Stefan Stern has an interesting article on the Financial Times website (“Bully-boy school of management”). He too thinks something went wrong with the corporate culture in certain organizations in the recent past. Maybe the macho management, achievement-at-any-price culture, with its attendant tolerance of bullying, even had something to do bringing on recession.

Bullies may think they are merely “driving the organization hard,” but the reality is different. They can so terrify their subordinates that no one is willing to bring them anything but good news. After all, turning on the messenger in anger at some piece of bad news is common enough for almost everyone to have suffered from it sometime.

Can you blame a subordinate who doesn’t want to be the one who faces a furious boss—especially one with a reputation for dealing roughly with people who get on his bad side? Yet, without proper communication upwards, the leader will be in the dark about most things, especially anything that might be a threat to his expectations and his ego—like risks about to go wrong.

It seems even Jack Welch—not a man with a reputation for kindness and tolerance of subordinates—has had a change of heart over the wisdom of leadership based on “squeezing, squeezing and squeezing.” Maybe he should have thought of that when he was still in the corner office. According to the article, “James O’Toole from the University of Denver remembers one former GE executive confessing to him that one of his boss’s attacks ‘caused me to soil my pants’.”

As Stefan Stern concludes:

“Organizations are made up mainly of ordinary people and most will contain their share of racists, sociopaths and bullies. That’s life. There may not be much we can do about that. But, if the CEO’s corner office is inhabited by a bully who cannot or will not be faced down, that business has a serious problem, culturally and operationally. And when it all ends in tears, it won’t just be those being shed by the bullied victims.”

Bullying used to be the sign of weaklings, trying too hard to prop up their miserable lack of self-esteem. Then, somehow, it started to be seen as a sign of commitment and intensity in pursuing corporate profit goals. But, either way, it has done great harm, both to the bullies and those who employ them. You cannot pursue even good ends by bad means and expect there to be no consequences.

Technorati Tags: corporate bullying, macho management, leadership mistakes, lack of communication,

When ‘knowing your place’ becomes a form of abuse
 

This is a guest article by Julie Ann Wambach, Ph.D.

Rankism, the term for abuse of position within a hierarchy, can occur in any human gathering. Like all social animals, humans establish a pecking order when they create groups. Hierarchies allow us to know how we can interact and accomplish whatever are our goals—producing a widget, preparing a meal, or choosing which movie to attend. When some persons in the hierarchy are treated as special somebodies and others as unimportant nobodies, you have rankism.

Throughout each day, we move from group to group. Sometimes we are at the top, sometimes down the line and sometimes at the bottom. With observation and steady action, each of us can practice ‘right-ranking’, the use of your position to ensure dignity for everyone, regardless of their spot in the hierarchy.

Understanding rankism

What the concept of rankism offers is a description of a common kind of mistreatment in a wide range of situations: school bullies, domineering bosses, racists, sexists, terrorists, and—you get the idea. The environments may be unique, but all are organized into hierarchies and all abusers misuse their rank. It is no surprise that powerful ‘rankists’ can negatively affect any organization.[1] What is important to realize is that rankism can occur anywhere on the hierarchy. A rankist could, for example, be the manager of your department who publicly berates an older employee for dawdling; or a rankist co-worker could spread stories about someone’s personal life. In all instances, rankism undermines individuals and the goals of the group.

Once it has permeated the assemblage, rankism feeds on itself

Nora J. Johnson and Thomas Klee found that autocratic or coercive leaders, because they show no regard for employee well-being, to be predictive of employee passive-aggressive behavior. [2] Why? The passive-aggressive behavior Johnson and Klee describe are as rankist as the autocratic or coercive leader’s actions.

“Battles between Somebodies and Nobodies” includes several rankist types. There are examples of autocratic and coercive ‘somebody’ rankists—the Tyant, the Seething Giant, and the Sovereign. There are also passive-aggressive ‘nobody’ rankists, such as the Gossip, the Placater, and the Noble Sufferer.

Change is still possible

Johnson and Klee concluded that both leadership style and passive-aggressive responses can be chosen consciously. This is good news, because it means anyone can decide to change. The autocrat can begin to listen to employees, learn what they have to contribute and credit their expertise. An employee can decide to stand up to the rankist. All it takes is one person to challenge the mistreatment of a co-worker to encourage others to do the same.

Rankism comes from all of us, not just those who are inhumanly spiteful and cruel. We all assume familiar postures when we are threatened. Harvey, et. al, [1] noted that bullying leaders do not just happen. Most have experienced (among other conditions) alienation, non-supportive families and pressure from negative superiors and peers.

Insight into how rankists are acting, what might be their motivations, and how those behaviors are affecting the group come from thought and study. That’s why slow leaders can be right-rank leaders. All it takes is thought and the willingness to act consciously.

