How to Handle Bullying at Work

By Michael CJ Fox

Bullying in the workplace by coworkers or bosses occurs so often that it's almost become a new normality. What lacks out there is a practical guide for the bullied on addressing these uncomfortable situations.

You may feel it's a small enough issue to take to Human Resources but big enough that you can't jump out of bed with enthusiasm to get to work. This book also guides you through those in-between Bullying situations.

After working for several years in fast paced teams in the corporate world where Bullying was witnessed, experienced and addressed, this book was put together as a handy guide for you to deal effectively with Bullying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael CJ Fox
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386941569

Book preview

Dedication

To all who experienced bullying.

Copyright

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form.

HOW TO HANDLE BULLYING AT WORK

First edition

Copyright © 2019 Michael CJ Fox.

ISBN: 978-1386941569

Written by Michael CJ Fox.

Preface

Live life in good company, with pleasant thoughts and that becomes a life well lived.

Many of us are experiencing bullying at workplace in one way or another. Let’s face it, most of us don’t have the money, time or energy to go down the formal legal routes to tackle a Bully at work. This book is for those who face the minute questions of handling bullying at work every day. It is a comprehensive guide, which empowers, comforts and helps you navigate the workplace bullying maze.

Origins of the book

As a true millennial globetrotter, I moved jobs multiple times over the past decade between Consultancy firms, Banks and Global Corporations across different countries. At each place I worked, I noticed one common issue – bullying at work. Sometimes it was overt and other times it was covert. I was a witness, victim and challenger of workplace bullying. Colleagues, friends and family were also going through similar ordeals of being bullied or mobbed at work. The realisation hit me that workplace bullying was a pervading problem across the world.

However, nobody tells you, for example, what actually happens if you decide to escalate bullying to human resources or how to handle conversations with your boss when you are being bullied by a colleague. Therefore, I wanted to use all the practical experiences I have had and heard from others to put together this handy guide for you. This book helps you right from the beginning of your trials with bullying, to coping with its after-effects. It also encompasses the wider impacts of workplace bullying on other areas of your life.

During the course of researching for this book, I reached out to many professionals who worked in powerful corporations, startups and everything in between, to find out about their experiences of bullying at work. In the interviews and Whatsapp groups, raw emotions and the real challenges of handling bullying at work came out. Names have been changed to protect privacy but the struggles are very real. Some of us were successful to handle bullying, some of us failed miserably and some suffered silently. Nevertheless, all these experiences taught us valuable lessons for our careers and lives. With this wealth of information, I decided to write this book, which is a combination of advice, empowerment and peppered with real life stories of handling bullying at work. There are also (fun) exercises at the end of each chapter to help you reach workable solutions.

How this book is organised

The book is divided into three parts: "Assess, Address, and Adios". It charts a journey from Assessing Bullying, to helping you to Address Bullying and finally, to say Adios to it.

Part one: Assess delves into your power of conscious assessment. Questions like Is it just rudeness or is it really bullying are explored. It also helps you assess the emotional tolls you go through, as a result of bullying and practical advice on coping with the highs and lows.

Part Two: Address doesn’t mean ignoring or developing a tough skin and being able to take the bullying. Addressing is to change the situation for yourself, so that you are no longer feeling uncomfortable at work.

The third part of the book is called Adios, because no one can stay being bullied at work and feel what you are feeling for an extended period of time. This situation will be temporary (however long temporary you would like to define temporary, perhaps a few weeks or a few years). The paths may differ on how you manage to get out of the situation but get out, you will. This chapter explores the various paths, the decisions you will have to make and helps you build the perseverance you need to handle workplace bullying.

Workplace bullying is one of the issues, which cannot be resolved by simply acting according to the rules and expecting change. The power structures at companies and the constraints we have at home mean we have to tread a careful path in tackling bullying. This book explores that fine line and helps you with an effective plan of action.

Part One

Assess

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I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time. - Pope Francis.

Chapter One

Am I really being bullied?

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Doubt whom you will, but never yourself. - Christian Nestell Bovee

One of the first questions, which runs through our minds when we experience bullying, is whether we are really being bullied.

The word bullying itself is rarely heard at workplaces. Maybe in books, blogs and in casual conversations you can find the word Bullying. However, in practice, very few workplaces openly discuss how to handle Bullies in their team and the impact of their bullying. Most companies do have HR policies related to bullying, but do they act to get rid of bullying in their organisation is another question.

Perhaps, a worldwide # movement is required to make this happen. But until then, we are involved in conversations which dance around the terms Bullied, Bullying, Bully. A silent pandemic of bullying therefore exists at work these days. How on earth are workplaces supposed to effectively deal with something, which they pretend doesn’t even exist. What incentive is there for someone to go around talking about being bullied? You certainly earn no cash-back points by raising difficult issues.

People themselves are uncomfortable to make the self-admission that they are the Bullied. Doesn’t it convey weakness, even if to admit this truth to themselves? The self- image we carefully craft about ourselves doesn’t normally include Bullied at work. Isn’t being strong in life, one of the first lessons we are taught as kids. Well, the other lesson we have to keep remembering, is to be comfortable with who we are, no matter how the environment around may make us feel.

Accepting weakness and strength in ourselves is also a great strength. Anyway, experiencing bullying itself does not automatically make us weak. It is how we respond to such incidents in life, that tell us a great deal about ourselves. Our self-categorisation of how strong or weak we are should happen after we handle bullying.

Defining Bullying

There are several ways to define bullying and there are several experiences of people who have been bullied in the past. You can pore over all of them to see which definition fits best to your situation. Perhaps you find several definitions of Bullying, which describe your situation or perhaps you find none and fall into the gray area.

Either way, it is important for you to understand that your individual experience deserves equal importance as all the other Bullying definitions. Because, how can one really define that uncomfortable feeling in your gut when you are at work and categorise that? Real life is so varied that no one can successfully capture each and every experience and neatly put it into a definition bucket.

Even if you do manage to find a perfect definition for your own situation, there has to be a realisation that no matter how many places you look, the validation you are seeking, that whatever you are experiencing is far removed from normality, comes from yourself. You indeed are the first validator that the situation you are experiencing is unacceptable, definitions aside. Therefore, it is up to you to categorise which definition fits best for your situation and apply whichever word you are comfortable with.

So, coming down to it, Bullying can be defined as aggressiveness against a person, intimidation, shouting, humiliating, ridiculing, extreme unconstructive criticism, micro-management, belittling, ignoring your opinions etc. There are also subtle forms of bullying where you are simply excluded out of meetings, given tons of work and