What Happens WhenYour Manager Is A Bully?

The choices you have and their consequences.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

In the ideal workplace, your manager is a mentor, a guide, and a source of support. However, in the real world, your manager is often your biggest source of stress and anxiety.

It’s Bullying If You Think It Is

Bullying is different things to different people; what might seem as constructive criticism to one, might be bullying or harassment to another. From my experience, if YOU think it’s bullying then it’s going to impact your work and your life. My suggestion is, if it’s bothering you, you have to do something about it for your own sanity.

Power Imbalance — You Can’t Win

From my experience, the power imbalance in the manager-employee relationship makes it difficult for you to defend yourself or seek help from internal channels. Your manager controls your workload, evaluations, promotions, and job security, which leads to fear of retaliation or job loss if you speak out. Additionally, if you report this to HR, they will ask for a mediated discussion between you and your Manager. Honestly, I can’t think of anything worse.

The Impact of a Bad Manager

Here I have split the impacts into two categories, Personal and Professional. This shows not only the emotional toll bullying can have, but also how as a victim of bullying your chosen behaviours can actually cause your career more harm.

Personal

• Emotional and Mental Health: Exposure to bullying of any level can lead to anxiety, depression, and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The constant stress can erode your self-esteem and lead to feelings of helplessness and despair.
• Physical Health: The stress of being bullied at work can manifest in physical symptoms, including headaches, fatigue, insomnia, and other stress-related illnesses.
• Relationships: The stress of being bullied often flows into relationships outside of work and impact your personal relationships. Friends and family may tire of your incessant complaining about work while taking no action to improve your situation.

The Impact of a Bad Manager — Professional

• Job Performance: Your ability to perform your job effectively can be severely compromised. The fear of making mistakes or being publicly reprimanded can lead to decreased productivity, creativity, and engagement. Not only that, but if you know you will never receive a promotion because of this Manager, what drives you to perform better?
• Career Impact: Bullying can damage your professional reputation. This can occur if a manager unfairly criticises your work or excludes you from opportunities, BUT ALSO if their behaviour impacts you to a point that you can no longer effectively perform your role OR if you become seen as a nuisance or gossip.
• Additionally, if you stay in such a role and miserable for too long you will become unhirable. No-one wants to hire a negative employee from the outset, neither do they want to hire someone who hasn’t performed well in their previous jobs.
• Relationships: Colleagues may no longer want to be associated with you because of the potential damage on their own careers.

DANGER!DANGER!DANGER!DANGER!DANGER!

BEWARE: The way that you respond to these bullying behaviours can determine your reputation:

• If you talk to your peers, this can be seen as gossip.
• If you become known as unhappy or open to talking about bad workplace behaviours, you may become the go-to person for all complaints no one wants to escalate. This in turn will then mean you are viewed as central to all workplace drama which does nothing for your reputation.
• If you complain through unofficial channels, you may be viewed as a complainer that never takes action.
• If you complain to HR and nothing changes you may have shot yourself in the foot for any future opportunities (you may also make the current situation worse).
• If you spend so much time focussing on the bullying, you may be viewed as incompetent at your job and unable to get on with the role you are paid to fulfill.

I understand these dangers are hurtful, but I write to warn you to be careful that your own response to bullying doesn’t do as much harm to your career as being bullied itself does.

What Can You Do?

Dealing with a bullying manager is incredibly challenging, and everything ‘by the book’ will tell you to document everything, to seek professional support, to know your rights, etc. But let me tell you; all of these scenarios result in your job and manager remaining the same, including the bullying behaviour.

Escape!

Here is the one step I believe will truly help: Escape.

You don’t have to leave the company entirely, but you have to leave the manager. Trust me, you can’t change another person’s behaviour but you can change how you respond to it.

Conclusion

When the bully is your manager, your only option is escape. While no one should have to endure bullying in the workplace, the powers that be typically do very little to rectify these situations and at the end of the day, do you want to work for a company that lets these behaviours go unreprimanded?

Reach Out

Above I mentioned that talking about these issues isn’t always the best approach but if you want to talk to a stranger who has been there and made the bad choices, contact me and we can work through this together — I won’t judge, neither will I impact your professional reputation.