Tag Archives: Subfeature

Can You Survive The Office Witch Hunt?

Posted on by
80

I was fascinated by a recent series of articles in the Huffington Post written by Dr. Janice Harper and decided to learn more about her work.  [Harper is the author of MOBBED! A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO ADULT BULLYING AND MOBBING ] Her 2010 paper, Just Us Justice, is the culmination of lessons learned from a chilling personal experience with mobbing in the workplace.   Anyone uncomfortable that she links this phenomena to lessons learned from the Holocaust should read the in-depth article, Trial by FBI Investigation.  The author details Harper’s horrific descent into what has been called an academic witch hunt.

I decided to give her a call and quickly found myself deep in conversation with a fascinating woman.  She gave me permission to re-print excerpts of Just Us Justice which include Harper’s own perspective on how to survive mobbing.  As important, she raises questions about the efficacy of laws, “zero tolerance,” and the “bully label.”

Just Us Justice

…If you are being mobbed, take an honest look at yourself and your own behaviors in fueling the aggression. Doing so does not in any way justify the violence that is being directed toward you, but just as you learn not to look a grizzly bear in the eyes if you should come across one, figure out what you are doing that is provoking your attackers. Don’t confront your attackers. Retreat, quietly document everything, but get your resume together and start applying for jobs – even if you don’t want to leave. Protect your reputation, safeguard your security and increase your options for escape. Do not accept any claims that you deserve this treatment, but do not accept the victim label, either. You have been mobbed because you have done something – however well meaning, however benign, however unintended to hurt anyone, however legal – but you have done something to trigger a violent reaction in others. The sooner you are able to identify what you have done to trigger these emotions, the sooner you can change your own behaviors and more favorably influence perceptions of you until the mob either diffuses, or you get out of their reach and into a new future…

How Survival Operates

Fighting the mob is like fighting a grizzly bear. When the bear goes after you, friends are going to run as fast as they can – away from the bear. And if you run in their direction with a grizzly hot on your trail, they will be outraged – not at the bear, but at you for putting them at risk. So what do you do once the bear gets a hold of you? Have a fair fight? Give that bear everything you’ve got? Good luck.

The more you fight a grizzly bear, and the longer you are visible and moving, the meaner that bear is going to get. What that means in an organizational setting is that you are no longer engaged in the warfare of work, but are instead facing a genocidal process. Leadership has given the signal that you are to be eliminated and it is okay to attack you, the mob has formed and the bear is coming your way. The more you fight the mob, the more force will be used to compel your elimination – regardless of how accurate, fair or even legal the claims are that are used to justify your elimination. Your anger will be treated as evidence of threatening behavior, your fear will be evidence of paranoid thinking, your confusion will be evidence of your erratic state and mental impairment, and your impaired productivity – from having your responsibilities taken away, your contributions ignored, your time invested in specious “investigations” and fighting for your job, and your emotions exhausted by the sheer weight of the battle – will become evidence that you can’t do the job. Importantly, reason – and public scrutiny – will not stop the aggression, but intensify it. The more you demonstrate that the attacks against you are wrong, illegal and just plain cruel, the more wrong, illegal and cruel they will become.

In order to survive, it may be helpful to take a lesson from those who survived the Holocaust. When the Holocaust got underway, those who fled early suffered the least and recovered the fastest. The longer a potential target remained in the shadow of the genocide, the more they suffered. Thus, the moment you discern the first scent of mobbing heading your way, lay low; if the mobbing has progressed, play dead. It may be necessary to file internal complaints to preserve potential legal claims, but the more you do, the more the aggression will intensify, so ask yourself if you really want to go that route. You may well lose your job unfairly, even illegally, and suffer grave losses as a result. But battling the grizzly bear can cost you your life.

