Managing Bullies

No one likes a bully. Bullies are manipulative, mean and controversial. What’s even worse is when you have to work with one on a team or in a department. When you have to work with a bully, things can be difficult. What makes it even more uncomfortable is when you work with a bully that holds control over one or many managers in the company, and for whatever reason, the manager fails to acknowledge, stymie the impact or punish a bully for their harmful behavior.

Over time, employees get weary of working with a bully and waiting for a manager to do something about it. This problem will pervade the work environment like a gas leak, silently suffocating the valuable workers; killing their motivation, forcing employees to look for another job or enabling key employees to be apathetic about their performance. At some point, the solution will have to come to a head.

A common response from management when dealing with a difficult person is that they (either consciously or subconsciously) do not want to disrupt the status quo by punishing the bully. The problem is, however, that during the manager’s indecisiveness, several things are happening:

• Valuable workers become apathetic and frustrated
• The bully gains in legitimate and perceived power
• Product or service quality starts to suffer
• Employee turnover starts to rise

In essence, what a manager is saying when they do not manage a bully is that they value the bully over the good employees. Just how much do they value the bully? What will be the tipping point? Will it take one month of lost productivity to decide to manage the bully? Is it worth 6 good workers leaving the firm? What about 15 good workers? Why even sacrifice one good worker for the bully? What about the time it is going to take to onboard replacements for the new workers? What about the lost respect for the manager from the employees that choose to stick it out with the firm, and choose to wait out the changes?

Managers are responsible for enabling a work environment that allows many different personalities to work collectively and productively on a daily basis. The way that the manager treats each employee sends a message to the rest of the group about the perceived value that the employee brings to the group. When bullies are allowed to keep working at a company without change, for whatever reason, it ends up demoralizing the people that work hard and add value to the company.

There will be a cost for management to make a decision about the bully. There will be a cost to action or inaction. Which cost is a manager willing to pay?

Filed under: Bully, Management, Teamwork