters, and with a slight nod to American readers, I’d recommend:

• Gary Namie & Ruth Namie, The Bully at Work (rev. ed., 2009);
• Gary Namie & Ruth Namie, The Bully-Free Workplace (2011);
• Maureen Duffy & Len Sperry, Overcoming Mobbing (2014);
• Stale Einarsen, et al., eds., Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace (2nd ed., 2011); and,
• Sheila M. Keegan, The Psychology of Fear in Organizations (2015).

Additional resources abound. The Workplace Bullying Institute website includes an invaluable research portal. WBI’s Workplace Bullying University is an intense, interactive, and content-rich three-day seminar facilitated by Drs. Gary and Ruth Namie. The American Psychological Association’s Center for Organizational Excellence has created a webpage of resources on workplace bullying, especially for employers. (I worked with the APA in developing this page.)

Some may benefit from or need more formal training and education, including the possibility of an advanced degree or certification in fields such as psychology (clinical, social, or industrial/organizational), social work, coaching, business management, human resources, labor studies, or law.

2. Get ready

As I’ve suggested above, you need to be able to step out of the emotions of your own experience. That’s not easy. Workplace bullying can seep into the bones. All too often, I’ve seen people jump into this arena, only to discover that they’re still too close to their own experiences. Especially if a counselor or therapist recommends that you’re not ready, it would be wise to heed that advice.

Also, you need to identify where you can make your contribution. Those who seek an avocational role may want to engage in activism and advocacy, social media outreach, and public education work. Many who support the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill are involved in these ways. For those who seek a more vocational focus — in other words, to earn a living addressing these behaviors — it usually will be necessary to pursue work in a given profession. Formal, advanced training in one of the fields suggested above may be appropriate.

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Related post

“I want to help stop workplace bullying” (2014) — “Periodically I get e-mails and voice mails from people who would like to get involved in addressing bullying at work. More often than not, they have experienced or witnessed workplace bullying firsthand, and now they’d like to do something on a broader scale to prevent bullying and help others who have been targeted. Here are my thoughts on this topic….”

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Trying out Brené Brown’s “Living Brave Semester”

For some time I’ve wanted to explore more deeply the work of Dr. Brené Brown, one of the most interesting thinkers and writers around today. Her work on courage, vulnerability, and bouncing back from life’s setbacks is very intriguing to me.

So I’ve signed up for her online course that starts this Monday, the “Living Brave Semester,” built around her two most recent books, Daring Greatly (2012) and Rising Strong (2015). Here’s a description from the course webpage:

The Living Brave Semester is a unique, online learning experience that provides participants with the opportunity to explore what it means to fully show up in our lives – to be brave, lean into vulnerability, and to rumble with the challenges that come with living a daring life.

I quoted a brief passage from Daring Greatly last month in a post about shame-based organizations, and I liked how Dr. Brown doesn’t pull her punches in discussing how shame can be used by management:

When we see shame being used as a management tool (again, that means bullying, criticism in front of colleagues, public reprimands, or reward systems that intentionally belittle people), we need to take direct action because it means that we’ve got an infestation on our hands. And we need to remember that this doesn’t just happen overnight. Equally important to keep in mind is that shame is like the other “sh” word. Like shit, shame rolls downhill. If employees are constantly having to navigate shame, you can bet that they’re passing it on to their customers, students, and families.

I’m looking forward to this course! It feeds the lifelong learning junkie in me, and I’m sure that I’ll gain some insights worthy of sharing with readers of this blog as well.

Understanding the Holocaust (and why I’m writing about it in a blog about workplaces)

Over the weekend I read Elie Wiesel’s Night (1958; new translation 2006), a defining personal account of life and death in Nazi concentration camps. Even with a Preface, Foreword, and Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech included, the book comes out to less than 150 pages, so this hardly counts as a reading marathon. Nevertheless, my intention was to start it on Saturday evening and to finish over the coming days. But once I began reading, I kept going until reaching the end early Sunday morning.

As an amateur student of history, I’ve read a lot of books and watched many films and documentaries about the World War II era, including the Holocaust. However, what should’ve been so self-evident to me beforehand finally sank in as I read Night: We need to understand the Holocaust because there is no more documented, memorialized, and analyzed chapter of widespread, deliberate, orchestrated human atrocity in our history. If we want to grasp how human beings in a “modern” era can inflict horrific cruelties on others  — systematically and interpersonally — then the Holocaust is at the core of our understanding.

I know there are many other episodes of genocide and oppression that we must consider. The Armenian Genocide of 1915. Rwanda in 1994. America’s history with slaves and Native Americans. The list goes on. But for a variety of reasons, the scale and driving hatred of the Holocaust, and the body of remembrance, documentation, and interpretation about it, are singular.

About bullying, mobbing, and workplaces

Allusions to the Holocaust, Nazis, Hitler, and the like must be offered carefully. This includes discussions involving employee relations. Even terrible workplaces are not concentration camps. But I respectfully suggest that these comparisons are important and useful when severe workplace bullying and abuse are under examination.

Barbara Coloroso is an internationally recognized authority on school bullying whose work also has extended into the general realm of human rights. She recounts in her 2007 book Extraordinary Evil: A Short Walk to Genocide how she used a talk at the University of Rwanda to explain “how it was a short walk from schoolyard bullying to criminal bullying (hate crime) to genocide,” invoking the roles of aggressor, bullying target, and bystander.

