« Teenage student harassed, bullied and beaten, but none of the adults at school protected him. | Home | How do you know if someone is your friend? »
Top ten ways to create a hostile workplace
By Ben | February 26, 2008
Bullies at work can ruin a culture, destroy productivity and make your life miserable. Many people focus only on bullying bosses, but I’ve seen just as many coworkers and employees use these bullying methods as I have managers and supervisors. Before you read the top ten I’ve seen, please think for a moment. What bullying methods used by whom, have you seen most?
Have you seen these techniques ruining your workplace?
- Yelling, physical threats (overt or subtle) and personal attacks.
- Verbal abuse, emotional intimidation, personal insults and attacks (in private and in public). Put-downs and humiliating, demeaning, rude, cruel, insulting, mocking and embarrassing comments. False accusations (especially outrageous), character assassination.
- Harassing based on race, religion, gender and physical attributes. Sexual contact, lewd suggestions, name-calling, teasing and personal jokes (sometimes overtly nasty, or threatening or sometimes given with laughter as in, “I was just kidding” in order to make it hard for you to fight back.
- Backstabbing, spreading rumors and gossip, manipulating, lying, distorting, evading, hypocrisy and exposing your problems and mistakes.
- Taking the credit; spreading the blame. Withholding information and then cutting you down for not knowing or for failing.
- Anonymous attacks and cyber-bullying – flaming e-mails and porn. Invading your personal space and privacy – rummaging through your desk, listening to phone calls, asking extremely personal questions, eating your food.
- Hypersensitive, over-reactions, throwing tantrums (drama queens) – so you walk on egg shells, back off in order to avoid a scene, or beg forgiveness as if you really did something wrong.
- Dishonest evaluations – praising and promoting favorites, giving slackers good evaluations and destroying careers of people the bully doesn’t like.
- Demeaning at meetings – interrupting, ignoring, laughing, non-verbal comments behind your back (rude noises, body language, facial gestures, answering phone, working on computer).
- Forming cliques and ganging up. Turf wars about budgets, hiring, copiers and coffee machines.
Most bullies use combinations of these methods.
We’ve all seen the effects of bullies and the hostile workplace they create. There’s increased hostility, tension, selfishness, turf wars, sick leave, stress related disabilities, turn over and legal actions. People become isolated, do busy work with no important results and waste huge chunks of time talking about the latest episodes. Effort is diffused instead of aligned. Promotions are based on sucking up to the most difficult and nasty people, not on merit.
Teamwork, productivity, responsibility, efficiency, creativity and taking reasonable risks are decreased. The best people leave as soon as they can.
The wrong people or the wrong culture can always find ways to destroy the best operational systems. Your pipeline will leak money and your profits will plummet.
I’ll go into solutions in future posts, but I want to mention one frequently used tactic that does not work to stop dedicated bullies. It’s based on the false assumption that if we – educate, explain, understand, reason, show the consequences, accept, forgive or make enough attempts to satisfy bullies – then they will become reasonable, civil, professional, friendly and good to work with. That approach only stops people who are not really bullies, but have forgotten themselves one time and behaved badly.
Determined bullies don’t take your acquiescence as kindness. They take your giving in as weakness and an invitation to grab for more. Bullies bully repeatedly and without real remorse. You won’t get a sincere apology from them. A sincere apology doesn’t mean anything about how they look. It means that they change and stop bullying.
I’d like to hear your horror or success stories.
Topics: Coaching, Consulting, Eliminate Low Attitudes CD, Hostile Workplace, Public Speaking, Stop Bullies Book |
February 28th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Work - Business Manager acts like she knows what is best for her children “co-workers”. I never hear the end of the mistakes I make and yet she makes them also. She is great at profiling all the employees and heaven help us if we work outside of the box (profiling). Everyone she comes in contact with gets the run down on the office staff. We have had two different “major boss” changes and they were given the run down each time. She full fills their every need and proves her worth and we are her peons. How do I talk to my main boss, she is my second boss, about her tactics and the effects on my performance, confidence and the morale of the office? We all want to leave. Most of us have been there 18 years.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Hi Colleen,
I’m so sorry you’re in a tough spot.
She’s a well-known type. First, she’s a know-it-all who enjoys putting people down. Second, she’s also the town gossip, dishing the dirt on everybody. Bullies like her rarely change because of pressure from below. After all, she does know best.
Doesn’t she sound like some parents that we all know who think the best way to help their children is to pound them relentlessly and embarrass them in public. Deep down, they do feel self-satisfied and righteous.
Know-it-all bullies and town-gossips sometimes change when there’s strong, consistent pressure from above. The pressure must be coupled with, “Change or you’re gone.”
I assume you’ve told her how you feel and have pointed out the effects she has in creating a hostile workplace and in destroying teamwork. But she hasn’t changed.
Since she’s probably made herself seem indispensible to the bigger bosses, I think you have some difficult choices:
1. Be as straightforward as you can with the bigger boss, knowing that your manager will find out and try to get you fired.
2. Go to the bigger boss with most of the team in hopes that the weight of numbers will sway the bigger boss.
3. Size up your bigger bosses until you think you have one who will act wisely and keep you from getting terminated.
4. Transfer to another department or look for another job – which is hard if you’ve been there 18 years.
5. Take it as best you can until you retire.
You should realize that your manager will take whatever you do as mutiny and will try to strike back.
I’m sorry the choices are difficult, but I’ve rarely seen know-it-alls and town-gossips change. You’re in a tough fight.
Good luck,
Ben
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:23 am
I work for a five (5) member Park Board and find that at least of 50% or more of these techniques are emulated by various different members of this Board in the way they treat me. Besides this, they often violate the Open Meetings Act (Law) with total disregard to how it affects my working relationship with them and my subordinates - they consantly undermine my authority and distort issues with my staff. Basically, everthing that is wrong with our agency at this time is my fault and I’m consistantly used as the scape-goat! Members of this previous Board gave me an overall rating of 8.5 on a 10 scale less than a year ago, and thorugh an election process, there has been a dynamic change of the members, and recently I only recieved an overall rating of 5.2 It’s obvious that this Board wants me out, I’m in a no-win situation; so I’ve resigned and I’ve accept a new job - a better job I believe. I wish the agency and the staff I leave behind well, but I hope this unethical Board eventually gets what they deserve!
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Hi Brian,
I sorry they ganged up on you. Maybe you did something you don’t even know about or maybe it was political or maybe someone has a relative they want appointed or maybe one of you staff undercut you and the new Board believed them - without getting your evidence or giving you a chance.
Whatever their reasons, since you couldn’t stop it, I’m glad you’re gone and have a better job. There’s no point staying and getting beaten when you could get out.
By the way, I often see new “management/leadership/boards” purging previous leadership and getting their own people in.
If you encounter the same treatment at the new job, then we have to look for a pattern.
Best wishes,
Ben
April 7th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
[…] Top ten ways to create a hostile workplace […]
May 5th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
[…] other 15% are the problem adults. They’re the whining complainers, hyper-critical bosses, lazy slackers, negative discouragers, […]