To save it, consider these tactics:

  • The more evidence you produce to defeat your attackers’ claims and actions, the more determined they will be to get rid of you – which means finding fault any way they can. Mobbing is not a conflict over facts and reasons, but a conflict over power and emotion. Reserve the evidence for future legal claims if you must, but whatever evidence you provide, keep it to a minimum, fact based, and stripped of emotion or counter-attacks. It may be helpful to have an attorney or pragmatic friend – unassociated with the workplace – draft your complaints or responses for you to be submitted in your name, to minimize the emotion.
  • Communicate to your closest friends and colleagues at work (or wherever it is that you are being mobbed) that you want to keep them out of this and will be keeping your distance until this is over. They will be relieved, grateful to you, and have less reason to turn on you. Get your emotional support elsewhere.
  • Do not assume that if your conflict involves your status as a member of a group of people (by gender, race, ideology, whatever) that other members of the group will support you, no matter how blatant the discrimination. They will be courted by management, provided rewards, and they will be afraid. They will almost always turn against you. The exception to this rule is when the group has been established within the organization for some time and they are secure with their positions – in other words, they have critical mass. The less diversity within the organization and the more recent the diversification of the workplace, the more likely the other members of the group will declare that there is no discrimination and you are the problem.
  • Similarly, do not expect that if you file a sexual harassment action, that feminists will support you, and do not expect that if you are accused of sexual harassment, that men will support you – no matter how vocal they have been about their views on the topic. For the same reasons that those closest to you and a member of your same group are likely to turn on you, you will be alone if you file, or are subjected to, any internal investigation.
  • Do not expect that a person’s political ideology, stated values, or religion will have any bearing on how they respond to your attack. The more they are committed to a moral framework, the more strongly they will likely condemn you so that they can persuade themselves that they are acting within their moral code.
  • Beware the bully label. If you are angry, complain, or express anything negative, you can expect to be labeled a bully at some point in the mobbing process. Zero tolerance policies for bullying, sexual harassment, racism, discrimination, and workplace violence might sound like progress, but they enable an organization to justify eliminating anyone once they are accused of any of these offenses. Lay low so that you are not accused.
  • Bear in mind that the most effective accusations are those which are outlandish, and/or contrary to everything you openly believe in, a principle which Joseph Goebbels well understood when he advised Hitler that if you tell a lie big enough and often enough, people will believe it. If you openly oppose sexual abuse, you may well be accused of sexual misconduct. If you openly oppose racism, you may well be accused of making racist remarks.
  • This is because people tend to believe an accusation of such nature could not possibly be made unless there was some evidence to support it.
  • Moreover, as people are conditioned to view you adversely and be prompted by “concern” for you and to “watch for” certain signs, they will see what they are told to look for.
  • Do not expect threats of lawsuits, appearances by attorneys, internal investigations, transparency, or reporters to calm the storm. It will worsen it. If you consult an attorney, do not let your employers know. An attorney eager for a lawsuit will probably not have your best interest in mind.
  • Get out. No matter what the cost, mobbing is not something most survive. Take pro-active steps to protect your health, career and finances by finding new employment, before your reputation and your spirit are destroyed. Whatever the costs of leaving, consider your assets and preserve then. Leave before your reputation is destroyed, your finances wiped out by attorney fees, your spirit savagely attacked. When you are at war, you can win. But mobbing is not a form of warfare, it is a form of genocide, and the only way to survive genocide is to flee.
[Note: Anyone currently experiencing mobbing should always seek in-person counseling from reputable experts to determine the best way forward based on their own unique situation.]  
Related articles

Are Women Bosses Really Meaner?

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s what Abby L. Ferber had to say in this excerpt of her Huffington Post article about the issue:

So why do women most often bully other women? Because they are rarely in positions of power over men. According to the article [NY Times, Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work:

“After five decades of striving for equality, women make up more than 50 percent of management, professional and related occupations, says Catalyst, the nonprofit research group. And yet, its 2008 census found, only 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 officers and 15.2 percent of directors were women.”

