Managers must confront manipulative, troublemakers

Dealing effectively with problem employees can be hard – and risky.  Courage, judgment and skill are required, and supportive leaders help.  Despite the difficulties, if you want a productive environment, exposing the problem is necessary. Why is it so hard?  Some people would say human nature.  I say fear, training in avoidance, and lack of skill.

To read the rest of this article from the Business First of Columbus, see: Managers must confront manipulative troublemakers http://columbus.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2004/09/20/smallb4.html

Problem employees can be manipulative masters at ignoring the wishes of their supervisors, using legalistic arguments to defend themselves, pitting fellow employees against one another, spreading gossip and back-stabbing.  They’re harassing, bullying and abusive.  By the time they’re adults, they’ve had a lifetime to practice their techniques.

Our society generally doesn’t train us to be warriors.  We’re trained to play nice; avoid discomfort, fear and conflict; and take the path of least resistance.  Even people who discipline themselves at the refrigerator or gym often avoid looking someone in the eye and saying “That’s not good enough” or “We don’t act like that here.”

Discipline and practice are required to skillfully take on a problem employee.  It may be hard to overcome your hesitation and to value performance more than acting sweetly hypocritical.  So it’s hard.  So what?  It tests your mettle.

Some people think you’re asking a problem employee to change, which may be hard for them.  But that’s only a half-truth.  You’re telling them to make a choice: Change or be gone.  And their degree of difficulty is irrelevant.

Managers often hope to avoid opening emotional Pandora’s Boxes, particularly if they aren’t sure of their leaders’ support.  Executives sabotage themselves and their organizations when they try to avoid recognizing and dealing with problem people.

Imagine you’re a manager assembling a new team and you’ve inherited a manipulative, long-term employee who follows her own agenda, underperforms, gossips, releases confidential material to stir up trouble, creates friction within the team, violates boundaries, feels entitled to do whatever she wants, and yet tries to rally the team against you.  Let’s call her Jane.

See the original article for more details.

Many well-meaning managers give up at this point because their childhood attitudes and rules keep them from making anyone look or feel bad.  Magical thinking makes them try to buy Jane’s loyalty by covering up for her.  The task of rehabilitating someone like Jane seems so huge, managers continue begging, renegotiating agreements and accepting her behavior.

But let’s imagine that you’re made of stronger stuff – and add another complication.  You go to the vice president of Human Resources to ask for advice.  He tells you that’s just the way Jane is and she has said things about you in confidence, he can’t reveal.  His advice: overlook it, stop being so picky and placate Jane because she's upset.

Should you take on Jane and how? The choice is simple and clear: Feel helpless, complain, whine, look the other way and give Jane control of your team or summon courage, fortitude, perseverance and skill to test your company leaders.

Can you succeed? See the original article for more details.

Lessons for executives: These problems won’t resolve themselves favorably if you ignore them.  Don’t make an instant decision to keep the highest-ranking people.  Leaders cowed by difficult people are merely administrators.

Investigate and act with discretion.  Put your stamp on company culture by confronting these situations.  You are announcing who you want to be your followers – the manipulative (mediocre who resist improving) or the above-board (productive who want to be outstanding).

Often, individuals need coaching and organizations need consulting to help them design and implement a plan that fits the situation.  To get the help you need, call Ben at 1-877-828-5543.

Stop sneaky workplace bullies

Learn how to recognize and stop covert, sneaky bullies and narcissistic control freaks in the workplace. Overt bullies – whether they’re bosses, coworkers or supervisees – are easy to recognize; they’re loud, obnoxious, threatening and in your face.

Sneaky, stealthy bullies are harder to recognize.  If we don’t recognize their tactics and label them, we can’t energize ourselves to develop and carry out an effective plan to stop them.

