Bullies are not leaders

The unacceptable side of workplace culture

“Melnyk — its SHOWER TIME”

These are the words that always rise up inside me when friends share their children’s experience of bullying at school. The voices of ghosts. The feeling of the bigger boys grabbing my arms and legs and carrying me squirming in panic towards the corner of the locker room. The freezing water hitting me as I’m dropped on the dirty tiles. The words bring back the shame of an experience that no child should have to go through.

And then my heart breaks, hoping kids today will not have to endure a moment of the humiliation that bullying brings.

Bullying is a behaviour that starts at school but carries on into our working life. I believe it’s important that our education addresses bullying head on, because picking on the small kids, the different kids, doesn’t stop on the playground. It’s unacceptable, yet so prevalent that we often accept it as being normal.

1.5 million young people in the UK have been bullied within the past year

Ditch the Label — Annual Bullying Survey 2016

Bullying happens when one person needs to put someone else down to make themselves feel big. I don’t know why those kids decided on that day to pick on me, and it wasn’t the first time. They were stronger physically than I was and yet I was somehow a threat to them. I know now they were reacting to feeling small in their own lives. The bully needs to turn someone else into a victim, to give themselves a feeling of superiority.

In the workplace this is:

• verbal abuse
• being shouted at
• being talked down to or called “stupid”
• humiliation in front of others
• being ostracised and left out

A TUC study from 2015 revealed that nearly one-third of UK workers have been bullied at work, and in three-quarters of cases the bullying was carried out by a manager. We’ve learned that to be in control, we need to dominate. Once given authority, people flex their muscles. So it’s no surprise that bullying moves from the playground to the board room. Though less violent than the schoolyard, it’s no less vindictive. People use their words and status to put someone down so they can triumph.

People who have been bullied are almost twice as likely to bully others.

Ditch the Label — Annual Bullying Survey 2016

Its sad to know that often the bullied grow up to be the bullies. Companies with altruistic intentions often have toxic cultures. I’ve worked for people who devoted their careers to championing the rights of others, and yet their own workplace culture was subject to their bullying. They would diminish the team’s ideas in order to make people feel stupid, often in front of others. To the outside world they projected the image of creating a wonderful place to work. Inside the culture was full of manipulation and fear.

At the source of this behaviour pattern is a feeling of insignificance. Workplace bullies needed to make themselves important — by being right or seeing others as a threat to their control — in order to feed their ego and identity. They might also believe that they will get the best out of people this way by firmly establishing their authority. Yet managers wanting to drive performance through dominant behaviours do so at a cost — to the wellbeing of their team members and a loss of productivity as a result of high-anxiety environments.

Bullies are not leaders. Leadership requires empathy and the ability to move people forward. A great leader will champion self-responsibility by supporting others to achieve the seemingly impossible. Simon Sinek’s mantra “A boss has the title. A leader has the people” sums this up nicely. Yet our popular culture is full of bullies. Newspaper headlines reveal accusations of political leaders and their bullying behaviour. And when the demeaning boss of reality television becomes the Commander in Chief, it sends a signal to our children. Win by beating your enemies. Make the weak feel powerless, make yourself feel big — in order to make something (yourself) great again.

In a workplace context those that are at the receiving end of the bully’s behaviour must see that they have a choice. They can begin to believe what the bully says about them, and become the victim of the story. Or they can respond — address the issue, share how it made them feel, and outline what they expect the relationship to be like. In a hierarchical business this is very difficult. Employees believe that if they stand up to bullying they will be penalised, bullied more, demoted, or even dismissed.

Stopping bullying at work requires a shared understanding of what great communication looks like. At Within we coach our clients to develop a way of communication that aligns to their values, and to learn how to create a culture that encourages difficult conversations. Leaders have a great opportunity to shape wholehearted working environments where conflict is addressed, diffused and turned into creative outcomes.

Research consistently shows that bullying is most common in organisations with poor workplace climates. It is best prevented by strategies that focus proactively on ensuring worker wellbeing and fostering good relations, giving employees and managers the confidence to engage in early and informal resolution — ACAS

My coaching with managers always focuses on how to manage their own energy and let go of their ego to become leaders that enable great cultures to flourish. We also work with employees in building their confidence of how to respond to situations, rather than react and feel victimised. Employees must believe that they have choices, and that removing ourselves from a situation should always be an option. Working for a bully in a culture that is not addressing negative behaviours will have a huge impact on many aspects of our lives. Our own wellbeing is too important to allow ourselves to be in a toxic work culture.

Entrepreneurs who want to create amazing businesses with great places to work will know how important culture is. As leaders they must shine a spotlight on unacceptable behaviours, and be an example of how the values of the culture are to be upheld.

And to our teachers — my message is the same. There’s no place for bullying in our schools. Thank you for working with parents and children to make it stop.