Vicki Anderson

I am appalled to hear about the latest victim of workplace bullying in Virginia where a man committed suicide because of a bullying boss. What is so crazy to me is that his coworkers knew about it and were saddened by it, but it took too long for the administration to do anything about it. The man made 17 calls to administration in the week leading up to the suicide. We do not know what action the administration planned to take, just that it is too late.

The problem with this situation is that it not only affects the person being bullied, but the coworkers as well. It is painful to watch it happening to someone else, wondering if it will happen to you. The tension can be enormous. You want the other person to speak up, but they are often so fearful of losing their job that they just try to measure up the best they can and take it. Unfortunately, this is usually about power, not performance, and unless someone else steps in or the person being bullied steps up, the bullying will not stop.

The tension created in these situations usually results in less performance overall because people are operating out of fear instead of working for continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. Organizations that take care of employees first know that the employee will in turn take care of the customer, which will take care of the business.

Be ever vigilant for people who use their position to wield their power. The successful leaders know that it is the people they help to succeed who will make them look good. In order to do that, you must coach, teach, and grow your staff. This is not possible if you are driving them with a whip. Scared people don’t grow and they don’t look out for anyone but themselves.

I just read an article this morning that the New York state assembly is considering a law against workplace bullying. What makes me mad is that we need one!

In my years of work in human resources and consulting with management, it never fails to amaze me that workplace bullies get away with it. They are often people who have some special knowledge that the boss doesn’t think he can do without, so he doesn’t want to take any risk of losing him. Or, the bully has a protector in a power position. Therefore, there are no repercussions for the bad management. Instead, they lose good employees who refuse to put up with their shenanigans. Unfortunately, today many people are stuck because there aren’t many other job options for them to jump to.

The employers don’t want to have this law because they think it will keep them from holding employees accountable. However, I think there is a definite difference between being clear to employees about what standard of performance you want and bullying. There are, of course, employees who will abuse the system and put forth trivial suits that will cost money on both sides, but if you are doing your management right, this should be minimized.

Just as unions came about because people needed to be protected against bad management practices, now someone feels we need another law to protect people against bad management. It is just another example of lack of job ownership. Managers often talk about the need for employees to own their job and take initiative. I think it’s time that managers take ownership of their jobs and start training, coaching, and reinforcing good management skills. It is just dumb business to let good employees work under bullying bosses.