Self-reflection: Are you a workplace bully?
By Hilary Holladay
Over the past five years, I’ve given a lot of thought to workplace bullying. I moved 650 miles, back home to Virginia, to escape a bully at my old job. I have friends who have been similarly tormented. We’ve traded stories and consoled one another. Some of them, like me, have found new work, or they have X’ed off the calendar days and finally escaped their tormentors through retirement. But a lot of people don’t have those options just yet, and they shouldn’t have to leave otherwise rewarding jobs just because someone is trying to make them miserable. So they continue to suffer the anxiety, anger, and depression that come with being bullied.
Awareness of the problem reached a tipping point in Charlottesville after Virginia Quarterly Review editor Kevin Morrissey’s suicide in 2010. The devastating event touched off dozens of news stories locally and nationally about workplace bullying. Board of Visitors Rector Helen Dragas’ thwarted attempt to oust UVa President Teresa Sullivan last summer raised the specter yet again. Everybody, it seems, is at risk of being bullied.
Many workplaces have instituted or strengthened policies dealing with this hot-button topic. It’s easy to find advice online for dealing with office bullies. The documentary film Bully, which focuses on students bullied at school, has contributed to the broader conversation. People are speaking out more frequently about what they’ve experienced. This provides hope as well as guidance for others still being victimized.
But it troubles me that the perpetrators are almost always left out of the public discussion. News articles typically describe the situation from the victim’s perspective. The online forums are for victims who anonymously share their sad tales of abuse and injustice.
Where, I ask, are the forums for recovering bullies? Where is the advice for them? No one identifies as a bully—no one I’ve ever known, anyway. Yet if so many people feel tormented at work, it stands to reason that there are quite a few bullies out there. Is it possible that some of us are bullies and don’t even know it? What if you are part of the problem that you so roundly condemn?
The first step, of course, is to figure out whether you are a bully. With that in mind, I have devised the following quiz to help you determine if you qualify for this ignominious distinction. Award yourself one stinkbug for each affirmative answer to the following questions:
• Have you ever snubbed a colleague or ignored her request for a meeting?
• Have you yelled at someone in your office or sent him an angry email?
• Have you ever gotten so close to a coworker during a dispute that she couldn’t get past you?
• Have you followed a colleague down the hall while speaking angrily to him?
• Have you worked behind the scenes to prevent someone from getting a promotion or a raise in pay?
• Have you tried to exclude a qualified colleague from an important committee or project?
• Have you ambushed someone in a meeting with a question or remark designed to embarrass him in front of others?
• Have you twisted a colleague’s words to make her look bad or made a fuss over a minor infraction just to get her in trouble?
• Have you denied a coworker credit for a job well done?
• And finally, have you ever tried to turn other staff members against a colleague you dislike?
If you’re holding even one stinkbug— that is, if you answered yes to even one of these questions— you’re a bully. No matter what your position— über-boss, mid-level supervisor, tenured or untenured professor, secretary or intern— you are a bully.
The label doesn’t sit well, does it? You may say that you are, in fact, a victim. You have occasionally stood up for yourself and fought back. You had to; it was a matter of survival, self-esteem. But I don’t buy that. If you have engaged in any of the behavior above, at some point you started playing for the other team. You may have some victim in you, but you are also a bully. Yes, you.
Here’s my advice: Don’t block out the trouble and pain you’ve caused, and don’t expect your spouse or best friend to make you feel like you were right to act the way you did. Instead, take a day off from work and go offline. Leave all your electronic distractions at home, and go for a long walk. Think about your actions and try not to rationalize.
Then resolve to quit your bullying ways. No more rudeness. No more plotting and scheming. When you’re tempted to criticize, don’t. Realize that you don’t have to fight every battle. Skip the cloak-and-dagger politicking and don’t try to hold someone else back. Remember that another person’s success doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Acknowledge that bullying is a sign you’re unhappy with yourself. Maybe it’s time to do something about that.
After a few weeks of holding your tongue, go a step further and try being nice—not just to your office pals but everybody you work with. Like so much else, it will come more naturally with practice. With any luck, by the time summer comes, you and all your colleagues will be getting along better without any stinkbugs to call your own.
22 comments
Not to sound like a "bully" to the author.... but when she said
" that is, if you answered yes to even one of these questions— you’re a bully. No matter what your position— über-boss, mid-level supervisor, tenured or untenured professor, secretary or intern— you are a bully."
