Bullies & Their Targets

TYPES OF BULLYING

Pressure bullying or unwitting bullying 
is where the stress of the moment causes behavior to deteriorate; the person becomes short-tempered, irritable and may shout or swear at others. Everybody does this from time to time, but when the pressure is removed, behavior returns to normal, the person recognizes the inappropriateness of their behavior, makes amends, and may apologize, and - crucially - learns from the experience so that next time the situation arises they are better able to deal with it. This is "normal" behavior and I do not include pressure bullying in my definition of workplace bullying.

Organizational bullying
is a combination of pressure bullying and corporate bullying, and occurs when an organization struggles to adapt to changing markets, reduced income, cuts in budgets, imposed expectations, and other external pressures.

Corporate bullying
is where the employer abuses employees with impunity knowing that the law is weak and jobs are scarce:

• coercing employees to work 60/70/80 weeks on a regular basis then making life hell for (or dismissing) anyone who objects
• dismissing anyone who looks like having a stress breakdown as it's cheaper to pay the costs of unfair dismissal at Employment Tribunal than risk facing a personal injury claim for stress breakdown
• introduces "absence management" to deny employees annual or sick leave to which they are genuinely entitled
• regularly snoops and spies on employees, by listening in to telephone conversations, using the mystery shopper, contacting customers behind employees backs and asking leading questions, conducting covert video surveillance (perhaps by fellow employees), sending personnel officers or private investigators to an employee's home to interrogate the employees whilst on sick leave, threatening employees with interrogation the moment they return from sick leave, etc.
• deems any employee suffering from stress as weak and inadequate whilst aggressively ignoring and denying the cause of stress (bad management and bullying)
• "encourages" employees (with promises of promotion and/or threats of disciplinary action) to fabricate complaints about their colleagues
• employees are "encouraged" to give up full-time permanent positions in favor of short-term contracts; anyone who resists has their life made hell

Institutional bullying
is similar to corporate bullying and arises when bullying becomes entrenched and accepted as part of the culture. People are moved, long-existing contracts are replaced with new short-term contracts on less favorable terms with the accompanying threat of "agree to this or else", workloads are increased, work schedules are changed, roles are changed, career progression paths are blocked or terminated, etc - and all of this is without consultation.

Client bullying
is where employees are bullied by those they serve, teachers are bullied (and often assaulted) by pupils and their parents, nurses are bullied by patients and their relatives, social workers are bullied by their clients, and shop/bank/building society staff are bullied by customers. Often the client is claiming their perceived right (better service) in an abusive,  derogatory and often physically violent manner. Client bullying can also be employees bullying their clients.

Serial bullying
is where the source of all dysfunction can be traced to one individual, who picks on one employee after another and destroys them. This is the most common type of bullying I come across; most of this web site is devoted to describing and defining the serial bully, who exhibits the behavioral characteristics of a socialized psychopath. Most people know at least one person in their life with the profile of the serial bully; most people do not recognize this person as a socialized psychopath, or sociopath. I estimate one person in thirty is either  a physically-violent psychopath who commits criminal acts, or an antisocial whose behavior is antisocial, or a sociopath who commits mostly non-arrestable offences.

Secondary bullying
is mostly unwitting bullying which people start exhibiting whenthere's a serial bully in the department. The pressure of trying to deal with a dysfunctional, divisive and aggressive serial bully causes everyone's behavior to decline.

Pair bullying
is a serial bully with a colleague. Often one does the talking whilst the other watches and listens. Usually it's the quiet one you need to watch. Usually they are of opposite gender and frequently there's an affair going on.

Gang bullying
is a serial bully with colleagues. Gangs can occur anywhere, but flourish in corporate bullying climates. If the bully is an extrovert, they are likely to be leading from the front; they may also be a shouter and screamer, and thus easily identifiable (and recordable on tape and video-able). If the bully is an introvert, that person will be in the background initiating the mayhem but probably not taking an active part, and may thus be harder to identify. A common tactic of this type of bully is to tell everybody a different story - usually about what others are alleged to have said about that person - and encourage each person to think they are the only one with the correct story. Introvert bullies are the most dangerous bullies.
Half the people in the gang are happy for the opportunity to behave badly, they gain gratification from the feeling of power and control, and enjoy the patronage, protection and reward from the serial bully. The other half of the gang are coerced into joining in, usually through fear of being the next target if they don't. If anything backfires, one of these coerces will be the scapegoat and sacrificial lamb on whom enraged targets will be encouraged to vent their anger. The serial bully watches from a safe distance. Serial bullies gain a great deal of gratification from encouraging and watching others engage in conflict, especially those who might otherwise pool negative information about them.
Gang bullying or group bullying is often called mobbing and usually involves scape-goating andvictimization.

Vicarious bullying
is where two parties are encouraged to engage in adversarial interaction or conflict. Similar to gang bullying, although the bully may or may not be directly connected with either of the two parties. One party becomes the bully's instrument of harassment and is deceived and manipulated into bullying the other party. An example of vicarious bullying is where the serial bully creates conflict between employer and employee, participating occasionally to stoke the conflict, but rarely taking an active part in the conflict themselves.

