CEO Tips for an Anti-Bullying Culture

Bullying at work? I personally can never tolerate allowing it nor working with anyone who encourages it.

Bullying in schools can be reported to teachers and principals and actions can be taken on the spot.

But what about bullying at work ? Who should it be reported to and who can stop it in case it was endorsed by the top layers?

Bullying at work places mostly happens by those people who stretch their fake muscles due to their close relationships with big names in the organizations.

The real problem is when bullying and cornering people is part of a culture with a perception that it makes people perform better… And this is Wrong.

I heard many people describing those people who corner others as Keyboard Lions, which is very true… Because they have the courage to fight on emails and behind the screens and never have the courage to confront on face to face basis towards solving any challenges or addressing any points that should be discussed transparently.

Bullying people at work can happen through many ways, be it toxic emails, or out of working hours aggressive text and chat messages, “judgement day” style performance meetings, and of course the day to day annoying unnecessary stress moments and micro follow-ups or mission impossible tasks that extract every essence of trust and empowerment from every passionate person in a corporate culture.

In small companies, it’s very easy to disinfect your corporate culture from such practices, but the real challenge happens in Large organizations.

If the CEO knows about those practices happening in his or her organization and no actions are being taken, then this is a disaster and an indication of an unhealthy place to belong to.

On the other hand, plenty of CEOs are against it and not aware because some people never speak up when they are in the job and only do so once they leave.. and this rarely will reach the top towards solving the problem for others who are staying..

Below are some tips for CEOs who are against such practices but very busy to notice the cracks and want to eliminate those Bad practices once and for all :

1- Creating hotlines is a great idea but never enough.. The CEO should take ownership of ensuring a clean culture and better to have a team reporting directly to him or her with an exclusive responsibility to receive all the escalations related to those bad practices and quick actions to be taken.

2- CEOs must personally communicate their sponsorship to battle bullying and those cornering practices in their companies, while ensuring that every single case is investigated and action is taken according to the severity of the case.

3- Set a clear policy that draws a proper way of addressing performance issues while setting strict limits on how to communicate with people rather than allowing arrogant people with power to play bad games.

4- Keep your Board updated about people and culture topics always, this by default sets an expectation and pushes you as a CEO to become more accountable and more engaged in people’s matters in parallel to numbers and results.

5- Align your Executive team and make sure they are all allergic to those bad practices and zero tolerance to any office politics that try to hide or cover on anyone who crosses the limits of respecting employees or dealing professionally with them.

6- Take personal ownership and hold every single person in the company accountable to any bullying practice and let the responsibility be on every leader and the leader of every leader… No one is immune against being questioned when bad things happen to others..

7- Lead by example and never give the power to people who may utilize that power in a negative way, only give the power to empower others in cleaning bad practices and never the power to corner people or violate the pillars of your good corporate culture.

8- Assure your people that their Job Security is your personal responsibility as long as they are doing the right things and nobody can run away from violating the codes of conduct.

9- Reward loudly the people who speak up and expose the bad apples.

10- Make sure to define the actions that fall under Bullying and communicate them with all under a zero tolerance policy.

Office Bullying is Bad, It Affects peoples mental and physical health, it burns them out, it makes them less productive and hate their work, and most critically it pushes them to buy sometime until they Jump ship… and the hefty bill of buying time is paid by your organizations..

No matter how big is the organization and how thick and plenty are those layers, if you cannot really Encourage a bullying free culture, then go ahead and Enforce it..

This is Leadership..