THANKS, WHITNEY! LET'S STAND UP FOR OURSELVES RE WORKPLACE BULLYING...

A wonderful blog appeared in Harvard Business Review regarding an unwonderful subject - workplace bullying. If you want to understand the maxim Homo Homini Lupus and its place in modern organisational life, you must read Whitney Johnson's, 'Bullying Is a Confidence Game', 13 July 2012. This is one step I didn't tread in my last post. However, I am sorry to say I know workplace bullying very well, as I presume (dangerous though it is to presume) do countless other individual contributors. Indeed, it seems bullying  extends to other managers, even senior executives..

Whitney Johnson is, from the start, remarkably accomplished. Whitney is an entrepreneur, a double ranked gold equity analyst, a former Merrill Lynch senior manager and partner in Rose Park Advisors with Clay Christensen, the father of disruptive innovation. Which makes it all the more telling that a formidable woman such as Whitney has also been bullied at work. (I will not repeat what Whitney addresses sensitively in her blog).

The fact is, however, bullying often happens surreptitiously. According to Whitney Johnson, your immediate manager may well comes across as sincere, and well-intentioned. Nonetheless, the prudent subordinate ought always to perform preliminary due diligence, meanwhile alert to any signal of an ulterior motive or political agenda. A bullying manager, Whitney adds, will very likely perform an unexpressed SWOT analysis of the intended victim's weaknesses to make him or her more pliant and bewildered. In the face of seemingly 'superior' criticism, we all have a tendency to wilt...

So, how do we collectively address workplace bullying? For my part, Human Resources is the key strategic actor in engendering a hopeful, forward-looking culture throughout any private organisation. I do not consider that HR should be sidelined to a support-role within the corporate matrix. If the Org Chart gets in the way of instilling solid values and managerial discipline, your company is between a rock and a very hard place.

And, let's be clear, managerial or, generally, workplace bullying, through either inducement or intimidation, is rarely direct. As Oscar Wilde quipped, 'The Truth is never pure, and rarely simple'). Far from sticks-and-stones simplicity, Whitney Johnson notes,

'..in the business world, bullying is far more complex.

In business, bullies are would-be leaders who, rather than use their talent for assessing strengths and weaknesses in the service of their team and their company, instead look to construct an uncontested fiefdom. There can be a very thin line between a bully and a leader'.

Which, in my estimation, requires all members of an organisation (me included) to be on the look-out for bullying/intimidation and to refrain from indulging or participating in it ourselves..
Let's reserve those arrows for the competition and our organisational goals in pursuit of the Aristotelian 'Good'. For companies, at least, that means managing our human resources appropriately, and deploying them in service of the greater good. In short, deploying resources, effectively, to win :)