A good manager is even handed. So when one of their team makes a mistake in a piece of work - it happens to everybody at some point - this is treated proportionately. It may need a supportive discussion looking at how to avoid it happening again but the manager will make it feel safe to have this discussion. Ultimately, the manager takes full responsibility for the performance of everybody in their team. The manager places themselves in the "firing line" and protects their more junior staff.
A bullying manager reacts disproportionately. If a victim makes a mistake of any kind - however small - this may be seized upon by the manager. Its importance is exaggerated. The language used emphasises this. It becomes a "major failure" or "unacceptable". It is regarded as "yet another example of poor performance" and so on.
Rather than take responsibility themselves, the bullying manager is quick to blame their subordinate(s) publicly for any mistakes, In order to side-step obvious questions about why they did not intervene themselves to prevent the problem, the bullying manager also has to fabricate plausible reasons for their ignorance: the victim is "secretive" and "deliberately covered up" what was going on.
This starts to become self-fulfilling, because after one major over-reaction, the victim is hardly going to be relaxed about drawing attention to anything else that is not going well.
In a good and cohesive team, the members support each other. Where one or more individuals behave dysfunctionally, mistakes by one team member may be broadcast by another or deliberately brought to the attention of the team leader and other more senior staff. Good team members will try to step in and support each other. Dysfunctional team members may relish a problem and do nothing to help.
In more serious cases of abuse, the manager may deliberately engineer circumstances in which things will go wrong for their victim. They may package work with too little time or too little information to be realistically achievable. They then exploit the resulting problems as justification for further bullying activities directed against the victim
Wednesday, 12 April 2017
Tuesday, 11 April 2017
Disclosing personal information
Workplace bullies love personal information.
Workplace bullies can be great gossips and "collect" personal information avidly. Leaking choice information about their victim(s) undermines them generally.
For example, revealing that a victim put in for a job and didn't get it suggests inferiority and may also suggest lack of commitment to the current organisation or team, Or revealing that a victim had a personal relationship with an influential manager suggests that their career progression was not based on merit and that they have questionable ethical standards. All damaging insinuations which the victim is most unlikely to be aware are being circulated by the bully.
In fact it could be seen that gossiping generally, which is widespread in workplaces, is the first step on the ladder of workplace bullying for many of us. There are some unhealthy underlying motivations.
Where personal information about a victim is particularly useful to bully is in providing a smokescreen for the abusive behaviour. If the victim is starting to shows signs that the abuse is getting to them, the bully can cleverly suggest that this is the result of other factors in the victim's circumstances. The victim is "under pressure" because of some out-of-work circumstances
It may well be that the victim has a significant out-of-work issue - a personal relationship difficulty, cares for another family member with health problems, has had some previous health problem themselves, is moving house, has some significant financial worries, has been bereaved, etc. Many people do have these things going on in their lives without it significantly affecting their behaviour at work.
It may be the victim has disclosed this information to the abuser in the past believing it to be part of a confidential or caring conversation, Bullies can be accomplished actors. It may be that the bully has access to HR and Health information about the victim and can browse this beyond the needs of the present work situation. It may be that the bully actively "researches" their victim in various ways including through the internet, social media and by talking to former work colleagues.
So the advice to any victim would be to be cautious about what you disclose to whom. You may think you are having a confidential and supportive discussion - it may be neither.
So how do you distinguish an abuser from a genuinely supportive colleague? Given abusers' acting skills this could be very difficult. But one simple rule of thumb would be that if that person has ever disclosed personal information about a third party unnecessarily to you, then there is every likelihood that they will do the reverse.
Workplace bullies can be great gossips and "collect" personal information avidly. Leaking choice information about their victim(s) undermines them generally.
For example, revealing that a victim put in for a job and didn't get it suggests inferiority and may also suggest lack of commitment to the current organisation or team, Or revealing that a victim had a personal relationship with an influential manager suggests that their career progression was not based on merit and that they have questionable ethical standards. All damaging insinuations which the victim is most unlikely to be aware are being circulated by the bully.
In fact it could be seen that gossiping generally, which is widespread in workplaces, is the first step on the ladder of workplace bullying for many of us. There are some unhealthy underlying motivations.
Where personal information about a victim is particularly useful to bully is in providing a smokescreen for the abusive behaviour. If the victim is starting to shows signs that the abuse is getting to them, the bully can cleverly suggest that this is the result of other factors in the victim's circumstances. The victim is "under pressure" because of some out-of-work circumstances
It may well be that the victim has a significant out-of-work issue - a personal relationship difficulty, cares for another family member with health problems, has had some previous health problem themselves, is moving house, has some significant financial worries, has been bereaved, etc. Many people do have these things going on in their lives without it significantly affecting their behaviour at work.