1. Michael G. Harvey, M. Ronald Buckley, Joyce T. Heames, Robert Zinko, Robyn L. Brouer, Gerald R. Ferris, “A Bully as an Archetypal Destructive Leader,” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, Nov, 2007; vol. 14, no. 2: 117-129.
2. Nora J. Johnson and Thomas Klee,“Passive-aggressive behavior and leadership styles in organizations,” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 2007; 14, no. 2: 130-142.

Julie Ann Wambach, Ph.D., is the author of “Battles between Somebodies and Nobodies: Combat Abuse of Rank at Work and at Home”. She mediates disputes for a variety of nonprofit and governmental entities and has long been interested in the dynamics of power in human interaction. As Professor of Human Communication at Scottsdale Community College, she has published two textbooks and numerous articles in academic journals and professional magazines. You can read her Amazon blog here.

Technorati Tags: bullying, rankism, abusing the hierarchy, abuses of power

The rising acceptability of stepping on people to get what you want
 

Photo: © Kelpfish—Fotolia.com

The ultimate example of stepping on people to get what you want occurred on Friday, November 28th at a Wal-Mart store on Long Island, NY.

A 34-year-old Wal-Mart temporary employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors. Video showed as many as a dozen people knocked to the floor in the stampede. When the police arrived and were giving first aid, they too were jostled and pushed. The employee’s family filed a wrongful-death suit on December 3rd, accusing Wal-Mart of creating “an atmosphere of competition and anxiety.”

Competition and anxiety. How many of our workplaces today reflect a fair amount of subtle and not-so-subtle “competition and anxiety”? Aren’t many people facing an all-out assault on “anybody who gets in my way” by colleagues and bosses driven by competition and anxiety? Aren’t they coping every day with people whose main motivation is to take care of themselves; people blinded by their ego-driven need to succeed at any cost?

Today’s workplace ‘crimes’

While instances of manslaughter and physical violence aren’t common in the daily workplace, the action of “stepping on people to get what I want” is everywhere. It’s practiced by a cadre of macho leaders, managers and employees driven by their own flavors of competition and anxiety.

We may not witness actual crimes of manslaughter, but we do witness more subtle, yet equally-painful, crimes of ‘morale-slaughter’, ‘satisfaction-slaughter’, ‘passion-slaughter’ and ‘reputation-slaughter’. Every day, people at work see others mistreat and abuse their colleagues and employees to achieve their own needs for control, recognition and security. We are surrounded by managers driven by competition to be seen and accepted as ‘somebody’. Everywhere we find people whose anxiety over being labeled a nobody leads them into unkind and unethical behavior.

Those who step on others to get what they want, to be seen as ’somebody’, usually fall into the categories of bullies, narcissists and psychopaths; all people whose view of their world is based on lack of trust and a tendency to define relationships as win-lose. Sadly, they often possess the ‘qualities’ used today to choose leaders: aggression, pushiness, political ’savvy’ and a willingness to suck-up to those in power.

What is going on?

In order to feel ‘seen’ and be ‘somebody’, these bullies, psychopaths and narcissists need to humiliate and subjugate others, even while they seek special treatment for themselves. They walk all over other people to make up for their own deficiencies.

Some were raised in harsh, abusive environments where they were constantly denigrated as lazy, good for nothing or stupid. As a result, their “I’ll show you I’m somebody!” mantra drives them to walk over others to prove they have value and worth. These are the psychological cases.

The cultural cases grew up in an environment like a boot camp—all orders and macho posturing. As a result, they need to intimidate and threaten others to feel successful. Because they measure their own worth by the extent to which others are obedient to them, they naturally use ‘walking over others’ as their managerial approach of choice.

Then there are the ignorant, thoughtless types who just don’t know any other way. Most learned how to be a manager in an environment where force was king and integrated this approach into their own thinking. Because they’ve only known a corporate culture based on force, force it is. It’s now their default programming. It never occurs to them to try anything else.

Where is civility?

Are we in danger of losing consciousness of the evil of tyrannical management behavior? Is ill-treating and bullying others becoming somehow acceptable in the cause of corporate profit? We may work in clean, high-tech environments, but that hasn’t stopped some people from behaving like the more brutal kinds of medieval barons.

“The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint . . .” wrote C.S. Lewis, in the introduction of the Screwtape Letters, “but it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried . . .) in clean, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.”

Some questions for self-reflection:

• Have you ever stepped on someone else to get what you want? Are you doing it now?
• Have you ever been victimized by someone who stepped on you to get ahead? What was that like?
• Are there oppressed groups in your workplace? Do you see attrition and transfers due to bullies, psychopaths and narcissists?
• What happens to managers who are abrasive? Are they simply accepted? Is what they do treated as business as usual or “that’s how it is around here?”
• How does senior management respond to abrasiveness and workplace abuse? Do they respond at all? Do they accept bad behavior so long as the individual gets results?
• Do people feel helpless when it comes to dealing with arrogant, abrasive leaders and colleagues? How can you collectively change things for the better?