She lost me. Particularly on her first qualification "Have you ever snubbed a colleague or ignored her request for a meeting?"
You know what? sometimes there are colleagues who call meetings and waste time like crazy. They need to be ignored from time to time to get it through their heads that frequent meetings can reduce productivity.
I get it... you shouldn't yell at your co-workers or chase them down the hall or force them to confront you in the workplace. But that just goes to professionalism and common decency. I don't think there's a reason to put a label on that person as a "bully." Labeling a person like that is no different than bullying itself.
2 stinkies.
I really do not know how to respond to your letter without sounding like I am bullying you. I am also not sure of the situation you were in but it sounds like the mgmt. team was weak and filled with friends.
I will only say that one should not wear their emotions on their sleeve and never let the aggressor know that they have upset you. Hard to do but effective. Document everything and remember not to take it personal to keep your sanity.
Good luck to you.
The reason we have bullies is because we have taken the rights away from people to stand up to bullies. When they were kids in the schoolyard and started bullying there was alaways a well raised respected child who came up and asked them if they wanted to try "someone thier own size" and maybe pushed them around a little bit to give them a "taste of their own medicine" Good teachers let the scenarios play out and resolve themselves while keeping a close eye to make sure it did play out properly. When the school started interviening in every little squabble they created an entire generation of sissies who cannot fend for themselves or form allies and want HR to resolve every dispute AND an entire generation of bulllies who learned that they can get away with it.. That is where we are today.
To fix it we need to go back to curing bullies in grade school before they become bullies and we need to teach people to fend for themselves and form alliances by being good people. All that will happen if we continue to raise sissies who want government (or HR) help for every slight is an unhappy populace filled with bullies and sissies who make the rest of our lives miserable as they both create a passive aggresive workplace where nobody is happy.
Bill Marshall fro President! Bravo!
Does punching an idiot co-worker count cause it seemed to solve the problem for me.
Excellent, thought-provoking article. I wish the author would write a second one on mobbing, which ramps up bullying to a vicious level, especially when a group with Mad Men attitudes gangs up on one person. Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace: International Perspectives in Research and Practice discusses the terrible effects of “consistent exposure to negative and aggressive behaviors of a primarily psychological nature” and “situations where hostile behaviors . . . . lead to a stigmitisation and victimisation of the recipient.”
How can one person stand up against a group engaged in behaviors that stigmatize and victimize? Ignoring them is an option, but that takes a terrible psychological toll. And would the soul-searching that the author recommends be effective for a mob? What causes people who are perfectly nice individuals on their own to join such a mob to begin with?
I will dispute that the isolated occurrence of some of the items on the list automatically qualify anyone as a bully. I have, for example, followed a co-worker down the hall while speaking angrily because the colleague had aroused my ire by an act which was capricious, unfair and potentially harmful to me and others, and no other attempt to engage the person civilly proved to be fruitful.
And I have, indeed, worked behind the scenes to derail an ugly campaign by a co-worker to populate the organization with people who met his personal tests of acceptance and be rewarded with privileges which were utterly demoralizing to the rest of the work force.
Yeah, I DID, and I would do it again.
But those are not examples which paint me as a bully. The bully is characterized by patterns of the above behavior over time, and with no obvious cause other then to advance the agenda of the bully, or a psychosis. I can appreciate that Hilary, who has been the victim of a bully, may be especially alert to the possible signs of it. But in the absence of a supporting context, the mere appearance ("have you EVER") of a single act does not a bully make.
Hilary if you come up with your own arbitrary list of criteria and assert that anyone who's ever met one of them is a workplace bully, you're in fact being a bit of a bully yourself. Likely this is an attempt to reclaim a sense of justice that wasn't there in the workplace that you fled. Some of the things you're describing above are just life in the sandbox. And some of them are definitely in the way uncool category. But who put you in charge of determining this?
I concur with JSGeare's points. There seems to be quite a few articles about showing lately, about bullying, that just simply water it down. When the term gets watered down, nobody will take it seriously. Watering it down will do more harm than good.
Walking after somebody while speaking angrily, even just once, is NOT bullying, for example. Please, Hilary Holladay, learn what bullying is before you write about it. You are not doing anybody any favors without informing yourself first.
