Bullied At Work? Here's What To Do with HR Expert Catherine Mattice
Bullying is a social phenomenon in which bystanders, leaders, and organizations all play a role. Are you being bullied at your workplace? What should you do?
On today's episode, we discuss how to identify workplace bullying and how to take action to improve it. Learn how to confront the bully with confidence, prepare documentation to present to HR, and more.
In This Episode You Will Learn About:
Bullying at work: signs and effects
A guide to navigating workplace bullying successfully
Employee bullying: a manager's guide
Peer allyship: how to be one
Getting out from under the bully's thumb includes making a decision that he or she no longer has control - once you decide you're in control you'll have the power to change the situation. - Catherine Mattice
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About the Guest:
Catherine Mattice founded Civility Partners in 2008 as a result of working in a toxic environment and since then through keynote speaking, LinkedIn learning courses, and consulting she has helped thousands improve happiness in the workplace. Catherine is a 3x published author, including “Back Off! Your Kick-Ass Guide to Bullying at work” and has been cited in Forbes.com, Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, and USA Today, and appeared as a guest on such venues as NPR and CNN. Catherine is active in the International Association for Workplace Bullying & Harassment (IAWBH) and one of the four founding members of the National Workplace Bullying Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on ending workplace bullying.
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The Damage Workplace Bullying Causes
I was an executive assistant in an organization and over time worked my way into Director of HR. And that organization had another director who was engaging in bullying types of behaviors. He was a micromanager. He would yell at you if he was frustrated. I felt like he was insubordinate to the president, even lots of turnover in his department, you know? So I was dealing with these behaviors as a target. I felt like one of his targets, but then as the Director of HR, I was dealing with all of the turnover and having to rehire and conversations with people who were complaining to me about it and talking to the president about it.
And then, you know, kismet or the universe brought me to get my master's degree in organizational communication. And my very first semester I had a class on ethnography, which is studying something, you know in your life that you're in. And the other class was the dark side of communication, which was a class about sibling rivalry and stalking and conflict. So I had to write a paper, obviously for both classes and I just kind of thought, well, I'll write a paper about this guy. It works for ethnography and it works for dark side.
And then I came across the phrase workplace bullying while I was researching those two papers. And I was hooked. And I've been sort of obsessed with that topic ever since. It was pretty therapeutic to read about my situation from an academic perspective versus going to therapy or something, which is also great. But just to kind of get this education about my experience and just went from there.
I got outta grad school and wrote back off pretty quickly and started a business.
I could imagine. I mean, coming from a place where you've got toxic work environment, and that can really create a ripple effect in your personal life. Because sometimes what we do is we take what's going on at work, and sometimes that can influence coming home and our happiness just in general. And then also, as you were saying, the turnover and how that creates a ripple effect at work as well. So tell us a little bit about if you are an individual and you are experiencing a toxic work environment and you're experiencing possibly some feelings of being bullied, what suggestions do you have?
Before I answer that question, I wanna just kind of go back to what you shared about the damage. There are 40 years of academic research on this topic and I would say 70% of it is on the damage it causes people. And I can tell you, you can develop PTSD from being bullied at work, lots of anxiety and depression. So it is very damaging. And then to your point about taking it home, there's even research supporting that if you're bullied at work, your marriage is really affected because you're kind of obsessed with it at home. I don't understand why this is happening. What do I do? Parenting skills are dropping off because you're really focused. You kind of become obsessed with it because it’s something you don't really understand, you know?
Managing Your Emotions During a Conflict
So with that said, some of the things that I would recommend is first off to make sure that you try to pull back from the emotions and that's a big ask. This is, I mean, it's abuse. And it's like telling someone who's in a domestic violent type of relationship, “Don't try not to be emotional.” I understand that. However, in the workplace, if you go to HR to complain and you're emotional about it, it makes it really hard for HR to try to help you solve it. So in a business environment, we're so focused on KPIs and goals and objectives that you have to do your absolute best to kind of think about it that way when you're talking to HR about it or management about it. So that's step number. Document, document, document, all of those facts. The who, what, when, where and why of when things happened, who saw, what was the top? All of that. Keep a journal again, keep your emotions out of it. Keep a diary at home. But you know, this piece, because you may end up presenting it to HR, right? So keeping that very factual journal.
And then a couple other items. Definitely attempt to resolve it on your own first. You can maybe try to have a conversation with this person as scary as it might be to sit down with them and say, look, I'm feeling like our relationship isn't working or I can't seem to meet your expectations.
Can we talk about that? Document that conversation so that when you go to HR, you can say, “I tried to solve this on my own. Here are the ways I tried to solve it on my own, and I wasn't able to, it's still happening. And that's why I'm here in your office.” Versus “I can't, I don't know what to do. Please help me.” You need to appear as the strong link, the strong relationship builder. And here you're stuck with this versus help me I'm hurt. You know, it's a very different kind of a message. So those are some of my main tips. And before I shut up and let you talk, I last, um, really is to be very, self-aware and recognize that it is causing you some damage internally. And you know, if you need to see a therapist do that, if you need to consider looking for another job, do that. It's just the damage is very clear. I just see it all the time and I see it in the research. You just have to be really self-aware of how it's affecting you so that you can make the right choice for yourself.
I think you really speak into one of the hardest parts, which is removing the emotions. And yet that is extremely critical as you go to HR. And what could happen is there are many times I had actually experienced workplace bullying pretty, pretty bad to the point where I didn't realize how it was affecting me as a person until I walked away from that situation. And I look back and I was going, wow, I had lost so much confidence about myself as a result of this workplace bullying. And sometimes what happens is like, it's either sometimes not really being in tune of that self-awareness of what's happening and it just kind of slowly takes over time.
