Posted by denised in Inc. Magazine recently posted an article about managing the office bully and contacted yours truly for some advice. In the piece Raven Hill offers tips on reining in the office bully. Here’s an excerpt from the article…
How to Manage an Office Bully: Are You a Bully?
Denise Dawson, who runs the ReallyBadBoss.com blog, describes her first boss as “the worst bully,” a cursing and screaming type who preferred to rule by fear. “We felt like prisoners more than employees,” she says. “Morale was awful. Attrition was atrocious.”
She worked at a small, family-owned company that made bikini wax products. The lowest point came when he asked another employee to model a bikini to give him a better idea of how they could improve their products. “And she wore it,” Dawson says. “None of us said anything. We were all scared of losing our jobs.”What Dawson witnessed may be extreme, but the fear she described is not unique. Do your employees complain of random sabotage, harassment, humiliation or isolation? There’s a good chance they are being bullied.
OfficeArrow, an online community for office managers and small business owners, created a quiz to see if you are a bully. For those who fear they are in a bully’s bull’s eye, the Workplace Bullying Institute has a checklist of early bullying signs that includes an unreasonably demanding boss, “surprise” meetings designed to humiliate, retaliatory behavior, unfounded accusations of harassment, and extreme work-related stress that interferes with your health and personal life.
Read the complete article, including a definition of workplace bullying, online at Inc.com.