Seven warning signs of sneaky, passive-aggressive bullies are:

1. They want to control all the turf. They form hidden, unofficial power centers on their teams.  They want you to ask their permission before you do anything.  In subtle, manipulative, bullying ways they’ll harass and abuse you until you walk on egg-shells around them.  Sometimes they gain power and control by being nasty and vicious behind your back.  Sometimes they gain control by being hypersensitive, so you’re afraid to hurt their feelings and set them off.  I call these hypersensitive ones, “professional victims.”
2. Sneaky bullies think they know best about everything; just ask them. They make your life miserable if you don’t do what they want.  With a seemingly friendly smile, they point out your mistakes and failings.  Their absolute certainty seduces you into self-doubt and self-bullying.  You become unsure of your own judgment and wisdom; eventually you give in to them.
3. They know they’re more important than you are. They think your whole life should be devoted to their emotional needs, wants and whims.  Their desires, jealousies, issues and concerns (not yours) become the focus of all interactions.  They think they’re entitled to get what they want.  Their feelings are their justifications for their anger, retaliation and revenge.  They’ll fight to the death over things you think are trivial.  They never really apologize or compromise, even if they say the words.  You may think that by giving in one time, they’ll give in the next time.  But they never give in.  They push each new boundary endlessly.
4. They think their sense of humor is correct. They think they can say whatever they want and you’re supposed to take it.  They use you as an emotional punching bag.  They make nasty, vicious, demeaning, hurtful remarks to you and cut you down in public, or they tell your embarrassing secrets.  Then they laugh like it’s a joke.  They don’t care about your pain or wishes.  If you object, they say you’re too sensitive or they were kidding.  They think your feelings are stupid and not logical.  And you better not say anything they don’t like.  They think they don’t have anything to learn.  They insist on doing things their way.
5. Everyone is a pawn in their game. You have value only as long as you can help them or you worship them.  They’re selfish, arrogant and demanding; they think they should be catered to or waited on.  Anyone who doesn’t help or who gets in their way becomes an enemy.  They form cliques and mobs who support them or who do their dirty work.  Sometimes they are entrenched in the workplace – they have friends in high places.  You’re afraid that if you disagree, they’ll strike back at you.
6. They think their excuses, excuse them. They’re sure their reasons are always correct and are enough to justify what they do.  They think that if you don’t agree, you simply don’t understand or you’re evil.  Self-deluded narcissists think their jealousy, anger and hatred, their manipulation and back-stabbing are not bad characteristics.
7. They think their logic, reasoning and rules, rule. They think they’re entitled to do anything they want – to take what they want, to ridicule and attack you or to strike back in any way they want – but everyone else should be bound by their rules.  They think that if your feelings are hurt by what they’ve said or done, it’s your fault and your problem.  They know they’re right and they’re righteous.  They’re great debaters or they simply talk so loud and long that eventually you give in.

Ignore your self-bullying; that little voice that doesn’t like you, that tells you that the narcissistic control-freak might be right.  If you don’t trust your own guts you’ll get sucked in, just like you would into a black hole.

You’re never going to change them.  They’re bullying, control-freaks.

Don’t debate or argue with them.  Find someone high up on the totem pole to help you.  Make a business case for how damaging their tactics are.  Get allies who also want to stop them.  Shine a light on their tactics and their cliques.

If we don’t stop bullies, they’ll think we’re easy prey.  Like sharks, they’ll just go after us more.

Often, individuals need coaching and organizations need consulting to help them design and implement a plan that fits the situation.  To get the help you need, call Ben at 1-877-828-5543.

To Stop Bullies, Value Behavior More Than Marriage Vows

We want to be people of our words; we want to be ethical and honest, and have trustworthy character; we want to do our duty.  But sometimes our loyalty to our vows – especially our marriage vows and vows to take care of parents or children – makes our lives a living hell and also sets a terrible example for our children. Deep in our hearts we know we must stop being loyal to those vows or our lives and spirits will be destroyed. But how can we stop honoring our vows?

