Workplace bullying strategies and tactics: An updated round-up

Two years ago, I did a quick little round-up of common strategies and tactics employed by workplace aggressors, as discussed in various articles here. It’s time for an updated version. I’ve included short snippets for each; please click on the topics to read the original posts.

Blackballing (2015)

“Blackballing is a prime form of eliminationist behavior. It also is awfully hard to detect and trace, because it typically occurs under the cloak of confidentiality and private communications.”

Button pushing (2014)

“Workplace aggressors are often experts at button pushing. They know how to get a rise out of someone, and if it causes the target to say or do something that gives the aggressors even more of an upper hand, then all the better.”

Gossip (2014)

“If gossip is for the purpose of maliciously trashing someone’s reputation and pushing them out of the workplace, then the situation may be part of a bullying or mobbing campaign.”

Superficial civility enabling bullying (2014)

“But at times, the organizational embrace of a superficial brand of civility can advantage those who engage in bullying, harassment, or discrimination at work.”

Bullies claiming victim status (2013)

“We’ve seen it countless times: Workplace bullies claiming to be the victims of workplace bullying.”

Splitting (2013)

“Eddy describes splitting in work settings as a personal and hostile process that promotes extreme, all-or-nothing positions and ‘often involves projection,’ i.e., tagging “’others as being divisive and inappropriate in the ways that they are actually being divisive and inappropriate themselves.'”

Gaslighting (2012)

“Gaslighting at work can range from orchestrated, manipulative aggressor-to-target behaviors, to HR officers expressing faux incredulity in response to claims of abusive mistreatment.”

“Puppet master” bullying vs. mobbing (2012)

“Let’s start with what I call 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.”

Workplace cyber-bullying (2012)

“A new study of British university employees concludes that targets of workplace cyberbullying often fare worse than those who experience traditional bullying.

Making targets disappear (2011)

“Bad organizations choose to ‘forget’ less flattering events of their institutional history, especially those that conflict with their self-generated mythologies. Sometimes that process requires them to create new unpersons out of individuals associated with those events.”

Recycling: Five years of March

Each month I’m reaching into the archives to highlight a piece from that month for each of the past five years. Especially for those of you who missed them the first time around, I hope they provide interesting and useful reading. For each post I’m including a short excerpt; you may click on the title for the full article.

March 2014: Dealing with a bad workplace: Getting to tolerance — “What do I mean by ‘getting to tolerance’? It means being able to deal with the undesirable aspects of your workplace without them constantly taking you down a notch, or at least bouncing back after a bad day there. It means being able to do your job well, perhaps even with some enthusiasm and satisfaction, despite the negative aspects of your work environment. It means not taking the bad parts of work home with you every day. It also means being able to develop and weigh future options in a constructive and hopeful way.”

March 2013: Does the Healthy Workplace Bill “demonize” workplace aggressors? — “I fully understand the emotions that cause some targets of workplace bullying to desire retribution. And while I do believe that compensation is a just goal for the Healthy Workplace Bill, the objectives of revenge and punishment seem less appropriate to fuel legislation designed, ultimately, to affirm human dignity. That said, holding someone accountable for engaging in proven, targeted, health-harming interpersonal abuse is not ‘demonization.’ We must be careful not to overuse the term, lest we become resistant toward all notions of personal responsibility for severe, intentional mistreatment of another.”

March 2012: Global report: Nearly 3 in 10 workers say workplace is psychologically unsafe — “If you need support for the proposition that employers need to take psychological health in the workplace more seriously, a Reuters global survey covering some 14,600 workers in 24 nations will give you some backup. The survey found that nearly three in ten workers deemed their workplaces psychologically unsafe and unhealthy….”

March 2011: Workplace bullying in the military — “At the 2010 International Conference on Workplace Bullying & Harassment in Cardiff, Wales, I attended a compelling session on whistleblowing and bullying that featured retired Irish Army captain Tom Clonan. Clonan shared with us the disturbing story of how he was retaliated against after submitting a report to his superiors about extensive levels of bullying, sexual harassment, and sexual assault directed at female soldiers by their male colleagues.”

March 2010: Do school bullying laws pave the way for the Healthy Workplace Bill? — “Time will tell if school bullying laws soften the way for workplace bullying laws, but I’m heartened by the fact that we’re starting to connect the dots on these forms of abusive behavior.  School bullying, workplace bullying, domestic abuse, child abuse…there are many ties that bind among these forms of mistreatment.”