In addition, women are more likely to work in careers and workplaces that are primarily populated by other women. Men, on the other hand, wield power in the workplace over both women and other men.

Instead of examining the larger dynamics of power at work here, the article focuses on women as a group, asking why they bully other women.

We are left with numerous problematic conclusions:

Women’s relationships with each other are problematic and women need to learn to better support each other.

Women are the problem themselves, and they are becoming too much like men as they move into positions of power.

Bullying itself is not a gendered phenomenon, men bully men and women bully women, so we are all affected by it.

Bullying by men is natural, and not in need of examination. We should expect that kind of behavior from men.

Looking at the exact same data, however, informed by an understanding of how the dynamics of gender and power operate, a very different story can be told.

The reality is that:

Bullying is about power, and people bully those they have power over.

Bullying increases when people feel their power threatened.

Our unequal gender system contributes to the problem of bullying because it reinforces the idea that some people should naturally have more power than others; that men are by nature more aggressive, and women should be more nurturing and supportive.

And bullying in the workplace contributes to economic inequality between men and women. As this study makes clear, bullying is a very serious problem, with real consequences: 40% of the time, the target ends up quitting her job (remember, most targets are women). So bullying is a tool to maintain inequality.

The way in which the story of the data is told by the New York Times ends up hiding the real problems and blaming the victims. If our analyses are not informed by research and analyses of gender and power dynamics, we end up contributing to the problem, rather than developing real solutions.

Should Steve Jobs “management style” continue?

Posted on by
6

Here’s a dilemma for those of us concerned about workplace bullies: Steve Jobs.  One of the arguments for ‘zero tolerance’ and proposed legislation is that no one is irreplaceable.   The public response to Jobs’ death heralding him as this generation’s Edison also praised him for his ability to utilize team work and it’s hard to imagine anyone waiting in the wings who could have had such a global impact.  But, stories about his true ‘management style ‘ have been public for years.  So the real question is, does Steve Jobs fall under the definition of a workplace bully?   Would legislation, like the bill proposed by the Workplace Bullying Institute currently pending in several States, have crippled Jobs’ ability to be a visionary of historic proportions?  How do we take academic and legislative definitions and apply them to real workplace relationships?  These are questions that all of us involved in lobbying for legislation need to wrestle with.

“Apple CEO Steve Jobs is known for his obsessive attention to detail and iron-fisted management style. He is often accused of making his subordinates cry and firing employees arbitrarily. But Jobs’ subordinates remain loyal. Several deputies–even those who have left the company–say they’ve never done better work. As one Apple employee told journalist John Martellaro, “His autocracy is balanced by his famous charisma–he can make the task of designing a power supply feel like a mission from God.” [Forbes 2009 ]

This week a New York Times article, “Defending Life’s Work With Words of a Tyrant,” begins with a story of grade school bullying.  If you do a Google search on the term “workplace-bullying” you’ll find most reporters LOVE to start with phrases like: bullying moves out of the playground and into the board room.  The New York Times is no exception:

The first time Steve Jobs ever bullied anyone was in the third grade. He and some pals “basically destroyed” the teacher, he once said.

For the next half-century, Mr. Jobs never let up. He chewed out subordinates and partners who failed to deliver, trashed competitors who did not measure up and told know-it-all pundits to take a hike. He had a vision of greatness that he wielded to reshape the computer, telephone and entertainment industries, and he would brook no compromise.

Maybe it is only the despair people feel about the stagnating American economy, but the announcement of the death of the Apple co-founder Wednesday seemed to mark the end of something: in an era of limits, Mr. Jobs was the last great tyrant.

Why do employees put up with it?

Most definitions of workplace bullying refer to a repeated pattern that includes actions like verbal abuse and humiliation that take place over time.  But, while the NYTimes article seems to confirm this pattern, why do employees put up with it? And more importantly, if they do buy in, is it still fair to call it bullying?

