When the boss is a bully

They verbally abuse you, humiliate you in front of others. Maybe it’s because power is in the air, but offices tend to bring out the bully in people. We offer strategies to handle such potholes.

If the schoolyard is the playground for child bullies, then the office is the playground for adult bullies. Perhaps because power is the primary benefit in most companies, especially those with strict hierarchies, offices can bring out the bully in people.

Everyone has a war story. There is the boss who calls at 2 in the morning from Paris, just because he is there. The boss who asks for your assessment of a problem and then proceeds to disparage you and your opinion in front of the entire staff while you rage with hidden rage. “It’s a display of power. It’s degrading,” says Harry Levinson, Ph.D., dean of organizational psychologists and director of the Levinson Institute in Waltham, Massachusetts.

“I haven’t systematically studied bullying in the office,” he says. In fact, no one has. Despite common perceptions of its prevalence, it is essentially virgin tuff for organizational psychology. The problem is that organizational psychologists are often called to the highest level of management; Nowadays, most thugs are eliminated before they reach the top.

Still, says Levinson, 40 years of consulting has given him insight into what they do and why. They overcontrol, micromanage, and show contempt for others, often through repeated verbal abuse and sheer exploitation. They constantly put others down with sarcastic comments or harsh, repetitive, and unfair criticism. They not only differ with you, they differ with you contemptuously; they question their adequacy and their commitment. They humiliate you in front of others.

There are two types of bullies, observes organizational psychologist Laurence Stybel, Ph.D., principal of Boston’s Stybel Peabody Lincolnshire & Associates: “The successful and the unsuccessful. The latter don’t last long in organizations. Successful bullies create problems.” , but they are competent”

They are often very bright workers. And therein lies the problem. They make a significant contribution to the company as workers. They are promoted because of their technical expertise. They then end up supervising others and criticizing people in support roles, competitors, maybe even their own bosses.

They are especially widespread in hi-tech companies, engineering firms and financial organizations, for example a stock fund manager who does an amazing job with investments. “The typical successful stalker thinks, ‘They won’t do anything to me, I’m the best they’ve got,'” says Stybel. But sooner or later, it is too costly to tolerate their behavior.

It is becoming too expensive much sooner in most companies. Stybel cites the example of a large New England hospital where the bully is a brilliant doctor who has been director of radiology for 11 years. Bullying was a problem over the years: I’m at exit interviews for technical staff who are leaving.

Why did the hospital decide to do something now? The administrator told Stybel, “We can no longer tolerate high turnover. It’s too expensive versus managed care.”

Every once in a while, the thugs rise to the top. Levinson points to Harold Geneen, the legendary ITT director, and trainer Vince Lombardi. And then there’s Fortune magazine’s biennial issue devoted to America’s “toughest” bosses. Take, for example, the CEO who reportedly yelled at the executives of a division she felt was not performing well: “You are eunuchs! How can your wives stand you? You have nothing between you and me!” the legs!”.

At least in large corporations, bullying is not as blatant as it once was. “John Wayne’s image of a leader doesn’t work as well in the ’90s,” notes Pat Alexander of the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina. “It affects the efficiency of the entire organization.” Bullying tends to be more polished.

While it is no longer okay to waste your authority, the counterforces are leading to a greater tolerance of negative behavior. Stybel signals a growing ‘What can you do for me now?’ stop. “There is a new generation of CEOs who are looking forward to four years on the job and moving on. This encourages emotional detachment from employees, an excessive focus on transactions; does not encourage a positive mode of relationship. Companies are growing more and more performance-oriented; care how anyone feels about an executive’s behavior?

“Where they’ve held me, it’s not because they don’t like bullies,” says Stybel. “Just the underlying economics make it dysfunctional behavior.”

Although bullies occupy the middle ranks of large companies, they positively thrive in small businesses. “There are a lot of bad potholes,” says Neil Lewis, Ph.D., an Atlanta-based management consultant. “In smaller companies, the quality of management is not as good as in large companies. They are our professional managers.”

Stybel warns workers not to focus on the source of the harassment. “When observers see a boss behaving like a bully, they attribute it to trait characteristics. That may not be the case. It’s almost always a product of individual history and makeup, and the company atmosphere.” But who cares? It’s the behavior that matters.”

