The phrase workplace bully holds many meanings and comes in many forms.
Just about every office has one – that person who makes life around the office challenging, toxic, or even downright frustrating. Sometimes it’s not even on purpose.
Workplace bullies are distracting. They derail performance and can impact the organization’s ability to deliver on its mission. Sure, sometimes their “bully nature” may be known to drive work to completion. They may even be very effective at their job.
But alienating people and making enemies is never a good long-term solution for success. Workplace bullies can cost your organization time, money, and productivity.
So are you the workplace bully. or are you working with or for a bully? Here are the three (3) biggest workplace bullying behaviors I’ve seen:
I call them the 90/10 bully because these bullies are never happy. Nothing is ever good enough. You can do nine things right yet one thing wrong, even slightly wrong, and these bullies will only focus on that one thing wrong — to hell with the nine things right.
They rarely, if ever, give positive feedback and encouragement, but they sure do love to nitpick about the negative. Good managers and leaders address the good and the bad, the positive and the negative. They encourage, coach, teach; they don’t just nitpick for flaws. I mean, really — who wants to work for a “Debbie Downer” anyway!
The blame game bully never takes any responsibility. They’re usually blaming everyone but themselves.
Often accountability is a foreign concept to these folks. It’s easier to point out what someone else did wrong than own up to the fact they may have played a part in the outcome or output they find unsatisfactory.
I’ve found this is the most prominent bully in the workplace, and probably because people don’t like to have the finger pointed at them – so they point it at someone else first.
The fact of the matter is, if you’re responsible for leading a team of people or even for creating deliverables as part of a team, their mistakes are your mistakes, regardless of finger-pointing. You want to be successful and help others to learn and succeed, so don’t try and throw them under the bus.
Do I really need to explain this one?
You know who I am talking about. No matter what you say, they’ll say the opposite. This is one of the most destructive of the bullying behaviors because it inhibits productivity upwards to 100 percent.
For every minute spent with an argumentative bully it’s costing you at least five minutes of productivity. And after the disagreement has ended, one must cool down to relax and refocus prior to getting back to work. That’s not conducive to high performance!
Here’s a bit of advice on why it’s not cool to be a bully leader, or, why you shouldn’t tolerate a workplace bully:
Guilty of being a bully? Stuck working with one (or two, or … ? ) Don’t fret. Here are three ways to improve your behaviors and interactions to prevent lost productivity.
Want to reach some more about how to deal with your buttons getting pushed? Check out our blog, Are Your Buttons Getting Pushed? 3 Tips On What You Can Do.
Even if you aren’t a workplace bully you’re bound to encounter one. These are three key ways to improve your style, make your work life a bit better, and help to improve how responsive, productive, and profitable your organization can become.
This was originally published on the Tolero Think Tank blog.
