As concerns about workplace bullying and mobbing bring to light the damaging toll of interpersonal aggression, there remains a disturbing tenor to many of these discussions that leaves me wondering just how possible it will ever be to minimize workplace aggression. With calls to purge and shun anyone labeled "bully" on the one hand, and tips on how to document and eradicate anyone labeled "difficult employee" on the other, there seems to be more and more room for intolerance, exclusion, and aggression among the workforce.
I have written elsewhere about my concerns about the use of the bully label, and about the distinction between one-on-one bullying and collective mobbing. Central to these views is my belief that in order to promote civil workplaces, we must extend compassion to our colleagues and co-workers, even when to do so is discomforting. When a worker is targeted for elimination, whether for poor performance, financial constraints, or because they have been unfairly marked for retaliation, discrimination or harassment, the common response among the workforce is to avoid the worker, spread gossip (often masked as "concern"), and align with management. When this happens, workplace mobbing ensues and the impact on the targeted worker is profound.
It is at this stage of the process of eliminating a worker that nearly all workers behave at their very worst. The response of a targeted worker is likely to be one of anguish, anger and depression -- the very traits that can then be used against the worker to paint him or her as mentally unstable, threatening or unproductive. Workers in management often align to ensure that regardless of the targeted worker's past performance or procedural fairness, the termination of the worker is presented as justified. Managers climbing the corporate ladder often find themselves acting in ways they personally abhor, but feel they must carry out in order to demonstrate their loyalty and grit. The workers closest to the target become fearful of their jobs, and in many cases, opportunistic. To distance themselves from the target, they are likely to spread gossip that only undermines the worker's status and further isolates the worker. Moreover, in the interest of workplace entertainment, gossip inevitably becomes embellished as it spreads, until there is little truth to it -- but the subject's reputation is severely damaged nonetheless. As those who spread the gossip feel discomfort in their behaviors -- whether by making "small betrayals," withdrawing friendship and support, spreading rumors, or not sharing critical information with the targeted worker -- they are more likely to act even more adversely toward their vulnerable co-worker, to justify their behaviors as necessary and righteous.
In short, workplace conflict brings out the worst in people, and the worse people behave, the worse they will behave. What happens in these cases is that we lose sight of human compassion, and replace it with combative behaviors that further erode our humanity and escalate workplace conflicts. Paradoxically, in many of our efforts to eliminate bad behaviors in the workplace, such as efforts to end bullying, sexual harassment, and discrimination, we become so concerned with upholding our virtues that once someone is accused of any of these bad behaviors, we tend to no longer see the worker as a human, but as a symbol of what we abhor. In other cases, once collective mobbing ensues, the targeted worker is viewed as the source of conflict, rather than the target of it. Even in cases involving poor managers, it is all too easy to view them as unsympathetic symbols of corporate power, rather than humans struggling to survive, and build and sustain relationships.
The workplace is a network of strategic and treasured relationships, and during times of conflict, these relationships can be destroyed just as new ones can be forged. Yet the more we draw on a rhetoric of intolerance, labeling, and exclusion to rid the workplace of the kinds of people we do not like, the less humane we make the workplace and the more our professional relationships become void of compassion and sincerity.
If there is one thing we could do to make our workplaces more rewarding and enriching, it is not by creating ever more categories of the kinds of people we do not want. It is by nurturing compassion within ourselves, one small act at a time. By refraining from gossip, and demonstrating greater kindness to workers who are targeted, we plant seeds of compassion in our workplaces. By cooperating with our colleagues, even when we disagree or dislike them, rather than avoiding them, we plant seeds of compassion in our workplaces. And by understanding that workers under fire may not always behave ideally, but may well be kind and decent people -- and excellent workers -- we plant seeds of compassion in our workplaces from which the fertile grounds of human relationships might thrive.
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Mark Goulston, M.D.: Know Any Complainers or Yellers?
But when conflict arises, as it inevitably will, that's when out of balance power relationships, especially notable in the U.S., often rear their ugly heads. At that point, targets of mistreatment -- especially those in subordinate positions -- exercise compassion and understanding at their potential peril. As you note, members of management are apt to band together to endorse the termination of a targeted employee, and all of the positive feelings radiated by the target won't be of much help. Indeed, one of the classic bullying scenarios is of the well-meaning target making every effort to placate her tormenter(s) ("it must be something I'm doing wrong" is a common form of self-blame), to no avail.
