Right is right, even if everyone is against it; wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
—WILLIAM PENN
The information provided in this book shows you how to stop the workplace from becoming a breeding ground for bullies and how to address it in a comprehensive way.
As coaches, we encourage and help facilitate the growth, development, and prosperity of our clients. We want our clients to win with others at work without lying, manipulating, grandstanding, or rolling over others to do well and move up in their companies. We are always saddened by executives who truly believe that the way to power is through use of force, manipulation, and hidden agendas. The irony for us is that when we work with these clients, we usually discover that they have been bullied at some point in their careers. Many bullies are repeating the bullying behavior they were exposed to in the past, and they use that past experience to justify their behavior.
Given the consequences of bullying, it is our strong belief that any form of bullying is not good management or good leadership, even though a bully might believe he is a good manager or leader. Bullying is the misuse and/or abuse of power. It crushes potential output in terms of productivity, comprehensive reasoning, informed judgment, and the desire to accomplish goals that will cause a positive outcome in the company or in the world. Bullying destroys employee growth and costs the company a fortune while simultaneously weakening the mission and vision of the organization. Most people, usually under stress, will exhibit bullying behavior from time to time. We are human, after all, but a committed bully exhibits the behavior almost all the time. You don’t have to go far to encounter bullying, whether as a target or as a bystander. The question is, will we muster the courage and words to confront it?
Bullying is not a gender issue. It is an issue of the abuse and/or misuse of power. Also, it is a lack of interpersonal competence on the bully’s part and a lack of understanding of how to deal with bullying on the target’s part. Bullying is everywhere, not just in the workplace. It is a widespread issue, and we want this book to be a clarion call to all who care to focus their attention on how we treat each other. Wherever bullying occurs, there are ways to confront it, ameliorate it, and transform our interpersonal interactions with others into more respectful communication. We hope this book is a meaningful contribution toward establishing a more ideal and civil society.
We offer one last story that continues to inspire us. The setting for this true story was a seminar at which executives from the work- place and veteran lower school teachers came together to strategize learning opportunities from both work settings. Executives were paired with schoolteachers for the initial activity.
In one such pairing, a Boeing executive was paired with a veteran third-grade teacher. The Boeing executive immediately began complaining as he perceived there was little he could learn from a third-grade schoolteacher, even with her 30 years of experience. The group tolerated his complaining patiently until his learning opportunity emerged.
The Boeing executive said to the teacher, “What can you possibly know about what happens in my world at work? You are a third-grade schoolteacher.”
The teacher, Cynthia, calmly replied, “We teachers know exactly what goes on in your workplace.”
The executive pressed, “How could you possibly know what goes on in my workplace?”
Cynthia calmly responded, “We know what happens in your workplace through the behavior of your children.”
Suddenly, this tough, aggressive, 6-foot-6-inch-tall Boeing executive had an aha moment. He immediately saw the connection, something that had never occurred to him. He followed around this diminutive third-grade teacher for the entire week-long seminar. He was trying to learn as much as he could about what she had gleaned about the workplace from her students so he could bring the information back to Boeing.
Our children internalize what they observe in our homes and the stories they hear about work at the dinner table. Our children are watching. Let us model the right behavior for them. Let us take the opportunity to make a real difference in our society by doing what we can, every day, to exemplify in our actions, words, and deeds true civility, kindness, and compassion toward others.