Some examples:

Some examples:

• In public we pledge many things in our marriage vows. But suppose our spouse turns out to have deceived us and reneges on their side of the vows?  Suppose that husband turns out to be physically, mentally and emotionally abusive?  Suppose he harasses, controls, bullies or abuses his wife?  Supposes he justifies his actions by saying that he’s the head of the house and she must do what he says?  Or suppose he blames his lack of self-control on her and uses threats, guilt and shame – his rage and violence are her fault and if she did what she should, he’d treat her better?  Or suppose that wife turns out to be manipulative and controlling?  Or supposes she’s lying, crazy and always verbally, emotionally and physically abusive in order to beat the husband into submission?
• In private we may pledge many things to our parents, especially as they get older. But suppose they’re narcissistic, demanding, bullying and toxic.  Suppose they squander all their money against our advice and then they insist we spend all our money on them – either taking care of them or sending them to an expensive, assisted living facility?  Suppose they are relentlessly critical, scolding, chastising, whining, complaining and demeaning, and nothing we do is ever good enough?  Suppose they are vicious in private but sweet as sugar in public, so every thinks they’re saints while they act like devils in private?  Suppose they’re lying, manipulative and back stabbing – they praise their favorite child, put us down and leave everything to the favorite while we’re the ones taking care of them?  Suppose we think we’re responsible because they raised us, we think we owe them and we still want their approval?  Suppose we feel guilty if we think of acting like ungrateful children and abandoning them in their hour of need?
• In our hearts we pledge to take care of our children until they can take care of themselves very well. But suppose they’re 40 and still living with us because they never took our advice and never got good careers or married the right person or held a job?  Suppose our toxic children are rotten to us until they need something?  Or they threaten to deprive us of our grandchildren unless we give them everything they want, even to divorcing our spouse, whom they hate?  Suppose they still act like spoiled, vicious, toxic teenagers, blaming us for all their failures, feeling entitled to everything they want, full of sneering sarcasm, back-talk, temper tantrums and demanding that we slave for them?  Suppose we still think that if we love them enough, if we’re nice enough to them they’ll finally grow up and become successful?  Suppose we’re afraid they’ll fail completely and end up homeless if we don’t give them everything they want?

Those are horrible scenarios but all too common.

Probably, we’ve discovered the hard way that we can’t make things better by being peacemakers.  Tactics like begging, bribery, endless praise, appeasement, ‘second chances,’ forgiveness, sympathy and unconditional love, and the Golden Rule usually encourage more harassment, bullying and abuse.  We won’t get the results we want; we won’t stop emotional bullies or physical bullying unless we’re clear about which values are more or less important to us.

So we wallow in negative self-talk, perfectionism, blame, shame and guilt.  We get discouraged, depressed, despairing and easily defeated.  We lose our confidence and self-esteem.

Often, we stay stuck in those versions of hell because we gave our word and we’re people of integrity – even though they broke their side of the bargain, we understand how hard it has been for them.  We think we must honor our pledge or we’d be just as bad as they are.

I say that’s a big mistake. I say, “Choose life, not a slow spiritual and emotional death.”  I say, “Examine your hierarchy of values and get clear about which values are more important to you.  Then honor the most important ones gracefully and cheerfully.”  And make yourself cheerful living a great life with your choice.

Don't be a victim waiting forever for other people to grow up or change or die.  Don’t suffer in silence.  Use your own power.  Say “That’s enough!”  Say “No!”

Often, we avoid examining that hierarchy of values and discarding those early vows until we are forced to.  We may not be willing to protect ourselves but we will act resolutely to defend others.

For example, our crazy or bullying spouse abuses the children and only then does our spirit rise up with fierce determination to protect our children.  We discard that marriage vow for the sake of something much more important than loyalty to a toxic spouse – loyalty to our children

Or the toxic parents are so abusive to our spouse and children that we take the power we need to protect what’s more precious than our toxic parents – our marriage and our children.

Or our toxic children are so vicious, nasty and abusive that our spirits will stand no more – we’ll protect our marriages, our health and our retirement funds from the energy vampires who want to suck us dry, even if they’re our own children

For some examples of different tactics, see, “Bullies Below the Radar: How to Wise Up, Stand Up and Stay Up,” “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Positioning Wars can Ruin a Business

Turf wars are a well-known fact of life in many organizations.  Lesser known, but far more destructive, are positioning wars – struggles by two or more opponents for the top spot in an organization. Turf wars aren’t any fun.  But they’re mostly defensive – people trying to protect their turf from encroachment by a real or imagined rival.  Positioning wars are far more aggressive and destructive.  They involve a fight to become No. 1 immediately or, at least, the heir-designate to whoever’s in charge now.

