Workplace bullying, sometimes also referred to as workplace harassment or mobbing, is way more common that we’d like to think – one reason being that it is far more misunderstood than we can imagine, therefore often overlooked. Indeed, on one hand, our definition of it has not been updated in years, and on the other, the taboo around workplace bullying and its consequences has not been lifted either – still to this day covering countless of people’s stories under a thick pall of guilt and anxiety. Workplace bullying kills. It does. It kills people, but it also kills companies. It kills teams, it kills performance, it kills communication… It’s like acid rain falling on a land; nothing will ever grow back, unless you replace the entire soil – and even so, good luck with that. Workplace bullying has persisted along the years (if not increased) for a number of reasons; lockdown brought the worse out of some people, deadlines are overall getting shorter and shorter because performance-standards for us humans are getting closer to that of robots, and overall, we’re quite simply losing our minds. Now the problem is that some of us lose it without harming others, and others, the polar opposite. On top of that, we also remain quite focused on only certain types of bullying or harassment, often seeing things through a narrow lens. Sexual harassment, on which the #MeToo movement helped raise awareness, is by far the most remembered type of harassment in the workplace. As a consequence, we end up overlooking other types of bullying, which may in fact be way more common than sexual harassment itself. So what are those types of bullying? What are the components to harassment scenarios and who tends to be the victim and who the perpetrator? Let’s turn our attention to this sinister phenomenon and attempt to find solutions for the development of healthier working environments.
First, let’s define the terms we’re talking about. When using the term “bullying”, one tends to have in mind the classic children-playground scenario, whereby one child is made fun of by other children gathered around them. In the workplace, one tends to imagine bullying as the typical male leader abusing of his own power to pester female subordinates. While these scenarios are very real, they are not entirely representative of what happens most of the time. In fact, our misunderstanding of what workplace bullying usually looks like constitutes the first reason why it goes on unnoticed and unchallenged. The NHS (England’s National Health Service), explains that although bullying can surely involve arguments and rudeness, it can also be more way subtle: “Other forms of bullying include: excluding and ignoring people and their contribution, overloading people with work, spreading malicious rumours, unfair treatment, picking on or regularly undermining someone, denying someone’s training or promotion opportunities”. Unison, one of the UK’s largest trade unions, lists a similar array of nefarious behaviors proper to workplace environments: “ignoring views and opinions, withholding information which can affect a worker’s performance, setting unreasonable or impossible deadlines, setting unmanageable workloads, humiliating staff in front of others, spreading malicious rumours, intentionally blocking promotion or training opportunities, ridiculing or demeaning someone by picking on them or setting them up to fail, overbearing supervision or other misuse of power or position, deliberately undermining a competent worker with constant criticism”. All in all, we can understand with such definitions the vastness of actions and practices which workplace bullying comprises. We can likewise understand to what extent workplace bullying is far more significant than we imagined in this day and age.
Indeed, because of the taboo around workplace bullying (a taboo fueled by a common ignorance around leadership Dos-and-Don’ts, profound self-guilt, and a serious lack of accountability across all organizational levels), a lot of the aforementioned behaviors have gone unnoticed, whether by the perpetrators themselves or their victims. The symptoms however have been gaining in importance, with the drastic and concerning increase of burnout cases along the years, and even more so post-pandemic. American worldwide employment website Indeed conducted in 2021 a survey of 1,500 U.S. workers to analyze the levels of burnout exhibited by different demographics: “Over half (52%) of survey respondents are experiencing burnout in 2021, up from the 43% who said the same in our pre-COVID survey. […] Fifty-three percent of millennials were already burned out pre-COVID, and they remain the most affected population, with 59% experiencing it today. However, Gen Z is now neck and neck: 58% report burnout, up from 47% who said the same in 2020.” Babyboomers were not spared either, with “a 7% increase in burnout from prepandemic levels”. However taking its root in a variety of causes (short-staffedness being one prominent component), this phenomenon also says a lot about leaders’ decision-making and its impact on employees’ mental health. Another misunderstood consequence is the toll this takes on organizations themselves; with millions of people suffering from depression and anxiety, the World Health Organization (WHO) in fact estimates that $1 trillion is lost in productivity each year as a result. Putting this in the context of a capitalist society, it would actually prove beneficial for corporations to care for their employees’ wellbeing, given that this would yield higher performance from the latter, and therefore higher capital for the organizations.
Workplace bullying is different to what we expect behavior-wise, but that’s not all. It also differs a lot from our preconceived perceptions of who is often involved in these scenarios and what is the nature of the dynamics. Empirical findings in the field of workplace bullying in fact reveal that most cases of bullying takes places between same-gender individuals. This means that most men are bullied by other men, and women by other women. The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), an American organization working on the prevention and correction of abusive conduct at work, and led by Dr. Ruth Namie, clinical psychologist, and Dr. Gary Namie, social psychologist, conducted a survey in 2021, which, amongst other things, helped determine the place of gender in workplace bullying scenarios. It was found that on top of most bullying scenarios defying opposite-gender stereotypes (with same gender pairs representing 60% of situations described by adult respondents), male survey respondents were directly bullied at twice the rate that female survey respondents reported. Another major gender difference found among respondents was the lack of awareness about workplace bullying by women being more than double the unawareness of men. This represents a deep contrast next to what most of us tend to assume when it comes to gender and bullying in the workplace. This also sheds light on that fact that most of us have the tendency to bully members of an in-group more than the people we perceive as pertaining to an out-group. It also gives insight on same-gender dynamics in workplace environments and the potential outcomes they may yield.