Recycling: Five years of February

Each month I’m reaching into the archives to highlight a piece from that month for each of the past five years. Especially for those of you who missed them the first time around, I hope they provide interesting and useful reading. For each post I’m including a short excerpt; you may click on the title for the full article.

February 2014: “I want to help stop workplace bullying” — “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 . . .”

February 2013: On creating organizational culture: What if your boss simply doesn’t care? — “We talk about good leaders who strive to create healthy organizational cultures, the places where people want to work. We talk about bad leaders who crack the whip, bully, and treat others as expendable parts. But what about bosses who don’t think much at all about the quality of work life within their organizations? What if notions such as supportive work environments, fair compensation structures, and organizational justice don’t cross their radar screens? What if all that matters to them are profits/revenues, avoiding liability, pleasing their boards & superiors, and getting ahead?”

February 2012: Recipe for healthy employee relations: Encourage speech, nurture civility, and prohibit abuse — “Organizations can, if they wish, clamp down on employee speech, encourage cutthroat competition, and bully workers relentlessly. Much of this will be legal, given the weaknesses of worker protections beyond employment discrimination laws. Of course, most of us know that such practices are a recipe for disaster, or at least guarantee an underperforming, low-morale workplace. With that in mind, let’s set out a few basic parameters for something better . . .”

February 2011: School bullying and workplace bullying: More alike than different? — “Beyond our families, our first encounters with others in a structured setting come via school. Is it not surprising that bullying behaviors modeled and validated in school settings reappear and evolve devolve in the workplace? More stuff to ponder here.”

February 2010: The University of Alabama-Huntsville shootings and the academic workplace — “I usually hesitate to use this blog to provide instantaneous analyses of developing news stories, but already it is clear that Friday’s terrible shootings at the University of Alabama-Huntsville will carry broader implications for academic workplaces. Three professors were killed, and two other professors and one staff member were injured during an incident that took place at a faculty meeting. In custody is Amy Bishop, an assistant professor in UAH’s biology department. Earlier that day, Bishop learned she had lost an appeal of her tenure denial. As soon as that piece of information was reported, the story behind this tragedy started to sharpen quickly.”

Recycling: Five years of January

Each month I’m reaching into the archives to highlight a piece from that month of each past year. Especially for those of you who missed them the first time around, I hope they provide interesting and useful reading. For each piece I’m including a short excerpt; you may click on the title for the full article.

January 2014: Mental health in the academic workplace — Because mental health issues remain a neglected aspect of the academic workplace, I thought I’d do a quick roundup of websites and blog posts that may be helpful resources for those interested in learning more.

January 2013: A mediator writes about workplace bullying and mediation — Currently in the U.S., applying any [alternative dispute resolution] mechanism to a workplace bullying scenario often would occur under the assumption that the abusive behavior is legal. This automatically tags the situation as one of conflict rather than one of abuse. . . .By comparison, crime victims agreeing to participate in restorative justice practices typically have the power of the criminal codes and the criminal justice system behind them, thus significantly changing the presumptions and power dynamics between them and the offenders.

January 2012: Rats as role models? — The next time you deal with a less-than-wonderful co-worker, think twice before you call him a “dirty rat.” You see, it turns out that rats can be pretty decent creatures. . . . Not that I’m eager to have them over to my place, but I guess this shows that rats can be, umm, stand-up animals. After all, empathy and resilience make for a good combo, at work or anywhere else.

January 2011: The costs of suffering in silence about bad work situations — Let’s say you’re being bullied or harassed or otherwise mistreated at work. . . . Anger and resentment are natural responses to these situations, but is there any outlet to express your emotions at work? Many people — dare I say most people — will keep it bottled up inside them. After all, self-censorship has long been a staple of behavior for the rank-and-file worker. . . . Repressing these emotions can have grave health consequences, however.

January 2010: A brief history of the emergence of the U.S. workplace bullying movement — As more people become aware of workplace bullying and efforts to respond to it, I thought it might be useful to offer a brief summary of how the American movement got started a decade ago . . . .

 

Recycling: Five years of December

Each month I’m reaching into the archives to highlight a piece from that month of each past year. Especially for those of you who missed them the first time around, I hope they provide interesting and useful reading. For each piece I’m including a short excerpt; you may click on the title for the full article.

December 2013: UMass-Amherst launches campus-wide workplace anti-bullying initiative — Yesterday the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the flagship entity of a major public university system, publicly launched a workplace anti-bullying initiative with a campus symposium that attracted over 500 UMass employees. This remarkable turnout, which included staff, faculty, and administrators, was over triple the number of RSVPs for the event. . . . I had the privilege of presenting the keynote address, and one of the lasting memories I’ll have is that of standing at the podium and seeing the large auditorium fill with people, with some having to stand even after dozens of extra chairs were brought in to accommodate the overflow.

