Bullying is a form of an abuse of power. Evelyn Field defines bullying as an abuse of power by someone who is stronger in physical, mental, social, political or financial ways towards someone who can not avoid bully's games or cruel behaviors. Bullying happens to employees or any individuals who allow others to bully them.
Bullying may be in physical, psychological, emotional, social or professional forms. Some acts are aggressive, such as pointing, shouting and touching. Other acts are hidden like exclusion, holding information and important communication. There are subtle ways, for example are whispering, staring and gossiping maliciously.Racial, sexual and physical discrimination are also forms of bullying. Harassment, mobbing and some forms of violence in work place by bosses can be classified as bullying.
Gary Namie, president of a nonprofit advocacy group, defines bullying as health-endangering mistreatment done repeatedly through acts of commission or omission. Bullying aims to foment chaos and divisiveness within the rank. Commission includes hostile verbal or nonverbal communication or interference, while omission means withholding resources such as time, information, training, equipment or support.Managers or sometimes veteran employees are those who practice this act.
They unnoticeably misuse power to train new comers of an organization or recently hired employees of a company. Others thought this as one way to gain respect of new employees, to follow orders strictly. Some others, so called “show-off”, do bullying to prove their knowledge with their experience and expertise on their jobs. Some do this action to psychiatrically test and train their new subordinates for work pressure in the future. The types of power that usually caused this abuse are: coercive power and legitimate power. Coercive power is dependent on fear.
One reacts to this power out of fear of the negative results that might occur if one failed to comply. It rest on the application or threat of application, of physical sanctions such as infliction of pain, the generation of frustration through restriction of movements, or the controlling by force of basic physiological or safety needs. Legitimate power represents the power a person receives as a result of his or her position in the formal hierarchy of an organization. This power is broader than the power to coerce and reward.
It includes acceptance by members of an organization of the authority of a position.Whatever reasons behind the abuse of these powers, individuals may create mental, social and psychological damages on abused individuals. The effects of these damages may lower self-esteem, dignity and alter working ability which would affect abused individual’s potential. Based on study by the Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute, woman is more likely to be abusive than a man.
Survey shows that woman to woman bullying is about 50 percent; man to woman is 30 percent, man to man 12 percent of all workplace bullying, while woman to man bullying is only 8 percent.However, to avoid this deed, there are several ways to deal and cope up with bully people. One must learn to accept this problem as a challenge to survive and maintain diplomacy with bully people especially in work place. Each individual has different personality and distinct characteristics therefore in order to be successful in handling bully boss, first thing is to identify what kind of bully he or she is.
Better to understand his attitude so one is able to know the best way to handle the abusive situation. Although the best way is to keep low and stay within the limits of the job avoiding confrontations.Whichever company or organization you applied to, most probably you can find bullies with it. One must learn to coexist with bullies.
It will serve as a self-defense in any matters of life. A boss is a boss. Subordinates will always need to follow the boss even though he or she is a bully or not. You can always quit the job but finding new job means new environment to adapt, new people to establish rapport, and new work to master and be knowledgeable with.
Another training to attend to and worst is you cannot grow further up with your career if you need to start again and again with new job, fortunately if you could easily find.One must formulate and choose the best approach in handling a bully boss. Human are unique therefore there should be a unique approach in dealing with any person. We only need to know the boss better from afar and decide what type of approach is best to catch his/her tickle point in order to be successful in handling them.
Types of Bullies Bullying is a tyrannical behavior. Some bosses are mind-controlling. Others are manic-depressive and few others are psychotic. There are also obnoxious bully bosses.
They see their subordinates as children and ask for work output from time to time.Harvey Hornstein, management consultant, defines two kinds of tyrannical bosses: conqueror and manipulator. Conqueror bosses use employees’ weaknesses to defeat them. They treat work as competition. Manipulator bosses are silent bullies. They wanted their subordinates to be unrecognized because they fear to be valued less.
They are backstabbers, who wanted to protect and secure their present position or seek promotion. According to Sam Horn, bullies choose their victims like predators do. They choose their target prey in the group of nice people because they are the easiest targets.They operate on a risk-reward ratio. They tried to abuse their targets and see how the targets would react.
If the bully see that you can easily be subjected under his/her influence, the bully wins. Brian Stern, president of management consulting firm Shaker Consulting Group, contend that tyrannical behavior are due to bosses’ thought and belief that they always know what they are doing especially managing people. To compensate on the lack of skill in managing people, they act as tyrant. Stern classified tyrannical bosses into two packages.
One is hard-nosed, tough, demanding perfectionist.They are difficult to work with, but they know how to listen to reason because they wanted the best output from their work. They push people to make things possible to happen at whatever cost. The only important thing to them is to achieve their goals. Second kind is far more difficult to deal because they are freaks and disregard facts. They disregard reasoning and set aside suggestions.
