Befriending the workplace bully - Part 1

​The bully at work:  He might sit right next to you, breathing down your neck as you read this, or she might be the person who conducts your performance review.  It is easy to spot the snarling, curled lip spite of a bully because we daily dodge them during our commute as they shoulder us out the way. We have been ducking and diving out of their way since the school playground.
 
However, unlike the school playground bully from our past, or the shoulder-shover on the train this morning, there is no escape from the work bully.  We can hold our breath for a train journey, but to face a work bully for the entire day, every working day, can sometimes be more than we can endure. Changing jobs is drastic, and sometimes not even an option, especially in this fragile economy.  We have all heard the statistics about lost work days due to stress, anxiety and depression.  So what can we do to withstand this?  If we cannot change what is happening to us, perhaps we can look at ways to strengthen our resolve.  To befriend the bully from within.

Karpman’s drama triangle (Transactional Analysis)
 
Bullying can be an act of overt or passive aggression.  In addition, as situations are often fluid, we adopt different roles in response to different circumstances.  As a result, the ‘bully’ label is often not fixed.  Only the honest amongst us can admit that we all have the potential to become a bully at certain points in our lives.  Just as any one of us can adopt the role of ‘victim’ or ‘rescuer’.
 
A concept from Transactional Analysis is Karpman’s drama triangle:  In social situations we can sometimes adopt one of the following roles:  Persecutor, Victim or Rescuer.  If one person is leaning in one direction (for example, they are becoming a Victim), that can often make others appear as if they are adopting one of the other roles (they are becoming the Persecutor or the Rescuer).  As a result, people perceive each other in terms of these contrasting roles, without recognising that we have elements of each in all of us.
 
By adopting one of these roles, there is often a payoff.  If we become the Victim, for example, we might be protected by a Rescuer in our life.  We do not have to go to the effort of rescuing ourselves.  If we adopt the role of Persecutor, we do not have to accept the pain of recognising that we all have vulnerabilities.  Our tendency to adopt one of these roles can often be subconscious, so it is hard to challenge this alone, but the more we recognise that these roles exist, the more likely we are to challenge this, and avoid viewing a situation in such a simplistic way as consisting of a Persecutor (or ‘bully’), a Victim and a Rescuer.
 
To view the ‘bully’ as a whole person, rather than simply the Persecutor –

• See the workplace bully as someone who is probably acting in fear.  Aggression, whether it is overt or passive, is born of fear, so if we just see the aggressive behaviour, we have missed a trick.
• A bully often feels inferior, and so their behaviour is a way of managing that perceived inferiority.
• When you interact with the workplace bully, make eye contact and remain civil, even if the bully has descended into childishness

In my next blog post I will look at Part 2 to Befriending the Workplace Bully

​This Workplace  Issues blog is part of the Explore & Transform Wellbeing toolkit.  Click here to access more Wellbeing tools
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Chris Warren-Dickins LLB MA Registered Psychotherapist & Founder of Explore & Transform

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