Turf battles often lead to bureaucratic slowdowns.  Positioning wars can ruin the very kingdom being fought over.

To read the rest of this article from the Dallas Business Journal, see: Positioning wars can ruin a business http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2007/04/30/smallb2.html

Imagine the consequences when two powerful, competent princes, who run different operational units, fight to determine who’ll inherit when the king retires:

• Political in-fighting takes precedence over vision, mission, productivity or clients.  Good staff stops trying to make a productive difference.  Meetings degenerate into skirmishes.  Soap opera flourishes.
• The princes circle each other like birds of prey seeking to uncover hidden agendas. Unofficial power centers are established.  The princes’ teams reflect their antagonism.    They focus on the faults of the other team and the hidden meanings behind looks, words and deeds.  They score trivia points by publicizing the other faction’s setbacks or their own minor victories.
• Innocent bystanders aren’t safe.  Neutral parties are inevitably drawn into choosing sides. Tension and terror activate childhood coping strategies.  Everyone watches their words more carefully than their productivity.
• Bad apples suck up to each prince looking for protection and power.  Slackers try to turn their protector against managers who pressure them to be more productive.
• Previously productive people become double agents or assassins.  Even within teams, suspicion prevents aligned, concerted effort.
• Clients are ignored or entangled in alliances.

Positioning wars are even more debilitating if the princes had previously been able to work together effectively.  Most people don’t adapt effectively to the dramatic change in environment.  They’re blindsided, feel victimized and waste time bemoaning their undeserved fate.

Competition stimulates creative juices and inspires outstanding achievement.  But cut-throat, internal war inevitably scorches the land.  If you’re still the king, act decisively to aminimize destruction from the princes’ fighting.

Positioning wars create the same symptoms. Performance decreases.  Behavior sinks to the lowest level tolerated.  Narcissists, incompetent, lazy, gossip, back-stabbing, manipulation, hostility, crankiness, meeting sabotage, negativity, relentless criticism, whining, complaining, cliques, turf control, toxic feuds, harassment, bullying and abuse thrive.  Power hungry bullies take power.

Don’t waste your valuable people time on slackers.  You won’t make things better being a peacemaker.

Begging, bribery, endless praise, appeasement, endless ‘second chances,’ unconditional love and the Golden Rule usually encourage more harassment, bullying and abuse.  Stop emotional bullies and stop bullying.

High standards protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  You can learn to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Don’t Stress Out Trying to Motivate Slackers

You’ve heard it a hundred times, “A great manager can motivate anyone.” Hogwash.

The fact is some slackers simply don’t care and are beyond motivation.  And it’s a waste of your limited time and energy to keep trying.  If you’re sick and tired and stressed out because you’ve accepted responsibility for motivating slackers, prepare for the inevitable effects of continued frustration and emotional pain.  You’ll be exhausted, burn out and get physically ill.

Unfortunately, managers often find themselves pressured to motivate everyone.  And both they and their bosses may see these managers as failures when they can’t pull it off.  It’s time to give them a break.

To read the rest of this article from the Business First of Louisville, see: Don’t stress out trying to motivate slackers http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/stories/2007/05/28/editorial3.html

Many slackers are like teenagers who don’t want to take out the trash or clean their rooms.  They pretend they’re not responsible or don’t know how.  They act as if there’s a debate going on between them and their managers, and they don’t have to do the work unless they like the bribe.  Slackers are sneaky, manipulative bullies.

Motivating your employees is an important part of being a good manger.  It’s also important to recognize the ones who can’t be motivated, so you don’t waste time trying to do the undoable.

If they’re not performing, let them know immediately and link consequences and rewards to performance.  You can’t make them happy enough to work hard.  If they don’t respond to praise or fear with increased productivity, let them look for a job where they’ll be appreciated for slacking.  Or, maybe, a termination will change their slacker attitude.

You’re not looking for people who require constant motivation and micromanagement.  You’re looking for people who come to you inspired and eager to face challenges, who take responsibility and who succeed.

Keeping a slacker forces good performers to pick up that slack.  You’re simply spreading the stress around so you don’t have to bear the whole burden.  That’s a poor reward for a good performer.  It’s as if you’re saying, “I can count on you so I’m going to give you a bonus of extra work.  We’re going to continue paying that underperforming slacker while you carry their slack in addition to the two jobs you already do.”

