Documentary on Nygard – a bullying boss

CBC’s The Fifth Estate aired a expose on Peter Nygard, an extreme form of workplace bully. It can be found here.

Getting the next job

After enduring my workplace bullying experience I was sneakily pushed out of the organization by the bullies, and spent the next six months unemployed. It was both a healing and a hard experience. After ten months of daily anxiety, the break was badly needed and I’m not sure I would have been in any shape to start a new job. Still, the financial pressures are huge under the inadequate compensation of Employment Insurance. Add to that the difficulties of job hunting. Job hunting is hard for everyone, for the bullied worker, it can become a continuance of the bullying nightmare if potential employers insist on a reference from the most recent supervisor.

It goes without saying that if at all possible, don’t use the bully as a reference. Do try to find someone at your previous workplace, and preferably someone higher on the organizational chart than you were. But most of all have a reference list full of people who will give a positive assessment of your performance.

However, in many jobs it is now workplace policy to get a reference from the present or most recent supervisor. If that person was the bully, this puts targets in an awkward position. Do you just give out the bully’s information and hope for the best? Not likely to go in your favor. Option number two is to spill the beans about bullying. As there seems to be a preconceived notion for many that “the boss is always right” (or else why would they be insisting on a reference from that person instead of whomever you choose?) this also doesn’t look promising. However, I think it is the better of the two options because it gives you some influence over the situation, and you may happen to come across a new boss with sense and understanding.

Think ahead about what you will say about your experience. Do not try to come up with something on the spur of the moment. My own opinion is that bullying should be labeled as such. If you feel you will get a better hearing with a term such as interpersonal conflict, feel free. Be honest. Be succinct – that’s one of the reasons you need to think ahead about what to say. Bullying experiences can be very complex and drawn out. It might take a few tries to come up with a way of explaining it that is both brief and clearly shows the realities of the situation. Practice with a wise friend or job coach.

If the new boss still insists on hearing from the old boss, at least you have had a chance to have your say. Will your workplace bullying experience possibly cost you some jobs? Undoubtably there are some employers who won’t touch you for fear that as good as your explanation sounds, you could be trouble. But you don’t want to work for those people. The ones that are stuck in a hierarchical mindset are the ones that will breed more bullying.

Another tactic is to find something, anything for a short while so that it will no longer be the bully who is your most recent supervisor. Term position for two months? Great. Part time job for four hours a week? Fine and dandy. Offer to do contract work for someone for a ridiculously low sum just to have a new current supervisor to put on your resume. “While technically not my employer, so and so supervised me in my most recent project…” It could be that part time or casual work will be a better fit while your recover emotionally.

The Workplace Bullying Institute suggests that job seekers ask questions to try to screen out potential bullying workplaces. However, a friend of mine also wondered out loud if doing so during my job search was keeping me from getting job offers. After this, I changed my approach. I didn’t ask about respectful workplace questions during the initial interview but decided to wait until I was offered the job and then approach the subject before making a final decision.

My own story has a happy ending. When a potential employer asked specifically for a reference from my last supervisor, I explained that I was bullied in my last job, and offered to tell her the story. I told her what happened, and also what I have learned from the situation and taken with me. After this she said, “Well, I’ve phoned four other references and after everything you’ve told me today I haven’t heard anything that makes me not want to offer you the job.” There are good employers out there, even ones who understand bullying, and ones who have been there themselves. The path to the next job may be longer and harder for the target, but it can be successful.

Performance Feedback and Workplace Discipline Part 2 – Performance issue or misconduct?

In part 1 of this series I noted that bullies may misuse typical management practices of giving performance feedback and administering workplace discipline. Therefore it is vital that targets understand these practices to be able to distinguish between legitimate exercise of power and abuse of power.

In this part I’m going to write about the difference between issues of performance and issues of misconduct.

No employee is perfect, and there will come a time when a manager will address an issue where they want to see something different from an employee. Straightforward talk about such issues when done in a logical and respectful way does not constitute bullying, even if it is uncomfortable or anxiety-producing for the employee.

The actions managers take in a bullying situation, however, are often not logical or respectful. One of the ways bullying can happen is by making every issue into a discipline issue.

