06/ 11/ 2007
by Pamela Mills-Senn
When a preteen girl was suspended from school for bullying a classmate, her mother didn't let the punishment stop there. She not only took away the girl's cell phone and television time; she went a step further. According to the LA Times newspaper, which published an article about the incident, the mother made her daughter spend four afternoons standing in front of several local middle schools carrying an oversized handmade sign that proclaimed:
"I engaged in bullying behavior. I got suspended from school. Don't be like me, stop bullying."
If only it were that easy to identify and address workplace bullying.
"It's a hard concept to pin down," said Tom Wassel, partner with Cullen and Dykman, a New York law firm that specializes in labor and employment. According to Wassel, unless bullying becomes physical, it can be difficult for business owners to detect and/or substantiate.
Wassel recalls a case where two co-workers who were once friends had a falling out. One began harassing the other, doing things like deleting files, changing the person's screensaver to one that was full of expletives and making slightly offensive ethnic remarks (the bully's target was Italian). The person being bullied complained to management, who believed him but lacked the hard evidence to respond. Not helping the situation was the fact that both men were union members. The company eventually solved the problem by moving the two to different departments.
Although Wassel describes bullying as generally infantile in nature (as evidenced by the above example), it can and does get aggressive. Former attorney Robert Mueller, a Bay-area author of Bullying Bosses: A Survivor's Guide, divides bullies into two camps. Abusive bullies, which he said follows a masculine paradigm (although women fall into this category, too) are those that yell, curse, throw things and so on. This is bullying in its simplest form.
"The second type is the subtle feminine paradigm, although men also do this, too," Mueller says. "It tends to be more complex and harder to detect, such as isolation of the target through bad-mouthing or put-downs. And then there are official acts supervisors take, such as reassigning or demoting the target. And by taking this official act, they [appear to have] the support of management, which further [cements] the isolation."
Bullying in the workplace is rampant, says Francie Dalton, president of Dalton Alliances, Inc., a Columbia-based management consulting firm. (If you don't buy that, type "workplace bullies" into any search engine and see how many Web sites devoted to this issue come up).
Why so?
"Bullies aren't stupid; they do it out of eyeshot and earshot of the boss," she says. "Plus, by the time they get away with this behavior, they either have a relationship with someone higher up, or they bring in the most revenue, or they have some sort of star quality that makes the organization willing to risk the legal liability in order to retain access to whatever results this bully is producing."
But in actuality, there may be few, if any, legal consequences.
"I tell managers there's no law against being a bad person, as long as you don't discriminate," Wassel says. "But there can be legal issues if bullying rises to a certain level, such as physical. In this case, employers could be held liable for tolerating an unsafe workplace."
Charles Wilson, an attorney with the national law firm of Epstein Becker Green Wickliff & Hall, PC, agrees.
"Often the bully will not run afoul of the boundaries of sex, age, race, etc., or bully a protected class exclusively," says Wilson, a Houston-based attorney. "They will mistreat everyone. Someone could file hostile workplace charges if the bully creates a hostile workplace for a protected class, but if he creates a hostile workplace for everyone, the business is less vulnerable (to legal risk).
"However," Wilson continues, "employers face other issues, like lower morale and productivity, higher turnover and getting the reputation as a bad place to work, which could hurt recruitment."
And, along with the above, come higher employee medical costs, absenteeism and disability claims.
Obviously, there are excellent reasons to find and discipline a bully, but, as previously mentioned, it's not always easy to flush them out. Targets of bullying often hesitate to complain for fear of looking like whiners, or because they're concerned about retaliation, Dalton explains. These concerns are heightened by the fact that the bully is usually someone who has an edge with the company, Wilson says.
Plus, bullies are adept at ingratiating themselves with those in power, Mueller says.
"They're extremely good at charming," he says. "They bully down and charm up. This is why management doesn't notice them."
But there are signs that can alert business owners that there may be a bully in their midst, Mueller says.
"Notice the person who is being charming," he suggests. "This is a red flag. Also look for someone who habitually casts disparaging remarks about people or groups. Go into the work areas and take the employees' temperature. Are they gloomy and down, or are they engaged?"
Dalton advises the same.
"Walk around, look for how the environment feels," she says. "One tip-off is that it's usually very quiet in the area where a bully is working. No one wants to call attention to themselves."
She also suggests that owners implement some form of peer review, such as 180 or 360-degree performance evaluations, and that they give and receive quarterly, rather than annual, feedback.
Mueller says that targets of bullying should take a dispassionate approach, documenting specific behaviors and actions. He calls this "the No. 1 tool for self-defense." (He offers an example of an incident form on his Web site: www.bullyingbosses.com)
"To discover a bully, look past a singular incident and look for a pattern," he says. "Bullies are not creative people. They do the same things over and over."
Establishing a pattern is important, Dalton says, because an occasional outburst of temper doesn't make a bully.
"You need to give someone a couple of chances before you take action," she says. "Especially since a lot of younger workers are extremely thin-skinned. Exercise due diligence to make sure people aren't overreacting to criticism of their performance."
You can and should discipline bullies, Wilson says, adding that it's especially important to send the message that bullying is unacceptable.
"You also need to train everyone in the workplace on the corporate culture, and what you will and will not tolerate," he says. "Try to cultivate an environment that fosters professionalism."
Some companies have found sensitivity training and training on appropriate ways to deal with employees to be helpful in turning a bully around, Wassel says. Although, he adds, it doesn't always work.
"Then, it comes down to making a business decision," Wassel explains. "If retraining fails, you have to decide whether it's worth keeping a bully on and risk alienating the rest of the staff."
