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How to Overcome Bullying. OvercomeBullying.org provides information and resources to help you overcome school and workplace bullying, mobbing and harassment. Speak Out Now! The Speak Out system gives your school or workplace a unique, innovative and affordable way of dealing with abuse.
 
BASIC ADVICE TO TACKLE WORKPLACE BULLIES
  1. DOCUMENT AND DIARISE ALL SIGNIFICANT EVENTS RELATING TO YOUR BULLY. ACCUMULATE ALL EVIDENCE THAT WOULD SUPPORT YOUR CASE.

  2. Decide if you want to make a complaint about your workplace bully to HR. This is risky as the person you complain to could side with your bully and it could get worse for you. It may be only worth doing this if you have good supportive evidence and/or the support of coworkers.

  3. It may be possible to successfully coexist with your bully by "keeping your head down". It is a balancing act to be tactfully assertive to avoid your bully breaching your personal boundaries. For example, tactfully decline requests by your bully if you think that he is just attempting to manipulate you. You need to make it known to your bully that you are not a pushover and the bully may consequently find it easier to find another victim to manipulate. However, going too far and overtly criticizing your bully can be dangerous. It can make him very angry (known as "narcissistic rage") and things could get a lot worse for you.

  4. A variant of the previous strategy that may be worth trying, is to resist getting angry or respond to your bully when he taunts you. He may get off on making you angry so if you don't react or get angry he may get bored with you and go and bully someone else.

  5. Once a bully has successfully breached your personal boundaries, he will just keep on doing it and successively try to breach forever deeper. He may intimidate you, yell at you, make false accusations, try to get you to apologise for something that was not your fault. He may continually attempt to undermine your work, your self confidence and your self esteem. Once the bully manages to get you to play his game by manipulation, he is in control and recovering from the situation becomes increasingly difficult. He has sunk his claws into you. He may, for example, start smearing your name by spreading false rumours and get others to bully you on his behalf (known as mobbing).

  6. It may be best just to cut your losses and run by getting another job.

You are unlikely to make a bully see the error of his ways as bullying is most likely second nature to him (called egosyntonic). It is usually a waste of time even trying. Chief bullies frequently have an incurable personality disorder. Bullies are commonly narcissistic and are often referred to as control freaks. They use a psychological defense mechanism called "projection" to offload their own failings and sense of shame onto the target. They claim that the target is to blame and he is the victim. They use scapegoating and even engineer failure by the target by setting them up to fail. Others may get taken in by the bully's manipulative charm - even some psychologists.

The only way you are likely to beat a bully is to get support from someone who has leverage and authority over the bully thus putting the bully back in his box.
 
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25 TOP WORKPLACE BULLY TACTICS

Workplace bullies use many methods to intimidate their targets. Based on studies of toxic workplaces, the Workplace Bullying Institute has identified 25 of the Top Workplace Bully Tactics employed by workplace bullies (see here).