December 2012: American elders: Human dignity and an aging population — At some point soon, America is going to have to come to grips with the massive psychological and economic implications of its aging population. It won’t be easy. . . . These challenges will have significant implications for the world of work. They will impact the demographics of the workplace and employee benefit programs. They also will create an expanding sector of the labor market devoted to elder care and health care. If we’re capable of philosophically redefining a crisis as an opportunity, then perhaps this is the best we can hope for. I believe these coming decades will be a test not only of our policy and economic ingenuity, but also of our hearts.

December 2011: Workplace bullying and families of targets — Workplace bullying often creates victims in addition to the target of the abuse. In particular, close family members often pay a price as well, as personal relationships are severely tested and sometimes fractured. Many bullying targets, and those who have interviewed, counseled, and coached them, have known this for a long time. Now, emerging research is helping to build the evidence-based case. Here are two helpful pieces . . . .

December 2010: “Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here” — Do you like the quote that headlines this blog post? Isn’t it an important statement for a workplace with a heart? Uh oh. Too bad it came from Enron’s code of ethics. Alas, great policies do not always translate into great leadership.

December 2009: Workplace bullying in health care IV: Nurses bullied and responding — “After you read this post, go to Google and type in these two words as a search request: nurses bullying. If you had a dollar for every hit, you could retire right now and live very, very comfortably. When it comes to workplace bullying in the healthcare workplace, nurses get the worst of it. They are bullied by doctors. They are bullied by fellow nurses. And when patients act out, they’re more likely to take it out on a nurse than someone else, at times using physical violence.”

Recycling: Five years of August

Each month I’m reaching into the archives to highlight a piece from that month of each past year. Especially for those of you who missed them the first time around, I hope they provide interesting and useful reading. For each piece I’m including a short excerpt; you may click on the title for the full article.

August 2013: Notes on the workplace anti-bullying movement — “If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve figured out that workplace bullying and related issues of human dignity at work have become focal points of my career. …These experiences have been defining ones, personally and professionally. They also have taught me a lot about the challenges of organizing a movement and building public support for it. I’d like to step back for a brief moment to share some of those insights and observations, centering on the types of people who have been drawn to be a part of this. Concededly, these are fairly broad generalizations, and I apologize in advance to anyone who believes I’m overstating my points. But here goes…”

August 2012: Professional schools as incubators for workplace bullying — “You start with ambitious young people who (1) are used to being heralded as academic stars; (2) do not have a lot of life experience; and (3) tend to be driven, Type A achievers. You then put them in high-pressured educational environments that emphasize technical knowledge and skills and a lot of “left-brain” logical thinking. These degree programs don’t place a lot of emphasis on interpersonal skills and the development of emotional intelligence. You then unleash them unto the world of work. Uh oh.”

August 2011: Hiring decisions, hard times, and personal & institutional integrity — “Employers, managers, and HR folks have a lot of power in an economy where jobs are hard to come by. Sometimes, the hiring decisions they make reveal something of their personal and institutional integrity, or lack thereof.”

August 2010: Can an apology help to prevent and settle employment litigation? — “It would take considerable reworking of the commonly assumed role of an employer’s lawyer to encourage, when appropriate, apology and disclosure as a healthy approach toward resolving employment disputes.   Right now, too many management-side lawyers assist their clients in creating a public fiction: We do no wrong — never, ever.  However, is it possible that a different turn will lead to less litigation, less contentious dispute resolution, and — ultimately — better employee morale?”

August 2009: Bully rats, tasers, and stress — “New York Times science reporter Natalie Angier has an interesting piece in today’s edition…about an experiment using lab rats to assess the effects of chronic stress, feedback loops in the brain, and how to reverse the damage.  It’s a good report on a thought-provoking study, but for me it confirmed what has become obvious…”

Recycling: Five years of Mays

Dear readers, with some 1,100 articles posted to this blog since its founding in late 2008, on a monthly basis I’m going to reach into the archives to highlight a piece from the corresponding month of each past year. Especially for those of you who missed them the first time around, I hope they will provide interesting and useful reading. For each piece I’m including a short excerpt; you may click on the title for the full article.

May 2013: Suicide and the Great Recession: Will we heed the tragic warnings?

In this era of the Great Recession, suicide has become a leading cause of death in America, especially among the middle-aged, and it is to our shame as a society that this reality is not an ongoing, dominant focus of our attention.