Technorati Tags: bullies, workplace bullying, mach managers, psychopaths in the workplace, narcissistic bosses, toxic workplace culture

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• Family of Trampled Worker Sues Wal-Mart (abcnews.go.com)

What makes a corporate and workplace culture ‘civilized’?

United States Supreme Court (Photo: dbking)

In recent years, much of corporate America—much of the Western corporate world, if it comes to that—has taken a large step backwards in providing truly civilized working conditions. Can it be right, here at the start of the 21st century, that people face career uncertainties, job instability and working pressures greater than any since the oppressed mill-workers of the Industrial Revolution?

Many workplaces present people with a continual, manic experience, full of rush, hurry, pressure, distractions and escalating anxiety. Professional and managerial-level staff skip meals and breaks, dash from one meeting to another and work hours even the unskilled laborers of the past would have felt were oppressive. Throughout today’s typical workplace culture, the environment has gotten steadily tougher. Organizations demand their staff work longer hours, often at a faster pace, to beat off competition from other businesses doing the same thing. It’s a vicious cycle—a no-holds-barred game where the stakes are constantly raised. No one seems to consider the alternative of stepping aside and allowing the lemmings to race each other off the cliff.

Taking a hard look at what we are doing to ourselves

This isn’t a civilized way to live. People have less time to spend relaxing or attending to family and friends. Fathers (and many mothers too) see less of their children, have less energy to devote to bringing them up as they would wish, and are too tired when they are at home to give their family quality time and attention.

The workplace has become more than central to many people’s lives. It’s become the place where they spend more time than anywhere else. The place that grabs at their attention, even when they’re supposedly having time off away from work. So they skip vacations, phone in to the office from those holiday beaches, carry cell phones everywhere in case someone—anyone—from work needs to call them at any time. Work has taken over their whole existence.

What should a civilized workplace look like?

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. To me, a civilized workplace needs to meet these criteria as a minimum. Anything less than this cannot, I believe, lay claim to being a civilized place to work:

1. It must operate in ways that ensure everyone is treated with the dignity benefiting a fellow human being. Macho management is not compatible with a civilized society.
2. It must recognize work as part of life, but not the whole of it. People who choose to set family and non-work commitments on a par with their work must not be penalized or devalued for doing so.
3. It must be free from discrimination, bullying, unfair pressures and exploitation. Bullies, whether they ‘get results’ or not, have no place in a civilized corporate culture; nor do discriminatory policies, unequal pay for equal work or victimization of those who blow the whistle on management wrong-doing
4. It must be a place where ethics are adhered to in deeds as well as words, and honest dealings are the norm. We’re seeing today what happens when no one trusts anyone else, either to lend them money or accept their sureties. That way lies a total breakdown of economic activity.
5. It must recognize and honor values that go beyond the obvious financial and economic ones. Money isn’t everything. You can manage what you cannot measure. Management by accounting and numbers has failed and failed badly. It’s time to look at quality as well as quantity.
6. It must be a place where people make choices on the basis of what is right—intellectually, ethically and socially—not what is currently expedient. Short-term thinking and devil-take-the-hindmost attitudes have brought us to the brink of ruin.

We can make better progress towards making our offices, laboratories and manufacturing plants into places to be proud of. We can encourage every leader, no matter how few are in his or her team, to accept civilized standards and implement them as best they can. Grass-roots movements are usually unstoppable, once they attain enough momentum. This one can be too. Yes, we can!

As the anthropologist Margaret Mead said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Technorati Tags: corporate culture, civilized working conditions, civilizing the workplace, corporate ethics, setting standards, work/life balance

When making the numbers is mistaken for making the grade, the only route is downwards

Photo: © Yanik Chauvin – Fotolia.com

‘Management by Making the Numbers’ — today’s fashionable choice amongst the macho and the greedy — produces a debased kind of leadership. We can only keep a working environment worthy of a civilized nation by valuing some things more highly than making the numbers. That means accepting ‘the numbers’ won’t be achieved — should not be achieved — if the price paid is the loss of honesty, dignity, integrity and humanity as guiding principles of corporate life.

People under pressure to deliver ‘the numbers’ will usually do so by whatever means are simplest and least risky. In time, that leads to using various unethical approaches, in the same way that it’s easier to get rich by cheating and theft than by working hard. If all top management care about is hitting or exceeding target, they’re likely to overlook little things such bending the rules. They’re especially likely to ignore management bullying, since they can re-interpret it as ’strong leadership’ or ’setting high standards’, and the victims as ‘losers’ and ‘weaklings’. Read the full story