Bullies do a lot of damage in organizations. They make subordinates run scared. They put people in a protective mode, which interferes with the company’s ability to generate innovation. They are not based on perpetuating the organization, says Levinson. “It keeps you in a state of psychological emergency. Add to that the anger you feel toward the bully and a sense of anger toward yourself for putting up with that behavior.” These are not the best conditions to do your best work, any job.

Just like with kids, bully bosses have blind spots. They do not see themselves accurately. They see themselves as better than everyone else, which only acts to justify their bullying behavior, a sentiment reinforced by the promotion. Another big blind spot: sensitivity to the feelings of others. Often, Levinson says, this comes up in competitive settings, where “you learn to focus on your own behavior. It creates a kind of psychological ignorance.”

Stybel has developed a psychological karate chop to “unfreeze” executive attitudes: a personalized parole letter. Basically, she tells an executive that, due to changing market conditions or some other external factor, his weaknesses now outweigh the strengths she has shown for a long time. “She spells out desired behavior changes in a positive way, not ‘people are complaining that you’re a bully,’ but ‘if you make these changes, you’ll have a reputation as someone considerate.'” She gives top brass 90 days to get in shape, or else.

Making progress with an office bully is never easy, observers agree. The first step is to recognize when it is happening. Repetitive verbal abuse. Micromanagement. Operation. Any activity that repeatedly demands or is impolite. “Any time you get put down, you’re dealing with a bully,” says Levinson. “Sometimes it’s unintentional. We all get caught up in it, once. You apologize and it’s over. But bullies don’t recognize their rudeness and don’t apologize.”

Professional Tactics

Here are tactics from experienced organizational consultants:

Confront the bully: “I’m sorry you feel you have to do that, but I won’t tolerate that kind of behavior. It doesn’t belong here.” It can be surprisingly effective. “Bullyers have no limits on their own behavior. Some external controls can force them to back down,” says Levinson. “A bully can’t intimidate you if you don’t let yourself be intimidated.”

Carry out the confrontation in private, behind closed doors in the bully’s office, during lunch away from the office. The harasser will not back down in front of an audience.

Specify the behavior that is infeasible: “You can’t just shoot from the hip and demote me in front of my staff or others.”
Don’t play armchair psychologist. Restrict the discussion to specific behaviors, not theories of motivation.

Make your boss aware by showing him the consequences of his behavior on others. “I’ve noticed Jim seems so demoralized lately. I think one of the contributing factors may be the meeting last week when you ridiculed him for producing an inadequate sales report.” Many executives have no information about how their leadership style impacts others, Alejandro says. “The companions do not tell them that they are in competition.

Why provide information that can make your competitor more effective? “Awareness isn’t enough; help your boss figure out what to do. Specify the behavior change you want,” observes Marquand. “Give your boss an example of desirable behavior, from your own repertoire of actions. Jump in with ‘But I can remember a month ago when you were . . . lavished your praise on that new assistant,’ or whatever.”
Point out how others view the boss’s behavior. “You embarrass me when you publicly humiliate me in a meeting, but you also embarrass yourself.

You’re showing your weakness.” Comparing one’s perceptions and the perceptions of others is often a “grabber,” Alexander finds. “The fact of the difference draws people’s attention.”

Try humor. If you tell your boss that he is acting like a cartoon, that may be enough for him to notice.

Recruit an ally or allies. Standing up for yourself can stop a bully by earning their respect. But it could also cost you his job. The higher his boss is in the organization, Lewis says, the more allies he will need. “It’s worth checking with other workers if the behavior he’s experiencing is pervasive or idiosyncratic,” says Levinson. “If it’s widespread, it’s easier for two or three people to take on a boss than just one.”

If the company you work for is big enough to have one, talk to the human resources department. Unfortunately, Levinson says, companies often don’t find out about bullying experiences until an exit interview. But the bigger the company you work for, the more mechanisms there are to deal with harassers. Unfortunately, the corollary is that in a smaller organization you may have no choice but to leave.

If you are important to the organization, you can achieve your goal by going to your boss’s boss. But that’s always a lucky move; you’ll have to live with your boss in the morning.