Workplace discipline, which usually takes the form is gradually more severe actions or punishments, is only appropriate for issues of misconduct. Misconduct is behavior that is clearly wrong because:

1. It is illegal. Examples of this would be stealing or having sexual relationship with a minor.

2. It is unethical. For example, a professional starting a romantic relationship with a client may not be illegal, but it may be against the ethics of his or her profession.

3. It is against rules and policies of the workplace.

It is up to the employer to demonstrate that an issue is misconduct. The employer should be able to demonstrate that the behavior was known, or ought reasonably to have been known, by the employee. For example, was t he rule clearly written in a policy manual, and was the manual given to the employee to read, and was the employee instructed to read it as part of his or her training? Caution needs to be taken where guidelines could be open to interpretation. For example, if a written guideline refers to respectful communication and a client complained that a worker was disrespectful, it is important to recognize that what one person feels is disrespectful may be normal communication for another. Caution should also be taken where guidelines or rules are not consistently enforced, or where exceptions have been made in the past. If an organization had a rule that no gifts are to be accepted from clients, but it was ignored for small gifts such as plates of cookies around Christmastime, this would need to be recognized as a gray area when discussing whether or not an employee should have accepted a different gift.

Issues of performance are about the skill and ability of the employee not being up to the required standard.  An example of this may be a salesman not meeting his quota for the month, or a counsellor not seeing improvement in his client. If the salesman or counsellor is not succeeding because he needs to improve his sales or counselling skills, that is a performance issue. However, managers need to acknowledge that sometimes results are not within am employees grasp. For example, if the salesman’s geographic area was one in which a major industry was hit with layoffs, even the most-skilled salesperson may not have been able to meet quota. Likewise, a counsellor can only go so far with an unwilling client.

Knowing the difference between issues of performance and issues of misconduct is a vital distinction when an employer wants to address an employee’s behavior. In a future post I will address appropriate employer responses to issues of performance and issues of misconduct.

Victim Bully: Real or backlash?

I have come across a couple of references to “victim bullies”, people who use the issue of bullying to make themselves look like victims and usurp power for themselves in the process. A few weeks back Barbara Bowes talked about this issue in her column in the Winnipeg Free Press.

The column is done in a Q&A format, and the questioner writes, “One of my staff is constantly complaining of unfair treatment from myself as her boss and from her colleagues. If it isn’t one thing, it is another. What do I do with a whiner like this?”

Definitions of workplace bullying often point out that bullying is not a one-time occurrence, but is repetitive behaviour. Researchers of workplace bullying have also written about the phenomenon of mobbing, where the bullying behaviour catches on and it becomes part of the culture for a group of people to victimize the one.

Therefore, if the worker was being bullied, and has the chutzpah  to fight for herself, the behaviour that is being written, that of constant complaints of wrongs done to her by her boss and collegues, is actually a reflection of what they are doing to her, and not her character.

I think it is possible, even likely, that there are those who could play the victim card when in reality they are lobbing false accusations at the people over whom they want to gain power. But I do fear that the accusation of “victim bully” could also be yet another action taken by bullies to disempower their targets and move the spotlight from their own behavior.

Becoming indifferent

An author and blogger I have come to appreciate is Bob Sutton. He wrote the book The No Assholes Rule which helped me through a bullying situation.

One of his best thoughts, which is vital to anyone that is going through workplace bullying, is that indifference is as important as passion.  If The Workplace Bullying Institute is right when they say that targets of bullying are usually the best employees, it stands to reason that targets are the people who have a lot of passion and drive for their job.

That passion becomes our enemy however, when we do not have the power to direct that passion is a constructive way. Bullies typically try to disempower their targets, leaving them unable to do their job, either from outrightly interfering with work or criticizing to the point where there is no more joy in work.

At that point, the best thing a target can do is let go of their passion. It has no purpose if it cannot be fulfilled.  Sometimes you have to put your head down, avoid further injury, and get out. Sometimes it’s all you can do for the sake of your own health and well-being. There will be other avenues for your passion, but there is no good outlet for passion when you are being bullied.

