Bad behaviour in the workplace can run up high costs in terms of reduced productivity, wellbeing, mental health, missed days at work and loss of revenue. In other words, it affects the bottom line of business, not to mention perpetuating individual suffering. Therefore, it would seem organisations and industries would be well advised to address both ‘misbehaving’ individuals, and the broader issue of culture change, designed towards eradicating such behaviours as mobbing, bullying and some of the less obvious ones; i.e. selective exclusion of individuals from groups, stringing people along, or purposefully assigning tedious and meaningless tasks.
Recently, I’ve been involved in running immersive workshops on the subject of bullying, and developing strategies of how to manage a badly behaving colleague at work. Lively and often critical discussions arose amongst the participants; particularly, around the usefulness of the bullied person experimenting with and learning how to deal with a bully, versus having someone in the higher echelons come in, ‘sort out’ the bully and generally get bullies to behave better.
Now, of course much depends on the person being bullied and their relationship with the perpetrator. And, please keep in mind that I am exclusively speaking of adults, here, not children. Admittedly, however, often there will be a power differential or dependence that facilitates bullying in the first place, which can make it all the more difficult to call out and put a stop to. So, far from suggesting the bullied person should just ‘take’ the behaviour and get some form of support, later, I do firmly believe we can only control our own behaviour, not someone else’s. And, I also firmly believe if our aim is culture change at large, misbehaviour needs to addressed at all levels - from the top to the bottom of the totem pole. Let me explain.
If the aim is to change a bad culture in the workplace, I believe we all must change our own behaviour first. Much as I wish this for myself sometimes, we cannot count on someone else to put a stop to unpleasant things for us. And once again I am talking about adults, here. I will also briefly mention a bright and little-known researcher and psychiatrist by the name of W. Ross Ashby (also see Requisite Variety and Cybernetics), who described way back in the 1960ies that if you can’t change the system; the system changes you. And, I reckon the same goes for culture.
So, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
- Change our own behaviour we can, other’s behaviour we cannot.
- We can learn to stand up for ourselves, and sometimes this might mean losing a battle to win the war.
- We can respectfully insist on being treated by others with due respect.
- We can set a good example by treating people with more respect and kindness than they perhaps deserve. I believe cutting others some slack and treating them respectfully breeds kindness and respect in return… You know, the whole yelling into, and echo coming out of the woods thing….
- By all means, engage others such as colleagues, peers, trusted superiors, and friendly people at the HR department to assist in these matters. I am not suggesting this need be or should have to be shouldered alone, not at all.
- We can choose to speak up for those who don’t, won’t or can’t speak for themselves.
- Together we can continue the conversation, create awareness and speak to policy makers, CEO’s, directors, superiors and HR representatives, and thus start changing the culture - the system - which will in turn impact individual people within that system, both bullies and the bullied.
So, the workshops on dealing with bad behaviour in the workplace are not meant, nor could they ever be, the be all and end all, the one and only solution to this cultural and systemic issue. As all the workshops I run, they are meant to get people thinking, and talking to one another. They are meant to let people experiment with - in the safe workshop space - how they might choose to behave on an individual level when they find themselves in such a situation. And, perhaps most importantly these workshops are intended to challenge perspectives, to slightly rattle people to incentivise them to take action towards change. And, if we have only in a little part succeeded in doing that, then I would say ‘mission accomplished’.
If you are interested in learning more about these workshops please get in touch here for all workplaces and / or here for the health care sector. Thank you.