Management stress and bullying

While driving last Friday, I was listening to a phone-in on workplace bullying. Something all too common. I reflected on various experiences through my varied working life.

I never experienced any bullying on the maternity unit, but I'm sure hospitals are not immune. As they are now managed as businesses by business managers, I feel sure that there will be more problems than there were 30 years ago.

I first came across serious bullying on the shopfloor in retailing. One particular young department manager was only able to assert his seniority in nasty ways. A particular method I remember well, was when he would wait for the section manger to leave the shop floor for lunch, give them time to go upstairs and order food and then ask for a tannoy announcement to be made for them to come back down to the shop floor. It was so predictable you could set your watch by him.

I was told that, as he was my senior I had to respect him. I said that he had to earn my respect. I was then told that he had difficulty with me, because I had a posh voice! Bullies have feelings of emotional inadequacy. They certainly lack emotional intelligence.

But the real eye opener into bullying in the workplace came when I worked as a psychotherapist in the occupational heath department of a large local authority. (Not York)

I was employed to work once a week for a month, to see a few of the long term sick. Due to the efficacy of the Human Givens approach (www.hgi.org.uk) I was able to help the majority and in turn, they returned to work. Good results meant that I was asked to see more people and I ended up working two days a week, seeing all levels of staff and the occ. health nurses themselves.

As someone who chose never to work in an office environment if I could help it, I begun, over the months, to put together a picture of how certain problems developed. I put it to the Health and Safety Manager that a pattern was emerging. When I described it, they agreed with me.

1. Someone was over promoted to a management postion. This was either because they had been in the office for a long time or there was some personal favouritism. They received little training for their new position.

2. The common denominator was that for various reasons, these particular members of staff were 'out of their depth', but couldn't admit it or ask for advice.

3. They started to feel pressure from above and the waterfall effect occurred. They dumped their stress, on whoever was junior to them. It may have stopped there or gone further down.

4. Someone junior to them would commit a minor misdemeanor. Instead of a gentle talk about the incident, the manager jumped in immediately with a disciplinary action. Because they were not well trained, they had no idea of what ball they had started rolling...and once rolling they couldn't stop it.

5. The person on the receiving end was in shock, if not traumatised, at the consequenses of the severity of the action and 'went sick'.

6. Short-term sick became long term sick and the authority started to look for ways to dismiss them.

I slowly realised that HR wanted the long term sick to leave, preferbly worn out by the hoops they were being forced to jump through. I had put a spanner in the works, by not only helping the long term sick back into work, but now wanting to highlight the problem of lack of training for mangers. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to just see the people and not question anything.

I couldn't stand by and keep quiet. This was not well received and one day, the notorious HR bully found an excuse to take me aside and give me the 'treatment'. This consisted of being given no notice of a meeting and being wrong footed by false accusations. Some of the people I had seen in the clinic were traumatised by this type of action. After my meeting, I could understand why. There was an independent witness, but they had their job to hold on to.

Through the meeting I remained composed outwardly, but was screaming inwardly. As emotional arousal can cause stupidity, I knew better than to 'lose it', however much I was being provoked. The next day, the HR manager called me. "We were impressed how you held it together." "You *******", I thought, "you tried so hard to make me collapse like the others, but I wouldn't."

I am of the belief that we can and should learn from all experiences, good and bad. It certainly can be grim at the time, because it can be very unfair. It's a cliche, but that's life isn't it? Hearing adults saying, "it's not fair" in a whining voice, always makes me wonder about their emotional development. The last time I heard those words about to come out of my mouth, I stopped!

I certainly have learnt that many managers/bosses, who are emotionally immature due to life long feelings of inadequacy, can cause mayhem in the workplace, however clever they may be. The knock-on effects are low morale, loss of productivity and loss of a great deal of money to the business /organisation.

There is also too little knowledge of how the brain learns, which leads to unrealistic expectations from those learning new processes.

The horrible meeting experience certainly held me in good stead when, some time later I found myself in a similar position, but in a different environment. This was more of an unannounced kangeroo court. Again, I remained as composed and adult as I could be on the outside, but screaming like toddler at the unfairness of it all, on the inside. The main interrogator gave themselves away when they said, " We don't understand why you are so confident", (despite their bullying manner).

I had learnt and learnt well. It did knock the stuffing out of me for a time, but, as I was told 25 years ago in Waitrose, the greatest quality a manager needs is resilience. I thought it strange at the time, but don't now. It's resilience against other people's immaturity.

I would suggest that that greatest quality a manager needs is emotional intelligence.