I concur with JSGeare's points. There seems to be quite a few articles showing up lately, about bullying, that just simply water it down. When the term gets watered down, nobody will take it seriously. Watering it down will do more harm than good.
Walking after somebody while speaking angrily, even just once, is NOT bullying, for example. Please, Hilary Holladay, learn what bullying is before you write about it. You are not doing anybody any favors without informing yourself first.
Hillary-a very thoughtful article about appropriate behavior in the workplace. I am pleased to say that I work somewhere in which I have rarely, if ever, witnesses this kind of activity (except at the highest echelon). That said, it is a fair comment that I am not aware of any diagnostic criteria in which one incident suffices for a classification. Ordinarily, it will involve a pattern of repeated conduct or multiple types of misbehavior to qualify. Simply, there is frequently more than one explanation for a single incident. Gross example: a jet place hits a skyscraper-are we under attack or is it an accident? A second jet hits a second skyscraper--we are under attack. Even then, it might matter how much time has passed and how far apart the skyscrapers are. The point is, it takes more than one incident at least to eliminate possibilities of randomness and coincidence. In any event, the criteria are useful and the commentary is instructive. I hope it brings self-insight for people who lack it.
I don't think that Bill Marshall has spent a whole lot of real time around real schools these days. Or perhaps he has and could clarify the basis for his characterization of the world.
I see exactly the opposite. I see schools and school staff that are very reluctant to get involved in any kinds of inter-kid abuse activities. I don't know why, but I'm sure it has something to do with being more damned if you do than if you don't. If you look the other way while kids abuse the heck out of other kids then you don't have to get involved in 1) the inter-kids politics and then 2) the inevitable inter-parental politics that follow.
In my days in school, inter-kid nastiness was not tolerated at all & brought the immediate smack down on the "bullies." Obviously there were still the school yard & extracurricular confrontations that Mr. Marshall describes because there are plenty of times and situations where adults were not around. But in general, if there is a day and age where kids are supposed to handle it themselves it is now - not some mythical time in the past.
And, on the actual subject of this essay, I completely agree with many of the early posts. The "one stinkbug" rule is clearly out of line with anything I would call reasonable. Perhaps Hilary could borrow a kind of logic used for diagnosing mental "disorders" - a list of criteria and the exhibition of "persistent patterns of...." I don't know anyone who doesn't behave badly on occasion. If we want to go as far as "labeling" for rare or singular incidents, then we can all send ourselves to jail. Virtually everyone has broken the law at some point in their lives. So we are all "criminals" - as well as bullies, I guess.
So this is them, I'm lost I don't know what to do, where to turn, I'm going to lose my job or my sanity. My supervisor told me I have no allies, and there are 4 of them and only one of me. I've talked to HR repeatedly, asked for a transfer twice, to no avail. They tell lies and are believed, I tell the truth and am shunned, humiliated and not believed, maybe my supervisor is right, mob mentality right.
Thanks for putting this list up. Of course you got some of the typical reaction to articles that discuss and define bullying, especially the 'life in a sand box' comment. And the person who said he has followed someone down a corridor angrily remonstrating - that is bullying. You simply don't recognise it because you have rationalised it as 'normal' and 'ok' because of all the reasons you gave. Oh yes, and the 'writing an article like this is being a bully' is just a typical bully's reaction to squirming at what is confronting them. Bullying is so 'normalised' and accepted in our cultures that we don't even recognize it. The 'life in a sand box' is bullying in action and we need to start saying 'no, no more'. Just as bombing the crap out of some poor sod somewhere is accepted and expected, so is bullying in the workplace and the school grounds.
I would appreciate it if either Carolyn Drew or Hilary would explicitly address the distinction between labeling behaviors and labeling persons.
For instance, Carolyn wrote: "the person who said he has followed someone down a corridor angrily remonstrating - that is bullying."
In my read of these comments no one denied that this kind of *action* can be defined as "bullying." What has been questioned is whether or not such an action makes the person a "bully" - as something that characterizes them as a person. One is a statement that labels a behavior. The other is a statement that labels a person, and these two things are very different.
