How to Stop Workplace Bullies in Their Tracks

12/02/20 • 11 min

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:

He lets inappropriate conduct occur in meetings – when Paul could stop the bully from constantly interrupting and preventing others from speaking. Paul must clarify what appropriate meeting etiquette specifically is, and ensure it is honored.
He acts as a go-between when the bully refuses to interact with people he thinks are “stupid”– when Paul could make it clear to both parties that they need to work things out together.
He holds his anger in and compromises his integrity – when Paul could just deal with this issue directly, modeling leadership for his team and showing them a safe, respectful, collaborative work environment is required at the company.
He lets others vent to him about the bully — instead of creating an opportunity to let disgruntled parties communicate their grievances directly and interface with HR.

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:

Person X puts others down, makes them feel small, condescends... because inside they don’t feel they ...what?
Person Y spreads fear, rumors, negative gossip... because inside they don’t feel ...what?
Person Z talks about inequality, unfairness, how others get special treatment because inside they feel they don’t ...what?

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:

What would you like? (the outcome they desire that they can create and maintain)
What will having that do for you? (how they’ll feel and the benefits they’ll get)
How will you know when you have it? (proof or criteria that will be present)
Where, when, with whom do you want this? (timing, who else, scope)
What might of value you have to risk to get this? (is it ok for them to have this outcome?)
What are the next steps?

Ask the question “What will having that do f...

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.

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:

He lets inappropriate conduct occur in meetings – when Paul could stop the bully from constantly interrupting and preventing others from speaking. Paul must clarify what appropriate meeting etiquette specifically is, and ensure it is honored.
He acts as a go-between when the bully refuses to interact with people he thinks are “stupid”– when Paul could make it clear to both parties that they need to work things out together.
He holds his anger in and compromises his integrity – when Paul could just deal with this issue directly, modeling leadership for his team and showing them a safe, respectful, collaborative work environment is required at the company.
He lets others vent to him about the bully — instead of creating an opportunity to let disgruntled parties communicate their grievances directly and interface with HR.

The Surprising Truth About What Bullies Want

Person X puts others down, makes them feel small, condescends... because inside they don’t feel they ...what?
Person Y spreads fear, rumors, negative gossip... because inside they don’t feel ...what?
Person Z talks about inequality, unfairness, how others get special treatment because inside they feel they don’t ...what?

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

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:

What would you like? (the outcome they desire that they can create and maintain)
What will having that do for you? (how they’ll feel and the benefits they’ll get)
How will you know when you have it? (proof or criteria that will be present)
Where, when, with whom do you want this? (timing, who else, scope)
What might of value you have to risk to get this? (is it ok for them to have this outcome?)
What are the next steps?

Ask the question “What will having that do f...

Previous Episode

Sink or Swim: A New Leader's Guide to the First 90 Days

There are about 350 new CEOs at the world’s largest public companies right now, with 102 new CEOs in North America alone.

What do new or incoming CEOs need to know? Three key things.

1- Secure Acceptance From The Team Overall

Successful CEOs frequently take the pulse of their culture. When you’re just starting out, it’s crucial to establish a baseline in order to:

Gain insights into how to grow the company in a healthy, optimal way supporting core company objectives
Improve and expand a unified company culture—and discover any silos or warring factions
Effectively motivate team members—what truly motivates them may surprise you
Identify the next generation of leaders—and determine who is your best investment

When we’re brought in to help a current or new CEO take the pulse of their culture, we’ll look at the company’s org chart. We’ll pick a sampling of 5% of the employee base or 15-20 people (whichever # is smaller) to interview across different departments, roles (up and down the org chart) and tenures with the company.

We’ll then ask them a series of questions including:

What is it like to work here now?

What frustrates you the most?

What motivates you the most?

How do you feel about your role and responsibilities?

If you could wave a magic wand and have the culture be any way you want, what would that be like?

How would you describe the executive team’s leadership style?

Be sure to add a number of additional questions based on what you learn from the above. When we do a Cultural Assessment, we gain tremendously valuable info that helps us:

1- Reduce CEO direct reports by up to 50%

2- Increase CEO and key executive strategic/high value time by 5-15 hours per week

3- Increase annual profit per employee by up to 40%

4- Increase gross revenue by up to 60%

5- Shorten the sales cycle by up to 50%

6- Increase accountability and team performance by up to 35%

Whether you do it yourself or get outside help, be sure to keep your eye on this information. Simply interviewing the team won’t move the needle. Interviewing, assessing, creating and executing a plan, and generating results is key to turn the tide to your favor.

One of the top new CEO team mistakes includes:

Avoiding the “regular people” and only spending time with the exec team and Board. This makes them feel they aren’t safe and you don’t care. How to remedy this:

1. Institute Town Hall meetings, where a brief company update is provided, a vision for the year and quarter is reinforced, team members are celebrated, and a 20-minute educational session is provided. Then, end with a Q&A session where anonymous questions may be submitted in advance... no topic is off limits. A culture of candor with kindness is key. Use social technologies to create increased communication and collaboration too.

2. Remember your team needs to feel safety, belonging, mattering... continually foster this.

The other top CEO team mistake is:

Not having a key team member assess and enroll outside help in performing a complete Cultural Assessment and then following it with a People Plan to optimize your culture.

The 2nd Key Thing a new CEO Needs to do is:

-Secure Acceptance from the Executive Team (will they follow you?)

Next, a new CEO (or existing leader wanting to optimize their impact) needs to gain acceptance from their executive team.

How: Inquiry vs Advocacy.

Ask tons of questions—focus on 5 inquiries (questions) per each tendency to advocate (give orders). You must show the executive team from the start that you don’t support a culture of order takers. You support a culture of leadership, and you create them and grow them via inquiry. Ask your executive team members individually (or get outside help if you think you’ll get more pure answers) the following questions:

What frustrates you the most? Have you tried to change this? If so, what happened?

What motivates you the most? What motivates your team the most?

If you could wave a magic wand and have the culture be any way you want, what would that be like?

What is the company’s vision? Do you feel aligned with it? Do you think the entire exec team is aligned with it and executing toward it?

What are our top 3 business priorities? What should they be?

Then, lay out or enhance the People Plan I mentioned above. You will win the hearts and minds of your team post haste. To summarize the People Plan, you’ll need:

Individual ...

Next Episode

Special Episode: Inside Leadership with Guest Christine Crandell

Christine Crandell, President of New Business Strategies, is our special guest for this insightful episode of the Crack the Behavior Code podcast where we discuss the importance of finding opportunity in times of crisis and much more.

Christine is an award-winning expert in customer experience optimization and B2B marketing strategy who has helped over 100 companies across the globe generate an average of 40-50% increase in revenue and ROI.

Connect with Christine and New Business Strategies here:

Twitter: @chriscrandell

http://newbizs.com/

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