Career Aspirations

Potato Chip raised an interesting question in his comment.  He (or she) says:

I will leave this line of work because of bullying. I am sad about that because in a short time I have achieved things in the role no one had been able to achieve in 10 years.

How many others have left their workplace or changed their line of work because of bullying in the workplace?

Even though my experience has been relatively mild, I too am considering leaving, at the very least leaving this management position.  For me, I just don’t think I care to live my life putting up with this sort of crap.

I’m not alone

Well apart from some of my colleagues at work who have also had unpleasant exchanges with my colleague… like the one I met today for lunch who has since left the organisation who said “And I thought it was just me!”, I’ve discovered a huge number of sites talking about Workplace Bullying.  Please let me know in comments if you know of a good blog or website.

You’ll find a few of them in my links section.  Look at these statistics from the Compliance Training Blog in the US:

About 45% of American workers have been the target of workplace abuse. Another study by the Workplace Bullying Institute concluded that:

• 80% of the women and 20% of the men surveyed had been bullied in the workplace
• 71% of bullies are bosses
• 64% of Americans believe that victims of bullying should have legal recourse

Perhaps I should say that I am female and my colleague is a very large person with an ego larger even than that.  I am my colleague’s superviser but our structure places a lot of power in talented individuals who are not managers, and this person does have talent.

Perhaps they might be emotionally retarded… but they have talent.

The meeting

I was pretty upset with the tone of the first email below and realised that it was doing exactly what it’s author intended – intimidate me into giving my colleague what they wanted.

What I can’t seem to get through to this person is that I am on their side!

Anyway I fretted about it all night and ended up at a position of not allowing myself to be intimidated.  I carefully structured the meeting and spoke to my boss beforehand to let her know that I wanted to run the meeting and not hide behind her – although I was pleased to have her there.  I also discussed the format of the meeting.

The structure was that I outlined why I’d called the meeting, what I wanted the outcome to be – a consensus – and I even complimented my colleague on inviting my boss (whom I’d already asked to come along) so we were all on the same page.

I opened the discussion by inviting my colleague to tell us what they wanted… and then asked if anything had changed from initial meetings where something else had been decided but was not being followed up on.

I kept the meeting on task and summed up in the end with action points which I summarised in an email following the meeting.

To be honest I was quite proud of myself that a) we managed to reach a consensus and b) I didn’t cry.

After that meeting my boss took my colleague to task about the emails. 

My colleague didn’t recognise that the words and tone used could be considered threatening or intimidating (let alone rude).  She says my colleague has no idea of the impact of those emails.  She told my colleague that if it happened again, to anyone, my colleague would be put on a first warning.

Personally I thought THAT should have been the first warning, after all, this person has also verbally abused my predecessor and my counterpart.  However, I’m happy that she has taken my colleague to task at all.

I confess to being a bit naughty though.  During her chat with my colleague an issue was raised that I wasn’t doing enough on a certain project.  A project, I might point out, that I knew only vaguely about.  So I sent off an email requesting a quick catch-up to see where they are up to on it.  After all, I need to know where to start from…

Yes, I know I’m fanning the flames but lets just see if the temper can be controlled… and fuck it.  I’m NOT going to be controlled by the whinging and undermining of a very nasty individual, no matter what talent they brings to the organisation.

The worm has turned.

The emails

I thought I’d share with you the emails that upset me so much.  Compared to others they probably seem quite pathetic.  I am the correspondent’s line manager.

Hi Boss* we have yet another micro management meeting with Anonatwork scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9. I suspect the shit is going to hit the fan in a rather large-ish way, you might want to be there. 

*our boss’s first name was used here.

 A couple of weeks before this person sent this email after I sent them an invitation:

NO…have you checked out my workload recently? Have you sorted out the website DESPITE plenty of notice? Are you at work during an important period? Are WE serious? Are you applying for the Management job? I sincerely hope NOT. Please reply before I forward my correspodence to Melbourne!

So yes.  I am intimidated and hurt that this person would respond in such a way.

I’ll tell you how the meeting went shortly.

Flames

Have you been flamed?

I’ve received two emails in the last fortnight that would fall into this category.  Abusive, threatening and designed to intimidate. 

I consider myself to be a fairly level-headed person and I know that not everyone can like you, but I find these emails to be upsetting.  They are, as the saying goes, spoiling my time in the house.

It is also very difficult to confront the person who is sending them.  They work.  I am intimidated.  And that is quite confronting for me to own.  That is not to say I haven’t taken some action.  I have forwarded the emails on to my boss and she has spoken to the person involved, who in fact I do like, most of the time.

It makes me think… if I feel so affected by just two emails, how on earth do people cope with sustained abuse?  For the first time, I have an inkling how hard it is for women to walk away from abusive relationships.  For kids to stand up to schoolyard bullies.

For now, I am focussing on not letting this intimidation affect the decisions I make.  My feeling is if I do, then I am rewarding this bad behaviour.  Is it enough action?  I don’t know.  It becomes a very personal decision and I don’t want to be “rescued” by well meaning others.  If it continues, I guess I’ll have to look again at my options. 

And I thought I’d left school!