Post by mrchumplie on Sept 26, 2009 11:21:46 GMT -5
When the Bully is the Boss
Workplace persecution hurts productivity,
health, creativity, experts say
By Mary Bergin
(Madison, WI) The Capital Times
March 13, 2007
Physically safe working conditions and fair employee treatment help make a workplace healthy, but some say another aspect needs to be confronted.
The on-the-job bully, who is usually but not always a boss, drains productivity, creativity and employee health, says Gary Namie of Washington, director of the nonprofit Workplace Bullying Institute, established in 1997 and financed by consultant work.
Some of the behavior is the result of escalating work demands, says Corliss Olson, a labor educator at the UW Extension's School for Workers, whose programs address employee concerns. Downsizing and competition raise work expectations and stress.
"We're beyond lean and mean," Olson says. "We're anorexic and vicious."
Research indicates bullying stops, in 75 percent of cases, only when a person leaves a job. That is roughly the same percentage of Americans who describe their jobs as stressful.
"People arrive at bullyhood by at least three different paths: through personality development, by reading cues in a competitive, political workplace, and by accident," Namie writes in "The Bully at Work," a book written with his wife, Ruth.
Teachers can reprimand children who taunt classmates, but it is harder to stop bullying behavior among adults, particularly when job rank, mind games, subtle signals, group dynamics and/or private confrontations complicate the issue.
"Many bullies can be very charming and (seem like) effective leaders," Olson says. Namie refers to NCAA basketball coach Bobby Knight as a high-profile example of a bully who is tolerated because of his career success.
"Good employers purge workplace bullies," Olson says. "Bad employers promote them."
Targets (she prefers this term to "victims") tend to be "empathetic, just and fair people."
The bully "will watch and seek the opportunity to pick on someone who they see as vulnerable and threatening," says Barb Becker of Elroy, who says she lost a higher education job because of bullying. "It's hard to recognize when it's happening," she says, because incidents may appear petty to others. Today she works with sexually violent people and "I find that less stressful."
The affected employee's first reaction, Olson says, is that "if you're getting targeted, you must have done something wrong." Advice to "grow a thicker skin" or "don't take things so seriously" are typical, but Namie says bullying is "way beyond a personality conflict - it's not involving personality at all," but a power imbalance that is repeated and consistent. He thinks "bullies know they're bullies, but have rationalized their actions."
Consider the boss who ignores or rolls his eyes at a worker's question, the co-worker who intimidates and isolates through body language, voice level or gossip. An employee may be treated differently than peers: excluded from department socializing, or his work accomplishments may be minimized.
Public humiliation also can be a signal: Think about the customer who makes life difficult for a bank teller, or gives waitstaff grief while dining.
"There's no case law for this, and in the vast majority of cases, there is no legal recourse," Namie says. Eleven states have introduced 25 bills to address bullying, and Joanna Thoms of Menasha, in litigation with Berbee Information Networks Corp. because of alleged bullying, is trying to get legislation introduced in Wisconsin.
Australia, Quebec and several European nations recognize "mobbing in the workplace" and for years have had laws in place to control it. "Until evil is named, it cannot be addressed," Marquette University ethicist Daniel Maguire has said, in support of a book about this topic.
Olson says being a tough boss, or an employee who challenges authority, is different than bullying. Bullying, she says, is deliberate, hurtful and repeated. It is mistreatment "driven by the bully's desire to control the target."
"The stress, as a consequence, is like post-traumatic stress syndrome," says Olson. She and Namie also draw parallels to domestic violence, in which the target sometimes blames herself for the situation.
"It falls on the abused to stop" the behavior," Namie says. There is denigration, a tendency to "blame them for their plight and force them to resolve it."
Stress can be compounded by the reactions of co-workers. "Other people around the target tend to keep their head down; we can't cope with the illogic of it, so there is this problem with people jumping on board" by ignoring, isolating or ganging up on the person being bullied, Olson says.
Sweden in 1994 enacted the first legislation to confront bullying. Quebec legislation, enacted 10 years later, has since resulted in the filing of 4,000 complaints - but "people are fairly discouraged," Namie says, because only one has made it through the legal labyrinth.
Olson believes there is a growing amount of bullying at work, in part because "hierarchy was more established in the past - you knew your place, you got and followed your orders." Having a more egalitarian society changes those dynamics, says Olson, who conducts workshops on bullying for college students, employment lawyers, labor unions and others.
"Bullying may be difficult to detect, but it is far more common than harassment or workplace violence and can be equally as devastating," stated the UW's "Break Away!" catalog, to describe a "Bullying in the Workplace" mini-course offered by Olson in 2006.
What are the solutions? "You need to support the target," Olson says, and "use mission statements to hold feet to the fire."
Building a respectful workplace, she says, means modeling the behavior that you'd like to see in others. It can be less abrasive to inquire about "what's working around here?" and "how do we want to be treated?" instead of pointing fingers of blame to improve the work environment.
Namie's work as a consultant has involved companies whose employee "turnover erodes production beyond belief." His job is to find and purge the bullies, then write the healthy workplace language that, if enforced, changes the work environment.
A challenge often is "to break the denial about the source of their problem," Namie says. There is a tendency to fear a problem executive, or people in power "have liked them so long" that dismissal seems preposterous.
"Friendships and relationships trump productivity and fairness," he says.
"There is a huge joint interest in solving this problem," Olson says, who notes that "most employees start a job enthusiastic, but we suck the life out of people instead of nourishing" them.
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