The most dismal cases are in organizations that promote slackers to management or allow slacking managers to stay.  That spreads slacking over a wider territory.

In the real world it’s everyone’s job, including a president or CEO, to motivate his supervisors that he’s worth keeping.  Why should it be up to your managers to motivate the slackers on your payroll?  Slackers should be working hard to motivate you to keep them.

Slackers create the same symptoms.  Performance decreases.  Behavior sinks to the lowest level tolerated.  Narcissists, incompetent, lazy, gossip, back-stabbing, manipulation, hostility, crankiness, meeting sabotage, negativity, relentless criticism, whining, complaining, cliques, turf control, toxic feuds, harassment, bullying and abuse thrive.  Power hungry bullies take power.

Don’t waste your valuable people time on slackers.  You won’t make things better being a peacemaker.  Begging, bribery, endless praise, appeasement, endless ‘second chances,’ unconditional love and the Golden Rule usually encourage more harassment, bullying and abuse.  Stop emotional bullies and stop bullying.

High standards protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  You can learn to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Office Moms, Slobs, Princesses Stir up Distracting Soap Opera

You’ve seen the sign, or some variation of it: “Clean up your mess.  Your mom doesn’t work here.”  It’s an obvious reminder to the slobs among us that they’re a real problem. But there’s a flip side to this problem: the office “mom” – male or female – who cleans up after the slobs.  That may sound like a good thing, but office moms create their own set of problems.

Office moms come in two flavors; those who clean up the physical debris left by others and “e-moms” who try to clean up other people’s emotional garbage.

To read the rest of this article from the Cincinnati Business Journal, see: Office moms, slobs, princesses stir up distracting soap opera http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/06/25/smallb5.html

There are people who leave physical messes and people who leave emotional messes like hot-tempered, hostile staff no one wants to tangle with and bosses who want go-fers to take care of their personal, menial chores.

The fact is some people are lazy, uncaring and irresponsible.  They act like overgrown children or arrogant princes/princesses expecting to be waited on.  You have to decide which values matter most.  Is it leaving people alone, because of politeness or fear, or setting and enforcing communal standards of behavior, despite resistance?

If you ignore slobs, resentment will grow among staffers who get stuck cleaning up other people’s messes.  Weak staff will also want slob privileges.  Resentment will destroy productivity.

Volunteer office moms clean up other people’s physical messes.  Acting out of courtesy or martyrdom, office moms appear to be benevolent.  But even if they’re happy cleaning up after others, there’s an insidious side effect that can cost more than the immediate benefits.

When someone caters to grown “children,” the latter tend to remain children.  Lack of responsibility about break rooms usually leads to lack of responsibility about team effort.  It spreads to messy, worthless paperwork and incomplete projects.

The most insidious and destructive side of the slob-mom equation are people who dump emotional garbage around the office (e-slobs) and their partners, e-moms, who listen sympathetically and try to clean up the messes.  E-slobs continually vent their hurt, frustration, complaining and criticism.  They want support for personal agendas.

One variant of e-slobs are bosses who want emotional voids filled by endless praise and unconditional love.  They often create loyalty tests for you to prove your love.  For example, they’ll demand that you miss important family events in order to wait on them over trivial matters.

E-moms encourage melodrama and make feelings more important than productivity.

Of course, you want your staff to care about one another, but e-moms and e-slobs take a tremendous toll on overall productivity.  You need to intervene quickly if you have a slob team.

E-moms, e-slobs and princesses create the same symptoms.  Performance decreases.  Behavior sinks to the lowest level tolerated.  Narcissists, incompetent, lazy, gossip, back-stabbing, manipulation, hostility, crankiness, meeting sabotage, negativity, relentless criticism, whining, complaining, cliques, turf control, toxic feuds, harassment, bullying and abuse thrive.  Power hungry bullies take power.

Don’t be a slob or dependent boss who needs an office mom.  Don’t look for a warm, soft, friendly shoulder on which to cry at work.  And don’t waste work time on melodrama.  Handle your feelings on your own time.