There are numerous articles that link narcissism to bully bosses.   Back in 2006, Forbes noted how difficult it was to work for visionary CEOs like Jobs in an article titled, The Narcissistic CEO.

The desire to change the system is a defining element of narcissism. And while it can be inspirational to work for someone like that, interacting with a narcissist CEO can be torture. Don’t expect praise. Get used to hearing the word “I.” And be able to take lots of harshly worded criticism.

Jobs talked openly with Forbes  about his management style and the work culture he was creating:

“When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else.”

A players hire A+ players

Surveys and workplace bullying pundits say that bosses bully because they have low self-esteem and feel inferior to their employees.   But, according to Guy Kawaski, Jobs certainly didn’t fall into this category:

Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo explosion” to happen in your organization.

Jobs own take on his demanding reputation:

“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.” [CNN]

Should this ‘Leadership Legacy’ really continue?

Hopefully Jobs replacement will have greater empathy towards employees both here and abroad.  Considering the pride Jobs reportedly took in controlling each detail of the product he created, his apparent disregard toward the suicides and horrendous working conditions in factories in China that create the iPhone is deeply disturbing.  Back in 2009 the Harvard Business Review probably summed up his legacy as a leader best:

…Humility is not part of the Steve Jobs leadership repertoire — and that’s worked out fine for him. But humility has become a crucial part of the job description for leaders who aren’t Steve Jobs. So marvel at his products, applaud his feel for design, wonder at his capacity to cast such a large shadow over so many industries — and, by all means, pray for his speedy recovery and long health.  But don’t think you’ll do better as a leader by acting more like Apple’s leader. Trust the art, not the artist. [Harvard Business Review 2009]

RIP Steve Jobs!

This article was written on a MAC and published to iPads & iPhones everywhere.  

WORKPLACE BULLYING: Would A Law Protect Me?

Posted on by
3

When Is a Law Too Business Friendly?

Many of the victims of workplace bullying that I come in contact with are devastated by the struggle to overcome anger and feelings of powerlessness.   They want to take action.  They want to protect others.  They want a law!

Proposed legislation like the Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB) seems made to order.  But, Patricia G. Barnes argues that the bill is “unnecessarily restrictive” and “would require American workers who are targets of workplace bullying to jump high hurdles that do not exist for workers in other countries.  There is no valid reason to set the bar lower for American workers.”

Barnes’ bio is impressive and lists her as an appellate judge, a licensed attorney (admitted in PA only), a Westlaw Round Table Group “Employee Relations” expert witness, and a legal author with experience in both domestic violence and employment law.  She understands workplace bullying and she understands law.

“One idea might be federal legislation to amend Title VII, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to permit any worker to sue if subjected to a hostile workplace environment,” she writes.  “Another idea is to approach the problem as an important public health issue – which it is – and adopt health and safety regulations to protect employees on that basis. Finally, one might think local – push cities and towns to adopt legislation to protect employees from workplace abuse.”

Or, the Healthy Workplace Bill could be amended into something stronger.  The passionate volunteers fighting for the HWB can add (or delete) language in the bill that places limitations on abused and bullied workers.  Here is Barnes’ critique of the HWB:

“The Healthy Workplace Bill”

[by Patricia G. Barnes] This proposed bill (see below) was drafted by Professor David C. Yamada of  Suffolk University Law School in Boston, MA, and is supported by the Workplace Bullying Institute at a web site called, The Healthy Workplace Bill.

Without detracting from the fine work of Prof. Yamada and the WBI, it is unfortunate that the Healthy Workplace Bill is somewhat anemic compared to legislation  adopted elsewhere on workplace bullying.

For one thing, the proposed Healthy Workplace Bill  would require a victim to provide evidence of malicious intent to bully.  Malice is defined in the proposed bill as “the desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another.”  Part of the “art” of  workplace bullying is subtlety. The target may be the victim of a thousand pin pricks that add up to a mortal wound. The bully acts covertly and uses manipulation to debilitate  the target. Bullies are notorious for showing one face to the target and another to his/her supervisor. It would be very difficult to prove malice in these situations and one can only wonder why this is a requirement  in the proposed Healthy Workplace Bill. 