They wanted things to be done on their own way. Whatever they instructed, must be followed. Seven Types of Bullies Robert Mueller, a labour attorney, identified seven types of bullies.He identified these types according to how they bully their individual targets. Before choosing the way to handle the bully boss, we have to classify them first. Subtle Bullies Subtle bullies torture individual targets quietly at unexpected situation and using piercing techniques.
This type is hard to determine during initial meetings, One must be very careful to deal with this kind. You can never think ahead. You must expect surprises affecting your work rates negatively. They can even fire you at your post in legal terms without your knowledge.
They often pretend to be nice but they are actually trying to pull you out of your job. Abusive Bullies Abusive bullies hunt target employees merciless. They usually give works that are not supposedly yours, excluded in your job description. Although nowadays, employees need to understand that companies implement multi-tasking.
Or these bosses will give targets with bundles and towers of tasks to finish in short span of time while other employees have fewer task or almost nothing to do. Crude Bullies Crude Bullies throw weight around loudly and physically. They insult and call-names. They say unfair criticism.This type throws things such as paper reports and mess office files and other things.
They do these bullying acts in front of other employees, or humiliate targets publicly. Raging Bullies Raging bullies are intimidators at work. They explode emotions and burst out anger uncontrollably. They often use eye contact to intimidate.
They see all the details of work done to find any single fault to correct their target. Echo Bullies Echo bullies are not abusive as other types of bullies. They only mimic bullying behaviour from their subordinates. They acted or speak the way their targets do.
They made fun and use behavior of targets jokingly but harmfully. Ghost Bullies This kind of bullies guides, teach and supervise bullying techniques and tactics to lower-level bully bosses. They do not bully targets directly but through other bullies. They are usually bullies at work who indirectly handling the target. Satellite Bullies This last type of bully, as Mueller identified, are people of stature allowing and contributing to someone else’s bullying in discreet manner. They are obsessed with control.
They use money, time and other staffs to seek failure of their targets successfully.They wanted to hinder the growth of potentials of their targets, and worst to unrecognized the targets excellent works. Precautions in Dealing Bully Boss There are ineffective ways in dealing with bully boss that should be kept in mind. Mueller suggests some observations. Do not pursue personal confrontations with bully boss if you do not want to be trap in his/her hands.
Employees who made confrontations with their boss are often considered problematic. Management team members and other co-workers in the company have connotation that meeting with the boss alone may be discussing work-attitude problems or faulty action.It is because most of the time, promotions and recognition of excellent jobs are done in group meetings. Avoiding and ignoring bullying acts from the boss meant success with their bullying actions, and considered as cowering behavior.
More practice of abuse of power may be experience due to this reaction. Have an eye contact with the bully boss. This move adds sincerity and honesty in the words you say. If one cannot do eye contact, there must be something that he or she is hiding. Personal and humane side of employee must not be shown and opened with the bully boss.
They do not tolerate personal aspect in professional level.Personal, spiritual and emotional life can also be used as a weapon against you. Never seek assistance from human resource department because they are allergic to employee-related problems. HR is supposed to protect the employers against any legal claims. Employees must be cautious and prepared in communicating with them.
They will only provide you with many excusable reasons being a subordinate of a bully boss. Avoid Becoming a Target of the Bully Boss Namie advised that the best way to deal with a bully boss is to avoid becoming his/her target. Bully bosses come in a variety of style.But their sole goal is to have absolute control power. They may utter the company line about teamwork and consensus building, but actually they wanted to be always the best. They are not after a team winning, but they are out to win for their own interest.
They classify people in the organization in two ways: people who are on top of their position or people below their position. Bullies target preys from the group of people below them. Bullies are almost anywhere. You can encounter bullies in an industrial company. There were bullies in time-oriented companies such as media on TV or radio.
Bullies can also be found in people-oriented fields like teaching because there are many nice people who are easy targets for bullies. As you identified boss being a bully, do not help or make friends with bullies. The closer you are to them, the most possible that they will target you. One cannot change the attitude of a bully because their aggressive behaviors are hidden for some reasons and these behaviors are express when circumstances need them to do it. Bullies are actually insecure people.
They know in themselves that they are not talented and new employees, who often their targets are better than them.With bullying acts, they draw lines that will serve as a marker so that nobody will be able to replace him/her in the position. They wanted others to look at them in a way that they are always good and better than anyone. Because they are weak and they wanted to hide it from others, they made violent acts toward others. Bullies never apologize.
They can never self-correct. They justified their behavior with actions done by their target subordinates. Bullies are not willing to take responsibilities of their own action. They blame things on their targets.
They thought that they are always right no matter what.Try to analyze the bully when dealing with their targets and when dealing with other workers. There are characteristics of people who they pick and who they do not pick as targets. Learn to give and have something in return. Bullies do not want to give out anything.
They only wanted to get everything from the target. Getting something in return of favor or task given, bullies will avoid dealing with you as much as he can. Gain respect from the bully. Do not allow a bully to bully you around. Show them that you cannot be easy to get and hard also to handle.
You need to be wittier. Some wits will save your dignity against abusive boss.