On the flip side; don’t be an office mom.  You won’t make things better being a peacemaker.  Begging, bribery, endless praise, appeasement, endless ‘second chances,’ unconditional love and the Golden Rule usually encourage more harassment, bullying and abuse.  Stop emotional bullies and stop bullying.

Work is about work, not soap opera.  Stick to that agenda and you’ll be better off.

High standards protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  You can learn to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Bosses who avoid conflict create a big mess

You probably don’t want an angry, confrontational, bullying boss.  But, do you want the other extreme – a conflict-avoidant boss? I vote, “No.”  Conflict-avoidant bosses create breeding grounds for passive-aggressive employees and self-appointed tyrants.

For example, Helen’s boss is nice and sweet.  And that’s her problem.

To read the rest of this article from the Austin Business Journal, see: Bosses who avoid conflict create a big mess http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2007/07/23/smallb3.html

Larry is always thoughtful and considerate.  He tries to agree with everyone.  Although he inspects each employee’s results and asks penetrating questions, he won’t tell them what they must do.  If two of his staff disagrees, he won’t intervene and make a decision, or force them to resolve the issue.

Helen has frequent and critical deadlines, but in order to do her job she needs information supplied by Lindsay, another employee in Larry’s department.  Lindsay says she’s too busy to give Helen the necessary information within the agreed-upon timelines.

Helen asks and asks but nothing seems to work.  She tries begging, twisting Lindsay’s arm and even explaining her predicament at team meetings.  She tries every communication and management technique her friends and human resource professionals suggest.  Lindsay simply goes on her merry way and stonewalls Helen.  She’s a sneaky bully.

In public, Lindsay always agrees to do that part of her job but then simply ignores the commitment.  In private she says Helen’s not important enough.  She doesn’t like Helen and she’s going to sabotage her.  In one-to-one meetings with Larry, she undercuts Helen’s needs, communication skills and performance.

Larry says he can’t do anything.  If he tried to force Lindsay, it’d create conflict – and he doesn’t want confrontation.  Larry is so sweet and nice.

Larry avoids conflict with Lindsay but creates conflict with Helen.  He’s upset with not getting what he needs from Helen but not upset enough to break the deadlock.  He’s more afraid of Lindsay than he is of Helen.  Lindsay knows she’s secure.  She has no pressure to serve Helen and no consequences for resisting.

There are numerous variations on this theme but they all lead to the same symptoms.  Performance decreases.  Behavior sinks to the lowest level tolerated.  Narcissisism, incompetence, laziness, gossip, back-stabbing, manipulation, hostility, crankiness, meeting sabotage, negativity, relentless criticism, whining, complaining, cliques, turf control, toxic feuds, harassment, bullying and abuse thrive.  Power hungry bullies take power.

Absentee bosses – whether they’re waiting for retirement, have distracting personal concerns, are mentally tuned out or are cowards – create sanctuaries for unprofessional behavior.  When there’s a vacuum of authority, the most aggressive, ruthless and controlling people are drawn in to fill it.  It’s like the worst behavior of children coming out when their teacher leaves them alone for the day.

Conflict-avoidant bosses don’t implement decisions necessary for overall productivity because they won’t face resistant people and get them to do what’s necessary.

If you avoid facing someone who’s unhappy, you’re abdicating your responsibility as a leader.  You’ll probably live to regret the pain caused by abandoning your duty.  Your good employees certainly will regret it.

High standards protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  You can learn to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Fixing Your Business? Keep the Best, Churn the Rest

What if you showed up for work to find a new sign posted by the owners: “Keep the best, churn the rest”—and you knew the best, and the rest meant you and your colleagues at all levels? Chances are, it’d get your attention.  And that’s exactly what business owners Dick and Harry (made up names for a true illustration) had in mind when they posted that sign at their medium-sized company.

To read the rest of this article from the Houston Business Journal, see: Fixing your business? Start at the top with managers http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2007/10/29/smallb5.html

Dick and Harry had allowed their company to drift into unprofitability.  Though they brought in more business, profits never increased.  And the more jobs they took on, the crazier their lives became.  They were so exhausted trying to stay afloat, they didn’t have time to plan how to get out of the mess—until a stress-induced fight finally forced them to stop and think.  It was change or lose the business.