The proposed bill also would require the target to provide proof of tangible  psychological or physical harm to the plaintiff.  This  would pose a burden for targets who don’t have health care coverage or the funds or the cultural disposition to see a therapist. How can they prove tangible psychological harm?  Also, overwhelming research shows that bullying causes  stress that may contribute to physical harm that only becomes apparent many years later – such as heart disease.  This should be taken into account.

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court says a plaintiff in a Title VII civil rights harassment case does not have to prove concrete psychological harm.   “Certainly Title VII bars conduct that would seriously affect a reasonable person’s psychological well-being, but the statute is not limited to such conduct. So long as the environment would reasonably be perceived, and is perceived, as hostile or abusive, Meritor, supra, at 67, there is no need for it also to be psychologically injurious.” Harris v. Forklift System,  510 U.S. 17 (1993).

According to Katherine Lippel, an international authority on workplace abuse, laws in other countries do not have the above restrictions, which would make it far more difficult for a plaintiff  to prevail in litigation. Ms. Lippel is the Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health and Safety Law, University of Ottawa, Canada.  Here’s what Ms. Lippel has to say about The Healthy Workplace Bill:  “It is understandable that the difficult context applicable in the United States with regard to rights of workers may favor a more restrictive legislative approach for purposes of political expediency, yet even some authors from the United States have expressed concern with the restrictive conditions proposed in the Healthy Workplace Bill.”

Furthermore, the wording of Section 7(b) limits  damages for emotional distress to $25,000 (with no punitive damages)  in  cases where an employer is found to be liable but the target does not suffer an adverse employment action such as termination. This  affects targets of bullying who are not demoted or fired. But why?  There is at least one highly publicized case where an alleged target of workplace bullying committed suicide because he thought that he was  going to be demoted or fired.    This cap is so low that it could  fail to adequately compensate a target of severe bullying and would  not serve as a useful deterrent to employers to halt workplace bullying.

Possibly the limiting language of the proposed Healthy Workplace Bill  reflects a concern by its drafters that employers will fight workplace anti-bullying legislation unless it is sufficiently weak. My feeling is that American workers deserve at least the same level of protection as other workers around the world.

[This article excerpt is reprinted with permission from the blog:  When The Abuser Goes To Work: a legal blog on workplace bullying and abuse.]


HR Response to Mental Health in the Workplace

Posted on by
Reply

Suzanne V. Benoit,  LCSW, SPHR often writes about toxic employees and workplace bullying.  She reveals a personal side in her recent post addressing Carol Kilner’s article Responding to Mental Illness in Your Workforce: Leading a Culture Change [PsychCentral].  I tweeted her right away for permission to repost:

HR Response to Mental Health in the Workplace

by Suzanne V. Benoit

A unique perspective

I came to the practice of HR from a business background and then Clinical Social Work. My views on mental illness and HR arise from a very different place than my HR peers mostly because of my exposure to severe and chronic mental illness. The sigma Ms. Kivler discusses is very powerful indeed. Because of my experience, I am not afraid of individuals with mental illness. I know that these are fellow human beings with a variety of personal values and styles. I know that only a very small percentage of people with mental illness are violent. It’s just that when a person with mental illness commits a violent crime, the media, especially fringe media, bombard the general public with disturbing images and sensationalized information. I also know that most mental health issues in the workplace are mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorders which respond well to medical intervention.

Finally, I know that the mentally ill were not all raised in chaotic or abusive homes. I was raised in a lovely family by good parents (not perfect, but good enough) and had a brother who suffered from bipolar mood swings and psychoses from the age of 20 until his death at 48. The voices he heard told him that he, and not others around him, were bad. I know first hand that the essence of who he was as a person, was not the paranoid, odd behavior and religiosity my brother expressed, but it was the sweet, creative and sensitive individual who worked part-time while well on medication. He would never have harmed anyone.