In addition, some industries in which same-gender interactions are more common also display more instances of same-gender bullying as well as lateral violence. The sphere of nursing, predominantly female-represented, has been an area of study for this specific phenomenon for a couple of decades now. An NHS survey from 1999, “Workplace bullying in NHS community trust: staff questionnaire survey”, highlighted that although the most common bully was an individual of hierarchically higher status in 54% of cases (vertical violence), 34% of cases had for perpetrator an individual of the same level of seniority as the victim (lateral violence). It also turns out that in 57% of all cases, the perpetrator was the same gender as the victim, and in 8% of cases someone of the opposite gender; with a female bully in 65% of cases and a male in 27% of them. Likewise, it is important to bear in mind that the data differs across territories, with in some instances higher cases of females as total victims. A 2007 study from Ireland by Phillip O’Connell, Emma Calvert, and Dorothy Watson (“Bullying in the Workplace: Survey Reports 2007 Ireland”) suggests that it is often found that more women report bullying than men, but that “some researchers argue that this often reflects the gender distribution of the sample”.
All in all, female-to-female bullying remains a relatively undiscussed topic, especially when it comes to a rather ‘niche’ topic like workplace environments. In a 2015 New York Times article (“Why Women Compete With Each Other”), American writer, producer and podcast host Emily Gordon explores the root-causes of female competitiveness and suggest two main theories: evolutionary psychology, and internal competition. Indeed, on one hand, evolutionary psychology (a branch of psychology which uses natural selection to explain our modern behaviors) explains how through time, female humans have developed traits and practices in view of survival. In the context of power dynamics and the place of gender therein, females have to use different characteristics than males when attempting to exert power over others. Indeed, while male dominance has been traditionally observed through physicality, female dominance has traditionally been observed through the use of psychological tactics, due to the latter not standing on equal grounds with men in terms of physicality. This not only led women to resort to the use of psychological manipulation vis-à-vis their male counterparts, but also led to the use of these practices amongst women as a group – women having traditionally not fought each other physically like men have within their own group. Female competitiveness not being traditionally overt does not mean that women did not oppose to each other, or compete against each other towards the same goal. In the context of dating or mating for instance, females have been observed as predominantly hypergamous, in the sense that, unlike their male counterparts (who, in opposition, have usually displayed a proclivity for polygamy), they typically favor quality over quantity – i.e. the quality of a man superates the quantity of men one can get. This also means that, historically and logically, women have had to compete over the same man if the latter represented the best potential partner in the group. Although competition over a mate being only one context in which the gender differences in aggression-style can be observed, the bottom-line remains that males typically exert direct (physical) aggression when competing, while female exert indirect (psychological) aggression. Gordon adds: “Feminist psychology chalks up this indirect aggression to internalizing the patriarchy. As Noam Shpancer writes in Psychology Today, “As women come to consider being prized by men their ultimate source of strength, worth, achievement and identity, they are compelled to battle other women for the prize.” In short: When our value is tied to the people who can impregnate us, we turn on each other.”
As for the theory of internal competition, Emily Gordon writes: “We aren’t competing with other women, ultimately, but with ourselves — with how we think of ourselves. For many of us, we look at other women and see, instead, a version of ourselves that is better, prettier, smarter, something more. We don’t see the other woman at all.” Indeed, a lot of our interactions are nothing bur mirrors in which we see ourselves. The choices we make are a reflection of ourselves. The way we address others is reflective of the way we address ourselves. Someone suffering of anorexia may for instance feel triggered by the sight of an overweight person, or even someone thinner than themselves. Someone diagnosed with learning disability may similarly feel triggered by someone displaying high intellectual achievements and prowesses. Ultimately, it isn’t much the people or the external factors per se that we interact with which pose us a problem, but rather the perception that we have of them and what they represent to us.
HCPLive, a clinical news and information portal also investigated whether lateral violence is “a women’s issue” in a 2009 online article, by bringing to light the biological factors proper to the situation: “One theory is that biologic differences exist between males and females in the way they respond to stress. In males the response is fueled by testosterone, which triggers a primarily physical response, while in females the response is mediated by oxytocin and female hormones, so the response is more social, verbal, and cerebral.” They also outline the influence of power dynamics on genders and the subsequent development of behaviors proper to each group: “Oppression theory also has been suggested as an explanation for why lateral violence is predominant among nurses. Nurses may be an oppressed and powerless group dominated by others (e.g., medical and administrative staff, hospital boards). The powerful dominant group directly controls the workplace and exploits nurses (or nurses believe that they are being exploited).” Award-winning author and Professor Cheryl Dellasega (who published a study on bullying among nurses in 2009) explains that the factors causing this lateral violence often come from decisions made by individuals higher up on the hierarchical ladder; she cites as examples: “understaffing; being a new nursing graduate or new employee: receiving a promotion, honor, or award; and receiving attention from peers, superiors…” This distribution of power and the behaviors it produces can be transposed in a myriad of different sectors. Negative behavior from middle management in general can likewise be associated to one’s disposition to being oppressed while being able to become oppressor.
There is, all in all, a great array of factors to consider when examining the issue of bullying in the workplace. However, two notions remain predominant: gender and power. These two notions, which historically have played huge roles in the very making of civilizations, are notions we often overlook when discussing such phenomena. They are notions which affect us all, and are key to understand our own behaviors. They also represent the first step towards introspection and the bettering of our own behaviors, whether taking their roots in human proclivities or environmental factors.
Sources
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https://workplacebullying.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-Full-Report.pdf
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Aude Calloch 