  1. Falsely accused someone of "errors" not actually made (71 percent).

  2. Stared, glared, was nonverbally intimidating and was clearly showing hostility (68 percent).

  3. Discounted the person's thoughts or feelings ("oh, that's silly") in meetings (64 percent).

  4. Used the "silent treatment" to "ice out" and separate from others (64 percent).

  5. Exhibited presumably uncontrollable mood swings in front of the group (61 percent).

  6. Made up own rules on the fly that even she/he did not follow (61 percent).

  7. Disregarded satisfactory or exemplary quality of completed work despite evidence (58 percent).

  8. Harshly and constantly criticized having a different standard for the target (57 percent).

  9. Started, or failed to stop, destructive rumors or gossip about the person (56 percent).

  10. Encouraged people to turn against the person being tormented (55 percent).

  11. Singled out and isolated one person from coworkers, either socially or physically (54 percent).

  12. Publicly displayed "gross," undignified, but not illegal, behavior (53 percent).

  13. Yelled, screamed, threw tantrums in front of others to humiliate a person (53 percent).

  14. Stole credit for work done by others (47 percent).

  15. Abused the evaluation process by lying about the person's performance (46 percent).

  16. Declared target "insubordinate" for failing to follow arbitrary commands (46 percent).

  17. Used confidential information about a person to humiliate privately or publicly (45 percent).

  18. Retaliated against the person after a complaint was filed (45 percent).

  19. Made verbal put-downs/insults based on gender, race, accent or language, disability (44 percent).

  20. Assigned undesirable work as punishment (44 percent).

  21. Created unrealistic demands (workload, deadlines, duties) for person singled out (44 percent).

  22. Launched a baseless campaign to oust the person; effort not stopped by the employer (43 percent).

  23. Encouraged the person to quit or transfer rather than to face more mistreatment (43 percent).

  24. Sabotaged the person's contribution to a team goal and reward (41 percent).

  25. Ensured failure of person's project by not performing required tasks, such as sign-offs, taking calls, working with collaborators (40 percent)
 
WORKPLACE MANAGERS OFTEN WORSE THAN CRIMINALLY INSANE

In 2005, psychologists Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon at the University of Surrey, UK, interviewed and gave personality tests to high-level British executives and compared their profiles with those of criminal psychiatric patients at Broadmoor Prison in the UK. They found that three out of eleven personality disorders were actually more common in managers than in the disturbed criminals, they were:

They described the business people as successful psychopaths and the criminals as unsuccessful psychopaths. This research was published as "Board, B.J. & Fritzon, Katarina, F. (2005). Disordered personalities at work. Psychology, Crime and Law, 11, 17-32"

There is a strong correlation between the existence of bullying and personality disorders (see here and here).
 
NARCISSISM AND WORKPLACE BULLYING

The bullying phenomenon fits in well with the psychological theory of narcissism (see here). Narcissists are particularly attracted to managerial roles. Narcissistic managers expect his or her subordinates to provide narcissistic supply, thus helping to support his or her deluded false sense of self. He or she likes to be surrounded with sycophants who can be relied upon to do this. The true self of a narcissist is that of a flawed and inadequate person. The false self of a narcissist is a perfect superior person who can do no wrong. Narcissistic managers are often referred to as control freaks.

Narcissistic rage is synonymous with bullying and allows a narcissist to offload his sense of shame and negative feelings about himself by blaming others and deluding himself of his natural superiority. This process is known as psychological projection.

A narcissistic manager often treats gifted subordinates and peers as a threat, and are envious of them, by virtue of the risk that their abilities will expose his or her inadequacies. Narcissistic injury can be triggered by criticism (or any perceived slight) of the narcissistic manager which in turn causes narcissistic rage. This is because the criticism has reminded the narcissist of his true self of which he is in denial. Narcissistic rage can also manifest itself on an ongoing basis as serial bullying where bully targets are selected who have perceived vulnerabilities.

The negative impact of a narcissist on a target is likely to result in loss of self esteem, depression or post-traumatic personality disorder etc.

 
PSYCHOPATHY AND WORKPLACE BULLYING

In the book Snakes in Suits : When Psychopaths Go to Work, the authors Robert Hare and Paul Babiak discuss psychopathy and workplace bullying thus:

"Bullies react aggressively in response to provocation or perceived insults or slights. It is unclear whether their acts of bullying give them pleasure or are just the most effective way they have learned to get what they want from others. Similar to manipulators, however, psychopathic bullies do not feel remorse, guilt or empathy. They lack insight into their own behaviour, and seem unwilling or unable to moderate it, even when it is to their own advantage. Not being able to understand the harm they do to themselves (let alone their victims), psychopathic bullies are particularly dangerous.”

"Of course, not all bullies are psychopathic, though this may be of little concern to their victims. Bullies come in many psychological and physical sizes and shapes. In many cases, “garden variety” bullies have deep seated psychological problems, including feelings of inferiority or inadequacy and difficulty in relating to others. Some may simply have learned at an early stage that their size, strength, or verbal talent was the only effective tool they had for social behaviour. Some of these individuals may be context-specific bullies, behaving badly at work but more or less normally in other contexts. But the psychopathic bully is what he is: a callous, vindictive, controlling individual with little or no empathy or concern for the rights and feelings of the victim, no matter what the context.”