Regulation bullying
is where a serial bully forces their target to comply with rules, regulations, procedures or laws regardless of their appropriateness, applicability or necessity. Legal bullying - the bringing of a vexatious legal action to control and punish a person - is one of the nastiest forms of bullying.

Residual bullying
is the bullying of all kinds that continues after the serial bully has left. Like recruits like and like promotes like, therefore the serial bully bequeaths a dysfunctional environment to those who are left. This can last for years.

Cyber bullying
is the misuse of email systems or Internet forums etc for sending aggressive flame mails. Serial bullies have few communication skills (and often none), thus the impersonal nature of email makes it an ideal tool for causing conflict. Sometimes called cyber-stalking.

In environments where bullying is the norm, most people will eventually either become bullies or become targets. There are few bystanders, as most people will eventually be sucked in. It's about survival: you either adopt bullying tactics yourself and thus survive by not becoming a target, or you stand up against bullying and refuse to join in, in which case you are bullied, harassed, victimized and scape-goated until your health is so severely impaired that you have a stress breakdown (this is a psychiatric injury, not a mental illness), take ill-health retirement, leave, find yourself unexpectedly selected for redundancy, or are unfairly dismissed.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE TARGETED?

People who are bullied find that they are:

• constantly criticized and subjected to destructive criticism (often euphemistically called constructive criticism, which is an oxymoron) -explanations and proof of achievement are ridiculed, overruled, dismissed or ignored
• forever subject to nit-picking and trivial fault-finding (the triviality is the giveaway)
• undermined, especially in front of others; false concerns are raised, or doubts are expressed over a person's performance or standard of work - however, the doubts lack substantive and quantifiable evidence, for they are only the bully's unreliable opinion and are for control, not performance enhancement
• overruled, ignored, sidelined, marginalized, ostracized
• isolated and excluded from what's happening (this makes people more vulnerable and easier to control and subjugate)
• singled out and treated differently (for example everyone else can have long lunch breaks but if they are one minute late it's a disciplinary offence)
• belittled, degraded, demeaned, ridiculed, patronized, subject to disparaging remarks
• regularly the target of offensive language, personal remarks, or inappropriate bad language
• the target of unwanted sexual behavior
• threatened, shouted at and humiliated, especially in front of others
• taunted and teased where the intention is to embarrass and humiliate
• set unrealistic goals and deadlines which are unachievable or which are changed without notice or reason or whenever they get near achieving them
• deniedinformation or knowledge necessary for undertaking work and achieving objectives
• starved of resources, sometimes whilst others often receive more than they need
• denied support by their manager and thus find themselves working in a management vacuum
• either overloaded with work (this keeps people busy [with no time to tackle bullying] and makes it harder to achieve targets) or have all their work taken away (which is sometimes replaced with inappropriate menial jobs, photocopying, filing, making coffee)
• have their responsibility increased but their authority removed
• have their work plagiarized, stolen and copied - the bully then presents their target's work (senior management) as their own
• are given the silent treatment: the bully refuses to communicate and avoids eye contact (always an indicator of an abusive relationship); often instructions are received only via email, memos, or a succession of yellow stickies or post-it notes
• subject to excessive monitoring, supervision, micro-management, recording, snooping etc
• the subject of written complaints by other members of staff (most of whom have been coerced into fabricating allegations - the complaints are trivial, often bizarre ["He looked at me in a funny way"] and often bear striking similarity to each other, suggesting a common origin)
• forced to work long hours, often without remuneration and under threat of dismissal
• find requests for leave have unacceptable and unnecessary conditions attached, sometimes overturning previous approval. especially if the person has taken action to address bullying in the meantime
• denied annual leave, sickness leave, or - especially - compassionate leave
• when on leave, are harassed by calls at home or on holiday, often at unsocial hours
• receive unpleasant or threatening calls or are harassed with intimidating memos, notes or emails with no verbal communication, immediately prior to weekends and holidays (4pm Friday or Christmas Eve - often these are hand-delivered)
• do not have a clear job description, or have one that is exceedingly long or vague; the bully often deliberately makes the person's role unclear
• are invited to "informal" meetings which turn out to be disciplinary hearings
• are denied representation at meetings, often under threat of further disciplinary action; sometimes the bully abuses their position of power to exclude any representative who is competent to deal with bullying
• encouraged to feel guilty, and to believe they're always the one at fault
• subjected to unwarranted and unjustified verbal or written warnings
• facing unjustified disciplinary action on trivial or specious or false charges
• facing dismissal on fabricated charges or flimsy excuses, often using a trivial incident from months or years previously
• coerced into reluctant resignation, enforced redundancy, early or ill-health retirement
• denial of the right to earn your livelihood including preventing you getting another job, usually with a bad or misleading reference

 

 

For answers to more questions you might have:

Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about bullying, mobbing and harassment