It seems that antisocial behaviour is on the growth in & outside of the work environment!
This is not about good or bad people. it is about lack of useful strategies that allow these behaviours to continue. There is too much bullying of the so called bully; not enough responsibility back to the so called victim. Again, not about good & bad, just lack of real understanding, lack of strategies.
Organisations recognise people acting badly, try (or don’t) various interventions then if not successful, make decisions based on how much they can afford to loose that person. Is the person an important part of the ‘IP’, are they client sensitive, “if they leave they will take clients with them”, do they have specific knowledge they haven’t shared with others and so too risky to loose them, so, too often the so called victim leaves.
Everyone has experienced being bullied, most of us have also bullied others, although that might be harder to elicit. Bullying take numerous forms, there is the loud and the aggressive but also the quiet and seemingly nice, the passive aggressive. There are the micro-managers, this is a type of bullying – “I need to check everything, tell you everything because I can’t trust you to do it properly”.
Recently I was approached by a young women undertaking her masters in psychology and was asked to share my experiences. I asked to read her thesis papers. Her thinking was based on the need for organisations to have policies and procedures to manage bullying amongst other things.
I shared that I thought these polices and procedures were at the base of the bullying. One example I have being a nurse who had been bullied by her manager (when introduced to this manager by their manager, she was told confidentially that this manager was a bully, “you will have to work with that”) for 2 years. When she sought intervention from her manager and then later by her HR lead and then again some six months later by both, each time the bullying got worse!
Working with this nurse for just under two hours, we developed a strategy she could own and implement. She did that the next day (13.05.2017) and the behaviour went from extremely difficult to very easy and enjoyable – and has sustained through to today. She never had to endure the 2 years if everyone hadn’t been relying on old thinking, on fault and blame thinking – on good person bad person thinking.
See the case study at https://leadershipthinking.academy/case-studies/
Rehearsing the “we have tried everything” line which of course blocks out the”what else can we do” only limits the belief that change can occur. It is not necessary to engage with psychologists, not necessary to find out from the so called bully what their childhood was like, just necessary to not continue down the proved to fail strategies that are too often used.
There is a belief widely held that bullies are bullies and there isn’t mcc anyone can do about it – well yes there is.