…Suicide is a scary, intimidating, and complicated topic, and it makes many of us uneasy. But a nation’s suicide rates should be among the prime indicators of its collective health and well-being. We need to “own” these statistics, understand what’s behind them, and do our best to respond to them. This will enhance our lives a lot more than obsessing over stock market reports and enabling corporations whose leaders don’t give a hoot about the rest of us.

May 2012: Trickle-down abuse: Workplace bullying, depression, and kids

We know that severe workplace bullying can trigger or exacerbate clinical depression in its targets. But that’s not all: In making our case for taking this form of abuse seriously, we also need to acknowledge how children become the secondary victims of bullying-induced depression.

…Bullying-induced depression can impact parental care provided by mothers and fathers alike. But I suggest that there’s a disparate impact on women. Let’s connect the dots….

…In other words, the evidence suggests that we’ve got a cohort of bullied, depressed moms out there, and the pain of their experience at work is being passed on to their kids at home.

May 2011: What policy objectives should workplace bullying legislation advance?

With growing discussion about the enactment of workplace bullying legislation occurring both in the U.S. and in other nations, it is fitting to identify some of the broad objectives that any such law should be designed to further.

When I was drafting the Healthy Workplace Bill, I identified a cluster of public policy goals that should inform the substance of an anti-bullying law. These four figured most prominently….

May 2010: Embracing Creative Dreams at Midlife

Dreams die hard is something of an old chestnut, but having entered the heart of midlife, I am thankful that this often is true. I think especially of creative energies waiting to be tapped and unleashed, perhaps after some of life’s other priorities and responsibilities have been addressed, and pursued with the benefit of experience and maturity.

Two long-time friends come to mind when I ponder this….

May 2009: Star Trek: To bold embrace passions…or to obliterate work-life balance?

With Star Trek and its heirs, life on a starship is all encompassing. The officers and crew live where they work. There rarely is such a thing as a “vacation,” unless beaming down to a planet that may serve up life-threatening beings or diseases counts as Club Med or the French Riviera. Alas, to my knowledge, none of the Star Trek incarnations feature an employee assistance program or union shop steward to address issues of overwork or chronic stress.

 

 

Dysfunction junction: A round-up of not-so-great management practices

Hello, dear readers! I’ve gathered some recent and not-so-recent blog posts on dysfunctional management practices and related topics. Do any of these fit your workplace? If so, what can we do about it?

Consultants and the “outsourcing of leadership” (2014) — “Take a look around your workplace. Are there consultants buzzing around, addressing practically every major pending concern or decision your organization faces? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then it’s likely that your employer is engaging in what a friend of mine brilliantly calls the ‘outsourcing of leadership.'”

Want better productivity? Fewer, more focused meetings may help (2013) — “Meetings are a necessary piece of organizational life. But good meetings are the exception to the norm. All too often, meetings are giant time and energy suckers. Fewer and smarter meetings would benefit everyone except those who like to sit in a room and yammer.”

“Can we help you with the problems we caused?” The ironies of employee assistance and wellness initiatives (2013) — “In less-than-wonderful workplaces, however, EAPs and wellness initiatives can play an ironic role: They exist in part to deal with the dysfunctional and unhealthy aspects of the organization itself.”

On creating organizational culture: What if your boss simply doesn’t care? (2013) — “But what about bosses who don’t think much at all about the quality of work life within their organizations? What if notions such as supportive work environments, fair compensation structures, and organizational justice don’t cross their radar screens? What if all that matters to them are profits/revenues, avoiding liability, pleasing their boards & superiors, and getting ahead?”

One-way feedback: In-house surveys and the illusion of open decision making (2012) — “A recent conversation at a conference confirmed my suspicions: More organizations are using online, “anonymous” surveys to get feedback from their employees. This practice appears to be especially common during strategic planning or organizational assessment stages.”

Is our psychologically ill economy fueled by psychologically ill business leaders? (2011) — “During the three years I have hosted this blog, I’ve written a lot about the devastating effects that bullying bosses can have on individual psyches and careers. As these commentaries and studies show, many of these individuals also are wreaking havoc on our larger economic and social infrastructures.”

“Strategic planning”: All too often, a time sucking bridge to nowhere (2011) — “My friends in management consulting may toss me out of the visitor’s lounge for saying this, but two words uttered together send a chill up my spine: Strategic planning.”

How lousy organizations treat institutional history (2011) – “Bad organizations avoid accountability by labeling any unjust, unethical, illegal, or simply inept behavior as part of the past. Those who seek discussions of, or explanations for, such actions or behaviors are criticized for dwelling upon the past, even if that past is a relatively recent occurrence.”

