How to Stop Workplace Bullies in Their Tracks
The VP of Finance constantly interrupts and actively prevents others from speaking in meetings. He scoffs when they share ideas or make suggestions.
A Managing Director at a financial services firm publicly trashes another Director’s new strategy, tearing it apart, without having the domain expertise to truly understand what she is saying.
The lead software engineer makes snide remarks about the product development process during team meetings. He publicly denounces the marketing team too.
What do these three have in common? They’re bullies.
Bullies are scary, shocking, embarrassing and far too often tolerated in the workplace. Why? Because we don’t want to have to deal with them, we don’t want the attack, the conflict, the discomfort. So we either pretend they aren’t wreaking havoc, or we grit our teeth and tolerate them.
It’s time to stop.
How We Let Bullies Thrive
"Paul," the COO of a consumer-packaged goods company manages the VP of Finance bully I mentioned earlier. During coaching, Paul realized how he tolerates, and even allows, this unacceptable behavior.
Here’s how Paul is enabling the bully:
We all avoid uncomfortable human relations issues sometimes… but what is the cost? Exorbitant--as we daily give our power away, compromise our integrity, and inadvertently teach our team that bullying is acceptable.
The Surprising Truth About What Bullies Want
I have talked before about how we all crave safety, belonging and mattering. Often one of these is exactly what the bully wants – he or she is just trying to get it in an ineffective and inappropriate way. Take a guess at what each of the following bullies wants:
The answers are mattering, safety, and belonging. Once you uncover what a bully wants, you can start to give it to them, to begin reducing what Seth Godin calls the tantrum cycle. We can also then help shift the bully from tension to empowerment. More on this in a minute.
The Three-Step Bully Rehab Plan
There are three steps to stop bullying:
1. Identify how you are enabling it, like Paul, the COO in our example earlier.
2. End the enabling system
The bully is generally playing the persecutor role, which creates the need for a rescuer to protect the victim. Then the train has left the proverbial station and we’re zooming ahead on a ride to a place we don’t want to go. We want to shift from Problem-Focused to Outcome-Focused.
We want to quickly interrupt the pattern of persecutor-victim-rescuer and step out of the system by using an Outcome Frame. Ask the bully:
Ask the question “What will having that do for you” a few times, as often this is where what they really want is revealed. The Outcome Frame is a potent tool to get a person to focus on the outcome, and not the problem—it helps them get unstuck. Then you can shift to an outcome-focused pattern, where the victim/rescuer/persecutor have shifted to their positive alternative.
The Third Step in the Bully Rehab Plan is to:
-Set up a new system with healthy boundaries and behaviors (rich with safety, belonging, mattering and shifting from tension to empowerment.)
Note that if the bully is above you on the org chart, you’ll need a mentor equal or greater in stature to the bully to do the following.
Our clients love our conflict resolution process (bullies or not).
I’m thrilled to report that the Managing Director and software engineer now play well with colleagues, and the VP of Finance is in the turnaround process with positive momentum.
Try this process and let me know how it goes!
Show Notes
1. Safety, Belonging, Mattering infographic
2. Tantrum cycle: Seth’s Blog: https://seths.blog/2013/11/extinguishing-the-tantrum-cycle/
3. Power Your Tribe graphic: Shifting from Problem-Focused to Outcome-Focused
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