The American workplace is in need of good information like the tips covered in Ms. Kivler’s article, particularly making information on mental health a part of wellness programs. If only employers could take this information and adopt it freely. I think it is possible but HIPAA presents a psychological and legal barrier to some of the actions suggested in the article. The discipline of HR tends to be generally risk averse. It doesnt’ make them mean or uncaring, just cautious. Let me explain this.

HR is naturally cautious

Employers are responsible for removing the appearance or fact of ADA discrimination. In addition, employers are required to protect the privacy of employee personal health information. To do this perfectly, employers would never want to know if someone has a mental illness. Once you know, you are open to accusations of misusing it in order to keep people from promotions or other employment opportunities. For this reason, medical benefits information or other employee-employer correspondence regarding the diagnosis of mental illness are kept in separate “medical files” and not in the personnel file to which supervisor’s have regular access. Employers must also try to prevent this information from being casually released and discussed amongst co-workers. As such, they may ask employees to refrain from discussing their conditions with their peers.

What is the right balance?

I believe that the answer is to emphasize compassion and inclusion a bit and loosen the mentality of “eliminating” risk to more a risk management posture. Ms. Kivler’s article is timely because presenteeism is an emerging HR issue. It’s like absenteeism in that productivity is negatively impacted. However in presenteeism, the employee is at work but distracted by stress and other matters. Mental illness appears to be one of the growing reasons for this distraction. I would conduct training as Ms. Kivler suggests – fold this into the wellness program. I would make sure that the HR department is a safe and informed place for any employee to go if he/she needed support for time off or accessing counseling benefits. This requires that HR staff be held to a high standard of listening, seeing this in the same nonjudmental way that they see say, diabetes, and well versed in the ways in which mental illness can affect employee performance.

I would make sure my performance evaluation system focuses strictly on what and how the employee performs the essential functions of the job and NOT extraneous and irrelevant information like: age, race or disability. I would encourage the company to sensitively approach employees whose performance seems to be impaired by a personal issue in the same way whether it is divorce, an ill relative or their own mental illness. I would ensure that these individuals receive referrals for EAP or mental health counseling. And finally, I would ensure that my HR staff are comfortable responding lawfully and respectfully to requests for accommodations for a bona fide disability whether it represents a physical or mental impairment.

Staff training and stereotypes

Part of the role of sexual harassment statutes is to prevent harassment in the workplace. The practical effect however, is staff training and development. Employers are comfortable conducting training about how employees should behave when they encounter harassment in the workplace. This means no sexual innuendo jokes, slang, etc. Ms. Kivler suggests that use of the word “mental” should be more comfortable (I agree 100%). I would add that we could also support employees to be more sensitive about comments that could be harmful: crazy, loony or even worse “lazy” as applied to those suffering from depression when they can’t get out of bed.

I am grateful to Carol A. Kivler for writing about this topic. It is timely and very important. I also look forward to @psychcentral’s thoughtful tweets each day on topics of individual mental health.

About Suzanne V. Benoit

Suzanne V. Benoit, LCSW, SPHR is a human resource consultant and author providing strategies to improve workplace culture and quality business outcomes. Striving for corporate excellence means a no-compromise posture on workplace abuse and intimidation as well as creating supporting structures that reward candor, respect and accountability. Her book: “Toxic Employees: great companies resolve this problem, you can too!” provides details about the source, motives and tactics used by toxic employees and is used by managers struggling to shift negative dynamics in the workplace. Suzanne’s workshops on principled approaches to workplace challenges are “both entertaining and valuable” including tools for attendees’ immediate use. To contact Ms. Benoit can be please visit www.benoitconsulting.com.

 

Tell Your Story!

Posted on by
27

Redirect: https://bullyinworkplace.com/your-stories/