I like to think that no-one goes to work each day with the objective to bully some individual.
But unfortunately there are leaders out there that do just that.
Bullying can be seen as aggressive behaviour from one or more colleagues or superiors over a long period of time,where the targeted person finds it difficult to defend themselves or get out of a situation.
Victims of bullying have claimed that bullying is mainly caused by the psychopathic personality of the bully.
In my view bullies go to work with the intention to harm people and they engage in specific planned actions to harm people. They can do this a number of ways through disorder, ambiguity in initial communication and contradictory directions to teams by changing the goal posts half way through a job or project and in what they say directly to people.
Heinze Letmann in his research on bullying claimed that organisational factors relating to the organisation of work and quality of leadership behaviour were the main causes of bullying. He rejected that any of the personal characteristics of the victim play any part in the development of bullying.
What is clear for everyone to note is that bullying is crippling and devestating for the victims as they suffer emotional reactions such as helplessness, anxiety, fear and depression and they completely change their outlook on life as they become more negative, insecure , and feelings of constant danger around them.
Organisations can identify the bullying behaviour if they are truly interested by looking at staff turnover , sick leave and productivity in the team or persons affected. Yes short term productivity will be gained but not in the long term as the behaviour will cost the organisation in the long run.
There is huge interest in the subject of workplace bullying which reflects the magnitude of the problem in the workplace.
Could it be however, that there is less attention being paid to the relationship between bullying and the organisational outcomes ? because bullying still exists for short term outcomes.
Are you responsible for producing severe emotional reactions in your workplace just to meet short term goals ? Do you intentially go to work as a leader to produce results regardless of the human cost ?
Only you know the answer to that.
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