Why so many managers are mediocre or bad: They weren’t promoted because they are good leaders (2011) — “This has been a recurring observation, repeated by different individuals in different circles, in person and online: So many people who are in positions of authority were put there for reasons other than their leadership ability.”

When bad employers retain thuggish employment lawyers (2011) — “They distort, intimidate, and delay. They take a worker’s minor faults or mistakes and elevate them into major deficiencies. They help their clients sweep horrible behaviors and actions under the rug. They use legal process to deplete, torture, and humiliate everyday workers.”

Past reflections on workplace bullying and worker dignity

Especially with over 1,000 articles now posted to this blog, periodically I like to go back and bring to readers’ attentions past pieces that raised common themes. Here are five for your consideration, and you can read each full post by clicking on the title.

1. How workplace bullying bears similarities to domestic abuse (2011)

When people ask me if workplace bullying is a lot like schoolyard bullying, I typically respond, yes, in a way, but that domestic abuse is the more apt comparison. These are among the reasons why.

2. Can workplace incivility ever be healthy? (2011)

I still find myself having to explain this point in the face of inevitable and understandable pushback:

Those of us who study workplaces generally assume that incivility is a bad thing. . . .

. . . However, there are times when incivility may be an understandable consequence of a disagreement or difference of opinion. Such exchanges — often marked by the use of otherwise rude, harsh, or offensive words – can clear the air, hopefully paving the way toward a healthy resolution.

3. Hope for worker dignity comes out of a union meeting in Massachusetts (2011)

On Thursday, it was my good fortune to be a guest speaker at the monthly Joint Executive Committee meeting of SEIU/NAGE in Massachusetts. . . .

. . . I realize that not all supporters of the Healthy Workplace Bill are fans of unions. Some may have had unpleasant personal experiences with them.

True, unions are fallible organizations, like any other kind of group endeavor. And a bad union is just that. But these imperfections render the labor movement no less necessary. A world without organized labor is a world that has declared open season on everyday workers.

4. Helping targets of workplace bullying: The need for an integrated counseling approach (2010)

Many years of talking to targets of severe workplace bullying have reinforced my belief that we need to fashion multifaceted counseling approaches for people who are dealing with this form of abuse.  At least three categories continually intersect . . .

5. Work and Workplaces of a New Decade: Notes on a “Dignitarian” Agenda (2010)

I think we’ve still got a long way to go on the seven points I raised in this piece.

As we turn to a new decade, permit me to set out some notes on a “dignitarian” (to borrow Robert Fuller’s wonderful term) agenda for work and workplaces for the next 10 years.  Obviously this is far from the last word on the subject, but establishing some basic themes may be helpful . . .

Ringing in the New Year

At year’s end, I always look forward to the holiday issue of The Economist, the venerable British newsweekly. It features an eclectic variety of articles on history, popular culture, and scientific and economic trends, some serious, others lighthearted.

In the spirit of that annual treat, I’d like to offer a more modest collection of a dozen posts from this blog that hopefully provoke, inform, and entertain:

1. Does life begin at 46? (2010) — As long as we’re talking about The Economist, here’s a piece inspired by an article in the magazine, speculating on the possible advantages of hitting midlife.

2. A 12-step program for compassion (2010) — A post about theologian Karen Armstrong’s book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.

3. What if we applied the Golden Rule at work? (2010) — Yeah, what if we did?!

4. Why targets of workplace bullying need our help: A rallying cry from the heart (2013) — If you’re wondering why I write so often about bullying at work and have authored legislation addressing it, this post provides some answers.

5. NWI’s “Eightfold Path” to a Psychologically Healthy Workplace (2009) — Try it sometime!

6. The lessons of nostalgia (2011) — Featuring insights from homebrewed philosopher Charles Hayes, one of my favorite authors.

7. Our avocations and hobbies: The third pillar of work-life balance? (2012) — A hobby or avocation may be a portal to a richer, more satisfying life.

8. Maybe our modern day heroes are simply “weird” (2013) — Contemplating the heroes in our lives.

9. A movement emerges: Will unpaid internships disappear? (2012) — A piece anticipating the emerging intern rights movement.

10. Ch-ch-ch-changes: Some books to guide us toward good transitions (2012) — Timely for New Year’s resolutions!

11. What workplace bullying teaches us about the integrity of American employers (2011) — How an employer responds to workplace bullying tells us a lot about it.

12. You want good leaders? (2010) — Highlighting a superb essay on leadership by writer William Deresiewicz.