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Bullying is wrong and must stop, now. It is not limited to raging adolescents who have yet to learn how to control themselves and live civil within in their communities.
All too often those adolescent bullies go on to become adult bullies who have a massively negative impact on others. There are bullies in companies across this country who are getting away with hideous behaviors because people are ill equipped to identify it or address it appropriately.
Bullying impacts an organization’s culture negatively and might lead to higher than average attrition rates. Bullying in any company must be met with a zero tolerance position. There is no room for negotiations when it comes to bullying.
Bullying is often perpetrated by those in roles of supervisors, managers and bosses. They have power over others that they use in unethical and immoral ways. Bullies can disguise some of their behaviors as normal ways of managing others.
Business bullies might act extremely aggressive towards others as a way of bullying them. Yelling and screaming at someone in the workplace may very well be experienced as bullying for others. Demanding others to do something is another way of showing aggressive bullying behaviors.
Managers are expected to interact with others in an assertive way that promotes respect, trust, and dignity. Bullying has a way of eliminating any chance of those things happening between a manager and their direct reports.
Mangers have the authority and power to assign work to others and those managers who demonstrate bullying behaviors can subtly introduce them into the workplace. When a manager gives the best work to their favorite employees while given the worst assignments and projects to the same people over and over again, they are dominating them.
Managers are expected to assign work to others based on their skills, knowledge, and expertise. It is bullying to assign impossible work to those who are perceived as vulnerable and marginal. Managers must be held accountable for their behaviors by other leaders in the organization including those in human resources.
Managers hold authority over others when it comes to their career development. Managers can make or break an individual’s career in some less than obvious ways that are indeed bullying. It is wrong for an individual’s career to be negatively impacted by a bully’s actions.
Bullies might intimidate others who would have otherwise been able to achieve their career development goals. When bullies undermine an individual’s self-confidence and confidence, they are taking away part of them that should never be compromised.
Bullies seek to intimidate, harm, and overpower others and only get away with it when others are silent and complicit. Bullies must be held accountable for their actions and experience the appropriate consequences for their behaviors. By not calling them out on their behaviors, they are enabled to do more bullying with more devastating effects each time going forward.
Everyone deserves the right to work in a safe environment free of bullying, intimidating, harassing, and her powering behaviors. Those who are bullying must be found and felt with directly, enabling them is a part of the problem while holding the accountable and in some cases removing them is a part of the solution.
Bullying is having an impact on individual productively and an organization’s ability to produce successful outcomes. That alone makes for the business case, is there are managers who cannot connect the dots on why this must be addressed and stopped.
Leaders have a moral , ethical, and organizational authority to create a safe space for all employees to work in and three in their careers. Those leaders who are unable or unwilling to follow the code required of them because of their compassion to bully, failure to decipher right from wrong, and inability heal themselves in the ways that are needed for their own insecurities have no business being in the business of leading others.
Bullying must stop and it starts with speaking up and saying something about it when you see it. If it looks and feels working when you see it or hear it, it is most likely Wrong and must be stropped by someone.
Are you the someone who stops it, now?
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