Payette’s gone, but moral pain lingers for staff

“Yelling, screaming, aggressive conduct, demeaning comments and public humiliations.” “Explosions, tantrums, bursts of emotion.” “In almost every meeting, someone was berated. “There was a victim in every meeting.” “A house of horrors.” “It was like a punch every time she spoke to someone.”

Staffers were quizzed on their knowledge of outer space, asked to name all the planets in the solar system or the distance between the sun and the moon.

Any HR complaints about the governor general went to her secretary Assunta di Lorenzo, who reported to the governor general. Staffers would leave work and cry in their cars.

The above words are taken from the official report into former governor general Julie Payette’s brutal bullying of staff, including appendixed news stories, as first revealed by Ashley Burke of the CBC.

What are we to make of this? Almost all of us have had terrible bosses. It is helpful to finally see them exposed and flayed, all resultant pain revealed.

I can only imagine the wounds inflicted on the staff, including those who fell ill or quit or soldiered on, though I cannot imagine how. When you have the boss from hell, small children and a mortgage can focus the mind wonderfully.

“A general rule of thumb,” the report said, “is that it can be expected to take just as much time to heal the situation as it took for it to develop.” I disagree. The damage suffered by employees past and present cannot be undone, whatever lawsuits, compensation or offers of counselling are forthcoming. To use Dr. Gabor Maté’s phrase, when the body says no, employees can suffer permanent damage, a SCAD heart attack caused by work stress, a migraine pattern that won’t recede, or a rock of sadness in the chest.

The concept of “moral injury” refers to the pain inflicted when one watches something terrible and feels guilt about having done nothing or been unable to prevent it. Good people suffer moral injury; bullies don’t even grasp the concept.

The only comfort on offer is that Payette will never be hired in government again. But she treated people horribly in at least two other jobs. Bullies travel. When you shuffle terrible managers out with nondisclosure agreements for victims, they just do it elsewhere.

I have never seen a male bully left unemployed. Female bullies are punished more harshly, perhaps because women are expected to be kinder, but what difference is there between a male and female bully beyond the male ability to pop up elsewhere like a weed tree or a virus?

Here’s the rule: if you yell at an employee, particularly in front of others, that’s your failure. Managers are paid to maintain sang-froid, to not hold grudges, to motivate rather than disparage.

Payette once threw an employee’s work aside and said it was “s--t.” Managers, use your words. Try this. “Well, it’s not quite what I had in mind.” “Great stuff. A few points we might want to consider though.” Abuse wrecks people.

The problem is, bullies don’t see what they emit as toxin. Bullying comes from the core; it is inbuilt.

Politics requires certain skills — genuine friendliness, courtesy, the ability to bend rather than break — and those without them do enormous damage. Prime Minister Trudeau runs into trouble because he is a people person, genuinely kind and sometimes maddeningly sincere. He assumes other people are, too. “Spot the Sociopath” is a hard game to play, even for spouses, prime ministers and reporters.

Aside from the usual, I have never been bullied by a male boss, partly because other men stood up for me. The best and worst boss I have ever had were both female. Sex and gender don’t matter; the consequences are the same.

I always ask victims if I can help, if only to fend off my old friend, moral injury. They always end up with a fat battered HR file full of sorrow.

What does HR stand for? Hurt and Rancour? Harm and Recompense? In the Payette case, the only thing the survivors have in their favour is the gentling passage of time.