 
BASIC TYPES OF WORKPLACE BULLYING

Dr Tim Field Identified the following basic types of workplace bullying (see here):

  • Pressure bullying or unwitting bullying
  • Organisational bullying
  • Corporate bullying
  • Institutional bullying
  • Client bullying
  • Serial bullying
  • Secondary bullying
  • Pair bullying
  • Gang bullying (or mobbing)
  • Vicarious bullying
  • Regulation bullying
  • Residual bullying
  • Cyber bullying
 
MEDICAL NARCISSISM
Medical narcissism is a term coined by John Banja in his book Medical Errors and Medical Narcissism. He uses the psychological concept of narcissism to explain the culture by which many medical practitioners downplay medical errors and often avoid taking personal responsibility. He claims this is part of the dehumanization of the patients from the practitioner's perspective. John Banja provided evidence that there is a higher incidence of practitioners in the medical profession with narcissistic personality disorder than the general population, and that there is a resultant general narcissistic culture in the medical profession of self-righteousness, arrogance, and denial.
 

This website explores the relationships between bullying, abuse, mobbing, psychopathy and emotional intelligence in various contexts. It is uncompromising, but I believe honest. My understanding is from first-hand experience, discussing the issue with hundreds of bully targets and studying many sources.

I have had a long successful career specialising in writing software documentation ever since leaving university. I have worked for a wide variety of companies; some good, some appalling. I have been struck by the huge amount of bullying and abuse in this world at all levels of society and in many contexts. For example, I have met many people with high conventional intelligence and technical skills but low emotional intelligence (EQ). People with low EQ typically have a lack of empathy, respect, decency, common sense and ability to communicate with others in an effective way. They have little integrity or trustworthyness. They seem to think that bullying, intimidation, backstabbing, manipulation and deceit are normal behaviour.

Whole bullying cultures can develop where bullying can become seen as the norm. This is how gangs and cliques are formed. A large minority of bullies are psychopathic (psycho bullies) and incurable but the majority of bullies are copycat bullies and can be reformed. It is a big mistake to think that psychopaths are necessarily violent; most are not. Non-violent psychopaths are surprisingly common. Psychopaths are sometimes referred to as sociopaths. Corporate organisations are often considered to have psychopathic characteristics.

In my view, the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) is valuable as the only effective way to tackle bullying and mobbing in all its manifestations. However, EQ is of fundamental importance to everyone and not just in this context. For example, it can:

  • improve communication and efficiency
  • reduce anti-social behaviour and crime
  • reduce stress levels
  • help to fix dysfunctional organisations
  • help organisations reach their potential.

EQ can matter more than conventional intelligence (IQ). Daniel Goleman's sequel book, Working with Emotional Intelligence, amongst other things vindicates my view that the Information Technology industry seriously lacks EQ. Particularly with increasing globalised competition, it is emotional intelligence, not technical expertise or superior intellect, that matters most for success. There are clear signs that EQ is becoming mainstream, for example:

There are some amazing potential applications for EQ which I mention in this site. For example, it may soon become commonplace for a job hunter's resume to prominently display his or her certified EQ rating.

For bullying, mobbing and EQ, an extensive list of related website links are included. There are also many books readily available on these subjects; click on the following for starter lists:

There is too much control in this world. Oppressive control is a psychopathic trait. As Louise Porter says, "More crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of obedience than in the name of anarchy." An interesting idea is the extension of democracy to companies, education and parenting. This could be considered to be applied EQ. Democracy is an ideal middle ground between authoritarianism and permissiveness. It allows rights with responsibilities, self-discipline rather than imposed discipline. A person subjected to an authoritarianism regime often swings straight to permissiveness as a rebellious reaction once the regime has been lifted. Authoritarian regimes can cause other problems such as damaging self esteem, causing stress, stifling creativity and originality.

People should be educated to be capable of independant thought so they are able to work things out for themselves rather than acting as sheeple, slavishly accepting what people in positions of authority say. To counterbalance this, people should be educated to have a strong sense of mutual respect. People should also be taught to be capable of resisting peer pressure.

If you have any comments, enquiries or suggestions regarding any aspect of this site please email me.

Last updated on 17 August 2008