They realized they had a lackadaisical staff, lackadaisically managed, producing minimally.  The big problem was their poor leadership.  Dick and Harry had let their standards slide.  They’d stopped being leaders and had become conflict-avoidant fixers.

They complained whenever something was done wrong, but they fixed it themselves.  They worked harder and dumber.  No one was re-trained or fired.  They never stopped bullies. The result?  The more business that came in, the worse their quality and the more profit gushed out of their pipeline.

The more frantic they had become, the less they enforced behavioral standards.  Over time, narcissism, cranky complaining, criticism, whining, demanding, bullying, emotional drama, back-stabbing, sabotage, negativity, hostility, cliques, cyberbullying, personal vendettas, turf fights, entitlement, claims of unhappiness and poor morale, control-freaks, toxic nastiness, gossip, disruptive actions and lying increased.  These behaviors are the typical signs of problems.

When standards slid, the best people left because they got tired of being forced to work with jerks who prevented success.  And they hated being paid the same as jerks.

Dick and Harry started demanding excellence from themselves.  Before they could fix problem employees, they had to fix themselves.

To let their staff know that there would be a new culture of high performance and accountability, they started an internal campaign: “Keep the best, churn the rest.”  To show that wasn’t a punitive exercise or mass downsizing, the slogan meant four things:

• They began at the top.  If they didn’t perform, they’d leave because they weren’t worthy of leading the company.
• Fixing managerial problems was urgent because problems at the top cost more.  One problem manager caused more damage than one problem employee.
• “Keep” meant increasing rewards because each quality worker is worth more than two jerks.
• “The best” meant competent, productive employees, not just shooting stars.

Although Dick and Harry needed to reward good performers, they also needed to demand high quality and accountability at all levels. That meant honest evaluations, with rewards and consequences.  They knew they had to stop bullying.

Dick and Harry didn’t expect a quick fix.  And there wasn’t one.  During the next 18 months, they turned over about 35 percent of their staff, including managers.  But they stuck to their plan. They walked the walk and talked the talk.

The company turned around.  The more they kept the best, the easier it became to churn the rest.  At all levels, unmotivated or incompetent people were gone.

High standards protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  Learn what you can do to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

You Can Change Attitude Problems at Work

Increasing productivity is relatively easy because you can measure and quantify production, and then respond effectively.  But how do you fix poor attitudes, which you can’t quantify? Actually, it’s not that hard.

A list of poor attitudes typically presented to me by managers and employees includes negativity, insubordination, narcissism, hyper-sensitivity, bullying, abuse of power and lack of responsibility.

To read the rest of this article from the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, see: You can Change Attitude Problems at Work

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2007/11/19/smallb3.html

A typical list of behaviors that result from those attitudes is: chronic gossip, back-stabbing, sarcasm, negativity, manipulation, sabotage, formation of cliques, nepotism, favoritism, critical complaining, whining, demeaning comments, bullying bosses, dishonest evaluations, flaming e-mails, disrupting meetings, abusive remarks, ignoring suggestions, “Drama Queens,” blowing up in response to feedback, turf-control, crabbiness, over-reactions, lack of communication, mind reading, people who want their minds read, pointing fingers, taking things personally, the loud, silent treatment and my all-time favorite: “not my job.”

I use a straightforward, action-oriented approach that changes company cultures infected with poor attitudes.  The key is to be clear and specific about which attitudes and behaviors you want, and then to require participation in a culture that has them.  Don’t be a conflict-avoidant manager.

How do you clarify attitudes you can’t quantify?  The first step is to acknowledge that although you can’t quantify attitudes like “narcissistic control-freak,” you can recognize and document behaviors without resorting to mind reading, moral judgments or personal attacks.  Then you can act on your documentation of non-professional versus professional behavior.

Make sure it’s legal.  Then everyone from the owner on down is required to subscribe to or sign off on the new code of professional behavior.  The code then becomes a significant part of everyone’s evaluations.  Be consistent in rewarding the desired behavior and having consequences for actions against your code.

