How to tackle workplace bullying
This Friday I will be wearing a pink shirt. Pink Shirt Day began in Canada in 2007 when two students took a stand against homophobic bullying, mobilising their whole school, after a peer was bullied for wearing a pink shirt.
In New Zealand the pink shirt movement is focussed on stopping bullying and spreading kindness. Participants are encouraged to spread kindness like confetti.
This got me to thinking. How do we stop bullying? How do we encourage people to reflect on their own behaviour and on how they are treating others?
I was at a conference last week where Keith McGregor, a well-respected organisational psychologist, said something that really resonated with me.
He said that the types of people who are more likely to have workplace issues are those who view the world from the perspective of how other people are affecting them, as opposed to how they are affecting other people.
This makes absolute sense, because things often look quite different if we try to view them through the eyes of other people.
I don’t believe that many people deliberately set out to bully others. Clearly there are some who do, and they are just bad people. But many people who are accused of bullying do not fully appreciate the effect they have on others. How do you tell the difference? If a deliberate bully is confronted about their bullying they shrug it off, if a non-deliberate bully is confronted, they are mortified (this came from McGregor, too).
I have been involved in a number of sad situations where a person has been accused of bullying and has been forced out of an organisation, yet up until that point they genuinely had no idea of how they were being perceived. All of these people have their own stories. In one case the alleged bully was a late middle-aged woman who had had to fight her way up the organisational hierarchy. The behaviours she demonstrated may well have been explained by her need to defend herself. This is not an excuse, simply an explanation.
If someone had raised concerns about her behaviour earlier, she would have had the opportunity to change. Whether she would have or not, I don’t know. But instead, her career was ended with her being labelled a bully.
And then there are the victims. Often it is the small things that really hurt. For example, being isolated – the manager says good morning to everybody except them. To others this may seem trivial, but it can substantially affect an employee’s self-esteem and wellbeing.
Bullying often happens in the context of perceived nonperformance. But this can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you focus on faults, this is all that you will see.
So if people were given the benefit of the doubt – treated with some kindness – things may work out differently.
Instead, I often see employers launching immediately into formal investigations. This is undeniably the right approach in serious cases, or where other interventions have been tried and failed. But conducting a formal investigation puts an enormous strain on workplace relationships and generally ends up with one party leaving.
A kinder approach would be to try to address the issue before it escalates to the point that an investigation is necessary.
This is a responsibility that every person in the workplace should share – the victim to speak up or raise issues through another person, if they are able; the alleged bully to hear, reflect, and change their behaviour; and others to create a culture where bullying is dealt with swiftly and in the daylight.
McGregor provided another brilliant anecdote during his presentation, describing a manager getting more and more wound up because an employee was ‘‘frustrating’’ him. He advised the manager to change his terminology to say that the employee was ‘‘fascinating’’ him. Within a short time the manager came to look at the employee differently because the negative connotation was not clouding their view.
So, this Friday I will be wearing a pink shirt. I am also going to try to view the world more through the perspective of others. And what’s more, I will try to do this for more than just one day.