I'm in the middle-adult years, and in my shortish time on the planet lots of things have happened to me and I have done lots of things. I hit college right when drinking ages started to go to 21, but I drank anyway. I also smoked some pot. Am I then "a criminal?" Saying something like "what you just did is against law" and "you ARE a criminal" are not even close to the same thing. Once in a while I have those days when I just can't quite get up the energy to do anything useful. The "symptoms" and actions would fit the DSM criteria for depression. Am I "mentally ill?" My oldest kid is almost 16. On a few occasions over the last 16 years I have lost my temper with my kids and yelled a lot - probably in ways that were out of proportion with the actual events. Am I an "abusive parent?"
There is a huge difference between defining an action in a particular way and defining a person "as" something. Hilary skirted the issue in her article and Carolyn Drew drove that omission home in her comments. I would like to hear it addressed by those who think that AN event or action somehow defines what a person "IS."
@ Carolyn: "Oh yes, and the 'writing an article like this is being a bully' is just a typical bully's reaction to squirming at what is confronting them."
Wow so by expressing my thoughts it's appropriate to say that I'm "a typical bully." As JS Geare noted above, you've gone from a discussion of the quality of particular behavior to outright ad hominem. Is that being nice? I don't think so, but I'll limit the complaint to your behavior, not a personal attack in return. Chalk up a stinkie for yourself; now go ponder whether that makes you a bully or just someone who typed a response without thinking it through fully.
You missed the point here, which is that without reference to some sort of adjudicated/recognized standards Hilary simply draws her own definition up and then wants to paint others with that brush (to mix metaphors). I do find that a very passive aggressive form of bullying (and yes I'm drawing my own standards using the label here, so I qualify it as a personal assessment). Where on earth is the license for something so abjectly judgemental as this: "If you’re holding even one stinkbug— that is, if you answered yes to even one of these questions— you’re a bully. No matter what your position— über-boss, mid-level supervisor, tenured or untenured professor, secretary or intern— you are a bully." When speaking about issues like this, and when applying very harsh labeling to others it's important to invoke recognized, authoritative standards. This piece would be far more compelling with references to studies, HR publications, etc. The admonition to play nice is not amiss though.
Should we next publish the characteristic behaviors of the Workplace Witch Hunter?
The designation as "bully" requires a bit of triangulation, I think. Mere occurrence of aggressive behavior, directed toward another person, is a possible indicator. Yet, there must be more.
Is there a pattern? Does the behavior occur often; so much so that there is a recognizable pattern with respect to the person who exhibits the behavior?
Is there some external cause? Or was there no apparent stimulus? In the first case, somewhat might pardonably be said to have a "short fuse," but not be regarded as a bully. But in the absence of any external cause, the psychology of the person might be suspect, and we may well have a "bully."
Some may say, and it appears some HAVE said, that an instance of the behavior ALONE is enough to warrant the bully classification. At face value, this would mean that everyone in the world is a bully, because everyone, at some time, has been aggressive or abusive to someone else. So, if that makes everyone a bully, then there is little to be gained either by self-examination or by designation of others. Likewise, little reason to call attention to the matter.
On the other hand, if the behavior appears to be very persistent and unrelated to some special external cause, we're dealing with a limited population. Actual bullies, who meet these tests, are unlikely to engage in much deep self-examination, and probably much less inclined to change their behavior until they are in the midst of people who won't tolerate it, or under care of a mental health professional. Perhaps the article may cause a few to think about this in terms of their own behavior, or perhaps it may stiffen the resolve of others to be less tolerant. But little will be served simply by classification of the entire population, because everyone at some time has exhibited some aggression or abuse, including those whose shallow preachments here take others to task.
Lol happy to chalk up a stinkie Dolemite, But I stand by my comments, as you stand by yours. I think you are over reacting to a piece on reflection. I for one think we need to self-reflect about our relationships with others around us much more than we do.
I'm glad that someone has finally come up with a productive use for stinkbugs.
Way to come back in and completely dodge the questions Carolyn. I assure you that they are not unreasonable questions. If you truly wish to see a better, more bully-free world, I really doubt that failure to engage with others on the issue is the most productive route.
I've done every behavior on your list and the employees all had it coming. The reality is that a huge number of people aren't worth the price of the rope it would take to hang them and when you have morons working for you you either have to fire them or blow some steam up their pants so you can get some production out of them. Just the facts, Jack.
This mentality is the product of the spoiled and pampered baby boomer generation. Get back to work!