In 2010, when Coloroso spoke to a group of South Hadley, Massachusetts, residents and school officials in connection with the much-publicized bullying-related suicide of high school student Phoebe Prince, she referenced this theme and distinguished bullying from ordinary conflict. As reported by Hannah McGoldrick:

“Bullying is the dehumanizing of other human beings with intent to harm,” Coloroso said yesterday during her third talk in South Hadley.

Coloroso, who did work in Rwanda during the mass genocide, explained that genocide “dehumanizes” people in the same way bullying does to “targeted” children.

“There is no remorse [in bullying]; it’s contempt for another human being,” she said. “As adults, we fail to distinguish the difference between conflict and bullying.”

Coloroso then explained that bullying, like genocide, cannot be resolved through conflict resolution.

Kenneth Westhues, the University of Waterloo sociologist whose case studies of mobbing in academe are worth the concentrated study of any serious student of workplace abuse, uses the term “elimination” to describe the process of removing targeted professors from their jobs. Ken also draws comparisons between severe mobbing behaviors at work and perpetrators of larger-scale eliminations and genocides, including the Nazis.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt invoked the phrase “banality of evil” to describe how Adolf Eichmann served as one of Hitler’s architects of the Holocaust. Since then, the phrase has come to represent — in more generic terms — how ordinary people become easily invested in the values of a morally bankrupt status quo and participate in terrible behaviors that seemingly are unthinkable in civilized society. These insights teach us a lot about how bureaucratic enablers of abusive bosses can help to facilitate the destruction of a bullying target. These professional handmaidens (usually HR folks and employment lawyers) are more than simple bystanders; rather, they are complicit in the abuse.

I have distinguished a form of mistreatment that I call “puppet master” bullying from situations that appear to be mobbings. In 2012, I wrote:

Let’s start with…puppet master bullying. In these situations, a chief aggressor’s power and influence over a group of subordinates may be sufficient to enlist their participation in mistreating a target, creating what looks and feels like a mob. For example, if the aggressor is a mid-level manager, he may recruit HR to help out with the dirty work and encourage the target’s peers to shun or bully her.

…By contrast, genuine workplace mobbing occurs when the malicious energy is shared among the many, who proceed to go after the few. It may have started as puppet master bullying, but regardless of its origins, this is now a mob, with individuals owning that animus in ways that fuel each other’s antipathy toward the target.

In cases of puppet master bullying, removal of the “master” has a dramatic effect: “Typically, much of the malicious energy that fueled the puppets fades away, and so with it much of the bullying behavior.” Surely conditions in Nazi Germany help us to understand this line between bullying and mobbing, even though the behaviors differ significantly in scale and impact.

And back to Night

Wiesel experienced Nazi concentration camps as a teenaged boy, yet the stories he shares do not require a more mature moderator beyond the author’s voice. In Night you will see extreme cruelty, calculated psychological terror, bystander inaction, the breakdown of civility and society, and willful ignorance and denial, along with acts of kindness, love, bravery, and self-sacrifice. It is good that this book is a short one; anything more might be overwhelming.

In any case, Night is definitely worth the time of anyone who wants to understand how the extreme realms of cruelty exist in modern society, in small and large ways. I wish that I could say that our workplaces are free of such behaviors, but that would not be true.

***

Related posts

“Puppet master” bullying vs. genuine mobbing at work (2012)

Cassandra calling: Margaret Heffernan’s “Willful Blindness” (2011)

Does the Holocaust help us to comprehend targeted, malicious workplace bullying? (2011)

 

 

Duffy & Sperry on the organizational life cycle: When the wheels are coming off, do bullying/mobbing behaviors follow?

In their new book, Overcoming Mobbing: A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying (2014), co-authors Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry present a trenchant, insightful description of the typical life cycle of organizations:

• “Stage I: New Venture”
• “Stage II: Expansion”
• “Stage III: Professionalization”
• “Stage IV: Consolidation”
• “Stage V: Early Bureaucratization”
• “Stage VI: Late Bureaucratization”

It’s Stage V, Early Bureaucratization, where serious organizational problems start to arise. Status seeking and turf wars become common. As negativity builds, the better workers start to leave. Leadership morphs into poor administration, and passive-aggressive behaviors increase while morale decreases.

The wheels start coming off in Stage VI, Late Bureaucratization. Miscommunication and poor communication become the norm, as well as helplessness and a lack of shared direction. Workers avoid rocking the boat and safeguard their own job security, while leaders simply try to keep the place going. At this point, absent major, positive changes, “the eventual demise of the organization seems inevitable.”

How does this relate to bullying and mobbing at work?

I suggest that you spend some time with this excellent book to see how the authors relate this life cycle to bullying and mobbing behaviors at work, but we can also ponder the question here.

We have known for a long time that interpersonal abuse at work is usually enabled by an organization’s culture. The Duffy-Sperry conceptualization of the organizational life cycle helps to clarify when these behaviors may become more frequent, especially varieties of mobbing that are focal points for their work.

Over the years, I’ve heard many descriptions of workplace cultures associated with bullying & mobbing that seem to correlate with the Early and Late Bureaucratization stages described by the authors. Status-seeking, turf wars, dropping morale, poor leadership, passive-aggressive behaviors, lousy communication, self-protective and play-it-safe strategies…the list goes on and on.

Bullying behaviors thrive in such institutional settings. Fixing such a toxic work environment calls for wise, inclusive, and open-minded stewardship — very likely the opposite of the brands of “leadership” that brought the organization to its crisis point in the first place.

I’m curious if readers recognize these latter stages of the organizational life cycle in bullying & mobbing situations they’ve experienced or observed.