They verbally abuse you, humiliate you in front of others. Maybe
it'sbecause power hovers in the air, but offices tend to bring out the
bully in people. We offer strategies for handling such bad bosses.
If the schoolyard is the stomping ground of bully boys and bully
girls, then the office is the playground of adult bullies. Perhaps
because power is the chief perk in most companies, especially those with
tight hierarchies, offices can bring out the bully in people.
Everyone has a war story. There's the boss who calls at 2 A.M. from
Paris--just because he's there. The boss who asks for your evaluation of
a problem and then proceeds to denigrate you and your opinion in front of
the whole staff as you seethe with hopefully hidden rage. "It's a
demonstration of power. It's demeaning," contends Harry Levinson, Ph.D.,
the dean of organizational psychologists and head of the Levinson
Institute in Waltham, Massachusetts.
"I haven't studied office bullying systematically," he says. In
fact, no one has. Despite common perceptions of its prevalence, it's
essentially virgin tuff for organizational psychology. Trouble is,
organizational psychologists are often called in at the highest level of
management; nowadays, most bullies are weeded out before they get to the
top.
Nevertheless, says Levinson, 40 years of consulting have given him
some idea of what they do and why. They over-control, micromanage, and
display contempt for others, usually by repeated verbal abuse and sheer
exploitation. They constantly put others down with snide remarks or
harsh, repetitive, and unfair criticism. They don't just differ with you,
they differ with you contemptuously; they question your adequacy and your
commitment. They humiliate you in front of others.
There are two kinds of bullies, observes organizational
psychologist Laurence Stybel, Ph.D., a principal of Boston's Stybel
Peabody Lincolnshire & Associates: "Successful ones and unsuccessful
ones. The latter don't last long in organizations. The successful bullies
create problems, but they are competent"
Often they are very bright workers. And therein lies the problem.
They make a significant contribution to the company as workers. They get
promoted because of their technical expertise. Then they wind up
supervising others, and spew on people in support functions, on
competitors, perhaps even their own bosses.
They are especially rampant in high-tech companies, engineering
firms, and financial organizations--a stock fund manager doing an
incredible job with investments, for example. "The typical successful
bully thinks, 'They won't do anything to me--I'm the best they've
got,"'Stybel says. But sooner or later, it's too costly to tolerate their
behavior.
It's getting too costly much sooner in most companies. Stybel cites
the example of a large New England hospital where the bully is a
brilliant physician who has been the director of radiology for 11 years.
The bullying was an issue over the years--'m the exit interviews of
departing technical staff.
Why did the hospital decide to do something only now? The
administrator told Stybel: "We can't tolerate the high turnover anymore.
It's too costly in the face of managed care."
Occasionally, bullies do get to the very top. Levinson points to
Harold Geneen, the legendary head of ITT, and coach Vince Lombardi. And
then there's the issue of Fortune magazine devoted every couple of years
to America's "toughest" bosses. Take the female CEO who reportedly yelled
at the executives of a division she felt was underperforming: "You're
eunuchs! How can your wives stand you? You've got nothing between your
legs!"
At least in large corporations, bullying is not as blatant as it
once was. "The John Wayne image of a leader doesn't go over so 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." Intimidation tends to be more polished.
While it's no longer cool to throw around your authority,
counterforces are leading to greater tolerance of negative behavior.
Stybel points to a growing 'What can you do for me now?' stance. "There's
a new generation of CEOs who expect to be in place four years and move
on. This fosters emotional distancing from employees, an excessive focus
on transactions; it does not foster a positive relationship mode.
Companies are growing increasingly performance-oriented; do they care how
anyone feels about an executive's behavior?
"Where I have been retained, it's not because they don't like
bullies" notes Stybel. "Only the underlying economics make it a
dysfunctional behavior."
While bullies inhabit the middle ranks of large concerns, they are
positively thriving at small companies. "There are lots of bad bosses out
there,' says Atlanta-based management consultant Neil Lewis, Ph.D. "In
smaller companies the quality of management is not as good as at large
companies. They're not professional managers."
Stybel warns workers not to focus on where bullying comes from.
"When observers see a boss behave as a bully, they attribute it to trait
characteristics. That may not be the case. It's almost always a product
of individual history and make-up--and the company atmosphere. But who
cares? The most important thing is the behavior."