If at-will employment wasn't the rule of the day, if workers had a general right of free speech when exercised responsibly, and if all employees had a right to be free from targeted, abusive bullying and mobbing, then the playing field would be leveled considerably. From a legal angle, I've been working on a post for my blog on how the absence of basic worker safeguards may actually promote workplace dysfunction and discord -- stay tuned!
Best,
David Yamada
My primary impetus for writing this piece, however, was for those engaged in mobbing, shunning, demonizing, or otherwise rationalizing abuses to a target, including those who might reject the job application of a mobbing target, to extend compassion to targets. Beyond that, we might all benefit from reflecting on how compassion for those who least deserve it might help to make each of us more sensitive as humans, and help to understand human sufferings and imperfections as something more than just good v. evil.
Are there any case studies or better yet empirical evidence that demonstrates how mobbing can be overcome and/or prevented? What has actually worked in the past, if anything?
Also, is simply "reflecting" on behavioral choices enough here to make a difference? Can "reflection" compete with the intense fear conditioning (the fear of also becoming a mobbing target/whistle blower) and the positive social reinforcement contingencies you've described in your mobbing posts?
Finally, you sometimes mention the gossip and rumor mills, where in the intensive mobbing can result in related behaviors that "confirm" the validity of the gossip in an almost self-fulfilling way. Again, how can that be realistically countered and prevented?
I've worked with many clients who have presented with work related stress. I've seen the effects of this mobbing process unfold in my own counseling office. The target is warn down over time and can begin to exhibit "mental health behaviors" from work-stress induced sleep deprivation and from countless other examples of the "thousand cuts" inflicted by the mobbing group; - those good people gone wrong.
That said, the literature in group aggression, riots, and animal behavior may provide useful answers, but that topic is too broad to address in an answer; I'll tackle it in future writing.
On the topic of reflection, it is unlikely to make a difference at the level of society, but if one person reading this post who is witnessing or participating in mobbing reflects on their own actions and reverses course, it has spared one target added pain and enlightened one participant. If one person considering hiring -- or rejecting -- a job applicant because they were mobbed considers that maybe the applicant was unjustly targeted as a result of group behavior and not their own failings, and merits an interview, then reflection made a difference.
For example in the Zimbardo, Milgram and any related research, has anyone looked at the characteristics of those people who would not participate; - those who would not deliver shocks and other forms of torture and harm to fellow human beings?
So long as union busting is legally sanctioned and "at will" employment is the default position of the law, employees will always be powerless to defend themselves against unfairness and abuse.
"Compassion"? Sounds to me like that will be about as effective as "philanthropy" has been historically as a remedy for poverty. The truth is, the rich and powerful like it that way and they aren't going to surrender any of their prerogatives in the name of "compassion".
We can try and be nice to each other, but the strategy of the powerful is and always will be to divide and conquer. Unless employees are given the legal rights to fight back, there will always be blameless victims and no amount of mutual back rubbing is going to change that.
Please refer back to my earlier comment and questions.
Saints are capable of acting with idealistic and morally lofty principles in the face of systems that promote violence, cruelty and selfishness, but most people just play along with the system. Sadly, saints have a way of being turned into martyrs because they get in the way of power. The opportunistic majority understand this, so when the Romans and the High Priests tell them to jeer at the wounded Jesus, the vast majority either comply or get out of sight.
Our system of paid employment places all power at the top. Most of our workplaces are about as democratic as a feudal manor in 1200 AD, and most American employees have about as much to say about what goes on in their workplaces as medieval serfs. If your boss is a nice lord/lady, that's wonderful, but there are a whole lotta companies that celebrate ruthless ambition and where the bosses would regard those who openly demonstrate sympathy or compassion to a colleague who has been marked for termination as losers or malcontents.
Jan, I see you have a nice gig as a blogger, and I hope you're doing well, but I wonder when is the last time you occupied a mid/lower level worker's cubicle in some big corporation's office building?