It may be the victim has disclosed this information to the abuser in the past believing it to be part of a confidential or caring conversation, Bullies can be accomplished actors. It may be that the bully has access to HR and Health information about the victim and can browse this beyond the needs of the present work situation. It may be that the bully actively "researches" their victim in various ways including through the internet, social media and by talking to former work colleagues.
So the advice to any victim would be to be cautious about what you disclose to whom. You may think you are having a confidential and supportive discussion - it may be neither.
So how do you distinguish an abuser from a genuinely supportive colleague? Given abusers' acting skills this could be very difficult. But one simple rule of thumb would be that if that person has ever disclosed personal information about a third party unnecessarily to you, then there is every likelihood that they will do the reverse.
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Did you have a good weekend?
It is Monday morning and people in the workplace chat about what they did over the weekend. This is all perfectly normal. It is an important part of the social life of a team
Sometimes people may ask the question in a ritual way and not really be listening to the answer [see note 1]. But there is a way using of such questions in an abusive relationship where there is a lot more going on.
So why would a bully ask their victim "Did you have a good weekend?" when really they are not interested (or may even hope for the opposite)?
First: it is good camouflage for the bully. It may create a false appearance that everything in the bully's attitude to the victim is normal and caring. Bullies can be good actors. The wider group will find it hard to reconcile alleged bullying with the normality they think they observe. The bully's behaviour can change abruptly when there is nobody else there to witness it.
Second: it forces the victim to answer. So it is a form of control. Not answering could be read as the victim exhibiting difficult behaviour. So the victim has to say something even if it is just a curt "Yes, thank you". Having to participate in this insincerity is potentially detrimental to the victim's self-esteem, adding to the overall destructive dynamic.
Third: it allows the bully to take the victim's emotional temperature. The bully will recognise the subtle signs in body language and intonation which will show exactly how uncomfortable, or courageous, the victim currently is. If the observation raises alarm bells, the bully may feel compelled to take action.
Fourth: it may provide the bully with information about the victim's personal life which can be exaggerated later to suggest deflecting explanations of the origins of the victim's work related stress or other difficulties actually caused by the bully
Also, in the slightly different context of group bullying (where a single victim is isolated and deliberately excluded by the rest of the group), for the victim to have to hear the group re-live what they all did together over the weekend can reinforce the isolation
Note 1
Many years ago I had a boss who would ask socially polite questions but was not really listening to the answers. Once he asked me "Did you have a good holiday?" and for a joke I answered "The hotel burnt down and all my children died". Confirming my theory, he went on
"That's good. Now about those reports..."
Sometimes people may ask the question in a ritual way and not really be listening to the answer [see note 1]. But there is a way using of such questions in an abusive relationship where there is a lot more going on.
So why would a bully ask their victim "Did you have a good weekend?" when really they are not interested (or may even hope for the opposite)?
First: it is good camouflage for the bully. It may create a false appearance that everything in the bully's attitude to the victim is normal and caring. Bullies can be good actors. The wider group will find it hard to reconcile alleged bullying with the normality they think they observe. The bully's behaviour can change abruptly when there is nobody else there to witness it.
Second: it forces the victim to answer. So it is a form of control. Not answering could be read as the victim exhibiting difficult behaviour. So the victim has to say something even if it is just a curt "Yes, thank you". Having to participate in this insincerity is potentially detrimental to the victim's self-esteem, adding to the overall destructive dynamic.
Third: it allows the bully to take the victim's emotional temperature. The bully will recognise the subtle signs in body language and intonation which will show exactly how uncomfortable, or courageous, the victim currently is. If the observation raises alarm bells, the bully may feel compelled to take action.
Fourth: it may provide the bully with information about the victim's personal life which can be exaggerated later to suggest deflecting explanations of the origins of the victim's work related stress or other difficulties actually caused by the bully
Also, in the slightly different context of group bullying (where a single victim is isolated and deliberately excluded by the rest of the group), for the victim to have to hear the group re-live what they all did together over the weekend can reinforce the isolation
Note 1
Many years ago I had a boss who would ask socially polite questions but was not really listening to the answers. Once he asked me "Did you have a good holiday?" and for a joke I answered "The hotel burnt down and all my children died". Confirming my theory, he went on
"That's good. Now about those reports..."
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