But then also, as you said, when you do go to HR, the more that you can remove the emotion and be more factual, the better it's gonna help you in the long run. Uh, just because there, it, sometimes it's hard to sometimes differentiate through the emotions as to what's really going on and having those facts is helpful.
Being More Self-Aware of Your Feelings During and Post-Bullying
I wanna just add to what you said, uh, which you hit the nail on the head. When I talk about being self-aware, recognize that whatever you're feeling is deeper than you know until you leave. And that was my experience as well. And so however upset, depressed, or anxious you are, it's probably worse than you recognize. And you won't know that until you're out. And so I always try to relay that. I don't know how successful I am, but I felt that too. I got fired, which is a pretty standard thing to happen to targets. I was seen as the weak link because my performance was going down and I was so frustrated and distracted. And I drove home, no idea how I was gonna pay my rent, but I could, I feel like this monkey literally was climbing off my back and I could feel my shoulders kind of like perked back up. And yeah, I didn't realize how damaged I was until I wasn't there. So it's, it's a tough place to be.
Society tells us we're supposed to have a nine-to-five job and you can't leave and you feel tied and there's a lot to overcome mentally with this.
There is a lot to overcome and it feels like this big weight is on your shoulders and sometimes you don't always know what to do, and sometimes you don't realize it until after you leave the organization or something changes with the environment. And I know that when I was going through mine, and you speak to PTSD, I swear I was having nightmares just consistently for the month after some of these things that took place, it's taken some time to kind of repair. But at the same time in our circumstances and yours is when that door shut, it opened up the door to a life that you couldn't even imagine as to where you're at now, where you take that challenge and that negative experience in life and you have made it your sole purpose to help other people thrive in situations like that and overcome it.
Taking Back and Regaining Your Power
I put out a call if you've been through bullying and you feel like you're successful on the other side, I wanna hear from you and understand, because I wanna understand those stories versus the ones about PTSD and people who can't get another job because they're so damaged.
And what I found is the one theme that I really see across the stories in that book is this decision that they made, and it's all different, but it's all about taking power. And as soon as you do that, that's when the trajectory changes. So all these stories were like down, down, down, bullying, bullying, bullying… made a decision… and it goes back up.
And so for example, one woman, she describes that some final straw happened. She walks over to the office manager and like all dramatic, drops, keys on the table and says “I quit” and storms out, you know? And then she gets around the corner and bawls her eyes out. But you know, she quit, it stinks that she's the one who left, but she took her power back.
Another woman, she's lesbian, PhD, black, in the coast guard. That's a tough place to be. She decided, you know what, this is my life's purpose. I'm the Martin Luther King of this place. And I'm gonna make some changes. So she made the decision to stay and fight. And she's done all sorts of crazy things and I really admire her.
And so it's just that decision and you have to decide: I have power and control. And I'm gonna use that. A hundred percent - it’s about regaining your power through it. And I found it's regaining your power, understanding your purpose, getting realigned with your core values, and from that day forward, never settling on anything else than being treated the way that you should be.
Ways to Handle Workplace Bullying
When I go into organizations as a consultant, it's kind of my first question. What kind of training are managers getting? Cause probably we could solve a lot of your problems just with that.
And then also, individuals or the whole company needs some training on how to stand up for each other, how to lean on the core values. If I see that, you know, you're doing something I feel is inappropriate in a meeting or what have you, what, what's my role and, and how can I influence that in a positive way?
And so doing training, we call it bystander intervention. And we heard a lot of that during Me Too. If you see something, say something, all this stuff, but that's not in our nature to throw ourselves in front of a bus. It goes against our instinct. So that's another area where I really see organizations, kind of falling short, I will say too, just in general.
If managers had the tools to build a positive work environment inside their team on a regular consistent daily basis, that would change things. And that's really another place where organizations fall short. Stop having people sign an anti-harassment policy, and then just assume that everybody's gonna get along.
And this whole idea that adults are professionals or we know how to behave. Obviously, we don't because we have war and divorce and all sorts of class-death adults. So that's the other key too. And I know that doesn't. If you're feeling bullied at the moment as a manager, it doesn't really give you advice for the here and now, but the more you can focus on team building, leaning on the core values, talking to your team about like, “Hey, what are the ways we appreciate each other?” Leaning on positivity is gonna make a big difference in the team as well.
If a manager or an individual is experiencing bullying, my first thought is, again, document, document, document all the ways in which you're behaving and the responses you're getting. When you approach your employees to hold them accountable, talk to them about the why, so that when you say something like, hey, you're not getting your report in on time. I need it on time. You could say, hey, you're not getting your reported on time. And when it's not on time, here are the repercussions of that. And what do you think we could do to help make sure you get your reports in on time? So that's a coaching conversation right there. I do suspect if people are claiming bullying and it's really about just holding someone accountable. There's some disconnect there between how you're holding them accountable and how they want you to hold them accountable.
There's a ton of ways to make people feel more positive. One way is to do what I call the Best Self-Exercise. I actually stole that from an author, Kim Cameron, who writes about positive psychology. This is a great exercise. Send an email out to all of your team members. List all, everybody in the team in the email and say, hey, send me back an email with something you're thankful for for each of the people on this list that we work with, and then you compile it and then you can deliver that at a meeting.
So I would, you know, could say, okay, Danielle, here's what everyone said about you. And then I print it out and I give it to you or email it to you. You can have it in your office or what have you. So those are the types of little exercises that are simple and easy and they start to turn, you know, we're, we're in a negative place right now. Politics stink. COVID. We're lost as humans right now. So the more you can be a positive, safe team, the better. I think your employees will just really appreciate that.