Performance Feedback and Workplace Discipline Part 1 – Clear Expectations

In workplace bullying situations, bullies are not likely to admit that they are trying to demean, humiliate and put down the target. Rather, they will use language that makes what they are doing seem legitimate. The language of performance feedback and workplace discipline is easy to manipulate, and bullies can be masters of manipulation.  It’s vital then, that we have an understanding of what performance feedback and workplace discipline look like in order to see if it’s being used correctly, or if it’s being used to harass.

One of the most basic things that is needed is clear expectations. The workplace has a responsibility to provide a clear job description,  written policies and procedures that  are kept up to date, and orientation and training for new positions.  Supervisors have a responsibility to provide further feedback as is needed that outlines expectations that are beyond or clarify the written material.

When expectations are stated in a way that is vague, it gives bullies a lot of room to manipulate a situation.  Tacking on “other duties as assigned” to a job description leaves the door open for bullies to take advantage of a target by assigning them meaningless and trivial tasks, or things that are not appropriate to the position, by expecting too much (to make sure the target fails) or too little (to shame the target). Giving feedback such as “I expect you to report back to me in a timely fashion” may mean different things for different people. “I’d like an update on this file by next Friday” is specific and an employee can know for sure if he or she has met the required standards. Saying, “Improve your bedside manner” to a healthcare worker is imprecise. “I’d like you to work on smiling, greeting the patient by name and listening to their concerns without cutting them off” is a clear goal.

It is reasonable to ask for specific examples that illustrate a supervisor’s concern. If the supervisor cannot describe the actions or quote you, but continues to offer only vague generalizations, you might be involved in a bullying situation. If you are a person who is examining a possible bullying situation, it is important that you require the alleged bully to tell when and how expectations were made known, and for very specific examples of their concerns.

The role of cognitive dissonance

One of the things that be confusing and frustrating for targets of bullying is that even when they use logic and evidence to defend themselves against attacks, they are unable budge the bullies from their stance. The bullies may seem reasonable in other circumstances and with other people. Why then, do they distort facts and substitute misinterpretations?

In the book Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) authors Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson outline the role that cognitive dissonance plays in people maintaining behaviours that seem to be clearly unwise or wrong.

Cognitive dissonance refers to the discomfort we feel when we hold two contradictory ideas in our heads at once. Our tendency as human beings is to relieve this discomfort by minimizing one idea and focusing on the other. Our tendency is also to do so in a way that makes ourselves look the best.

The authors elaborate from the website:

Self-justification, the hardwired mechanism that blinds us to the possibility that we were wrong, has benefits: It lets us sleep at night and keeps us from torturing ourselves with regrets. But it can also block our ability to see our faults and errors. It legitimizes prejudice and corruption, distorts memory, and generates anger and rifts. It can keep prosecutors from admitting they put an innocent person in prison and from correcting that injustice, and it can keep politicians unable to change disastrous policies that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

It is not hard to see how this manifests itself in a bullying situation. Once a bully has started to target a person, the bully’s tendency will be to construe what happens from that point on in a way that justifies their behaviours.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example: Steve has been a model employee, brings in a lot of business for his company and has great realtionships with clients. Ed, his manager, knows that his own track record when he was in that position was not nearly as strong, and is noticing that the management team has adopted more of Steve’s ideas than Ed’s.

Ed has a need to believe that as manager, he is somehow better than the people he supervises. He needs this belief to bolster his own self esteem. So he starts to be extra critical of Steve’s ideas and performance.

Steve, meanwhile, doesn’t quite know what to make of Ed’s critical attitude, but tries to learn from it. Ed, however, offers little in the way of constructive advice or specifics of his concerns, relying on vague generalizations. Nonetheless, Steve is determined to do harder, so when Ed accuses Steve of exerting his own ideas and ignoring those of others, Steve believes Ed and starts to hold back.

But Ed’s goal was not really to improve Steve’s performance, it was to bolster his own self-image. So when Steve’s input at team meetings drops, Ed notes to his collegues that Steve never really seems to put himself out there or take risks.  This pattern continues: no matter what Steve does, Ed will find a way to interpret it negatively.

We want to believe that we, and most people, are reasonable, logical and will do what makes sense. The beauty of Mistakes Were Made is that it shows us that this assumption is not always true, and that our drive for self-justification carries with it the capacity for immense harm, and may I add, workplace bullying.