A bully in the barrel?

The workplace bully may well be a leader who, left unchecked, is the bad apple likely to ruin the rest.Yet, as with claims of sexual or racial discrimination, not all accusations hold true and not all negative behaviours are irreversible. Here, Futures takes a closer look at the issue – from the visceral ‘what can we do about them?’ backlash angle as represented by Robert Sutton’s US best-selling book on the subject – and from the subtler ‘how can this talent be recovered?’ developmental angle our coaches prefer.

The backlash angle Robert Sutton’s book – The No Asshole Rule – a title which is mocking rather than obscene to the American ear – is a handbook for rooting out bullies of either sex, standing up to them and – for organisations – doing better without them.

The book, is a large paperback published by Sphere at £9.99, whose underlying advice is not to expect that bullies will change their behaviour. It works for them, he says, and while the more marginal ones may be recovered the rest have to be faced up to and removed.Their behaviour is virulently spread within organisations, he believes, precisely because bullies often occupy the leadership roles. At times of pressure, of course, almost any of us is occasionally capable of such lapses. It is when someone adopts them as a modus operandi that he or she may justly be described as a committed bully.

For bully-spotting, Sutton gives us two tests: one, after exposure to the alleged bully, does the ‘target’ feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energised or belittled as a person – ending up feeling worse about him/herself? And two: does the alleged bully aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those who are more powerful? Here are his ‘Dirty Dozen’ bully-defining actions:

Personal insults
Invading one’s personal space
Uninvited physical contact
Threats and intimidation, verbal or non-verbal
Sarcastic jokes/teasing used as an insult delivery system
Withering e-mail assaults
Humiliating status slaps
Public shaming or status degradation rituals
Rude interruptions
Two-faced attacks
Dirty looks
Treating people as invisible.

Radiation zone Bullying is mostly done in public. It’s theatre, like bear-baiting. There are the baited and there are the witnesses to the baiting, and nobody gets away clean. He quotes UK studies that show 25 percent of targets and 20 percent of workplace witnesses leave their jobs as a result of bullying; which, at an average replacement procedure cost per executive employee of £10,000, is seriously expensive for an organisation. But there’s a lot else you should factor-in.

Damage to victims and witnesses – distraction from tasks while avoiding encounters or blame – climate of fear undermines employee suggestions, risk taking and forthrightness – loss of energy/motivation – stressinduced absenteeism – infection themselves as bullies – work neglected while searching alternative employment.

Damage to the bullies themselves – they lose out on willing cooperation, don’t get given bad news – suffer subtle forms of retaliation – don’t fulfil their own potential – are humiliated when ‘outed’ – may lose job or suffer long-term career damage.

Damage to the management – time lost on counselling/ disciplining and appeasing upset employees, suppliers and even clients, resources spent on replacing bullies and their victims – even management burnout.

Legal and HR costs – anger management and other training reforms for bullies – legal costs – settlement fees for litigating victims – consultancy and health insurance costs.

Zero tolerance

Sutton counsels small wins, not dramatic over-turnings, in clearing bad apples gives ten steps to a happier workplace:

Set the no-bully rule, write it down and act on
Bullies will employ other bullies. Don’t let them.
Get rid of them fast. Delay embeds them deeper.
See them as incompetents.They’re ruining you.
Power breeds nastiness. Promote with care.
Embrace the power-performance paradox. Pecking orders are necessary but discourage unnecessary status differences.
Manage moments as much as practices, policies and systems.
Model and teach constructive confrontation.
Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.
Link big policies to small decencies.

The development angle

Management Futures coaches note several cultural divergences between US and UK experience. We see less outright, aggressive macho behaviour here, possibly driven underground in this PC age. Where the offending person has the capacity to change – and the management has the courage to act rather than ignore it – then a different dynamic comes into play.

Underground bullying

Some institutional organisations in the UK, coerce more subtly using unspoken but powerful messages of approval or disapproval, knowing that ambitious staff are understandably afraid of being perceived as ‘low impact’ people. Similarly, employees of high-energy commercial firms absorb the idea that, however fair a complaint might be, being seen as a whinger can be the career kiss of death. One/of our senior MF coaches writes,‘I have seen young managers ruin their health by overwork rather than complain’.

UK case study

A new client is discreetly referred to a senior MF coach. Client is a world-respected expert in his field, personable, dynamic, creative, successful, but with a career at risk of derailment. Problem: he can’t control his hair-trigger temper. Routine encounters can anger him and he also boils over with senior colleagues, playing a divisive Them and Us game. While lacking objectivity over his actions he is lately aware of difficulty in meeting targets and has been experienced chest pains.

His first task is to understand that these are not trivial issues to be brushed aside with an ‘Everyone knows I don’t mean it’ excuse. He then needs to make connections between his health problems, his difficulties with targets and his own interpersonal behaviour. This kind of person rarely grasps the extent of the negative impact they have on others. He has to understand his problem as one of impulse control, that in the nanosecond between stimulus and response, contrary to what he might claim, he does have a choice. Identifying his typical hot-buttons might form the client’s first piece of homework, followed by developing strategies for prolonging that nano-second to a five-second pause for calm thinking. He needs to move from the short-lived satisfaction of flattening people with one’s rage and the longer-term benefit of winning them over.

Our coach comments:‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if in the early training of experts it was possible to build in some rigorous training in these soft skills – which are actually so hard to do?’

Check your apple barrel

There may be bullies in there but it should also be understood that ‘bad apples’ can exhibit behaviour that sometimes only seems like bullying, acting more out of a lack of selfawareness, arising from their own considerable anxiety and vulnerability.

In the UK culture the real bully will most often not do the bullying in public, but rather when there are no witnesses present, and very subtly, in ways that can be defended later if necessary. With female-originated bullying, for example, the pressure can be applied through silent exclusion and subtle put-downs.

As Sutton says, victims can find it hard to avoid the bullying as the bully is virtually always more senior. Even then the interaction can be complex to read, the victim’s own chronic lack of self-assertiveness or semifeeble performance seeming almost to invite hostility.

‘Victims’ may use accusations of bullying as a selfdefence or as a pre-emptive strike, knowing that the b-word is so sensitive that action will be taken. In coaching it is not uncommon for victim-clients to say they have been bullied when it becomes obvious that all that’s happened is they’ve been firmly challenged about their failure to meet perfectly reasonable targets.

Many clients billed as bullies turn out to have had little idea how their behaviour strikes others. Once they grasp its effects on their own careers and the lives of colleagues, they usually manage the adjustment and prove well worthy of respect.