You won’t get everyone to buy in immediately.  So what?  Band together with the core group that wants to turn things around or to improve what you already have.

As you weed out a few resistant bullies, you’ll find that merely going through the process will change most employees’ behaviors.

Reinforce your expectations with new employees; publicize your code during hiring interviews.  Don’t bring people on board who argue with the code or who think the team should adjust to accommodate their personality or favorite styles that violate your code.

If someone has toxic behavior in another department, don’t bring them into your team in hopes you can change their long-term patterns.

High standards for positive attitudes protect everyone from unprofessional behavior.  Learn what you can do to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Can Forgiveness Keep Us from Stopping Bullies?

Many people believe that forgiveness – complete, unconditional and true – is necessary for spiritual development and for stopping bullies. These people struggle so they can see all people as completely spiritual and good, they strive to love them unconditionally, and they aspire to rise above earthly concerns and values.  That makes them feel very spiritual and virtuous.

However, much more often, I see the trap that “ineffective forgiveness” leads people into.

There’s a better way – “effective forgiveness.”

What I see are the many women and men who I’ve coached or who have written comments about their years of trying to love and forgive bullies who haven’t changed and who continue to harass and abuse them and their children.  Ineffective forgiveness becomes a trap when:

• We don’t stop thinking about the incidents and we generate the same repeating cycle of strong emotions.
• We don’t take precautions so the bully repeatedly attacks us.
• We don’t learn how to avoid the same traps or how to stop bullying by toxic, selfish, narcissistic bullies’ sneaky manipulations, control, back-stabbing, or overt violence or threats of violence.

Ineffective forgiveness means that we hope the other person won’t be mean or nasty next time.  We hope that our believing this bit of wishful thinking helps bullies become better.  And to show that we’ve forgiven, we must put ourselves back into the same position in hopes bullies won’t take advantage of our good nature and kindness.

Ineffective forgiveness means people have put the value of forgiveness and the value of self-protection at the same level.  This trap leads to despair, defeat, depression and, maybe, suicide.

Almost all of the women who have interviewed me on radio and television were raised to be “nice girls.”  Their mothers taught them to forgive the mean girls who tormented and terrorized them, because those girls must have had terrible home lives.  They were taught that it was wrong to fight back and to protect themselves.

This kind of ineffective forgiveness doesn’t stop relentless bullying at home, at school or at work.

What do we try to gain by replaying incidents of bullying and abuse? Replaying is a motivational strategy.  We’re trying to develop enough fear or pain, suffering or sorrow, isolation or depression, anger or rage so that we’ll finally take steps to protect ourselves.  We’re trying to develop enough energy to act effectively.

Therefore, once we know that we’ll protect ourselves, we can stop the rehashing the incidents, stop regenerating the strong emotion in order to keep us suspicious and alert.  Then we can forgive effectively.

What are the goals of effective forgiveness and what do we usually require to get there?

• The goal of effective forgiveness is simply to stop thinking about the other person so they occupy no space in our mental or emotional worlds.
• In order to relax our vigilance, either we have to know that the perpetrator won’t try bullying us again or that we’ll protect ourselves, naturally, automatically and easily, if they ever try again.  Because we’ll stop them automatically, we don’t need to replay and re-analyze all the terrible incidents to keep us on guard and full of energy.
• Sometimes we’ll get bullies out of our environment, off our isle of song, but sometimes we’ll allow them to stay, although we’ll protect our personal space next time.  Effective forgiveness does not mean that we must still relate to them in the way they want.  Whoever tries to require continued interaction as evidence of “forgiveness,” is still trying to control us.
• Usually, we test a bully’s sincerity by requiring public apologies and amends.  If they won’t do these, we correctly don’t trust them.  Even if they do these, we still can choose to get them out of our space.

What if no apologies or amends are possible? I saw a program about the Amish in America, in which a portion was devoted to a young man who invaded an Amish school, sent all the boys out and started shooting all the girls. He killed five and seriously wounded more.  Then he killed himself.

What can we say?  There are no apologies or amends that would make that okay.

I’m saying that in such cases, the task of the Amish families is not to forget, but somehow to move on with the children who are alive and with each other.  Whatever they can think and do to reduce this horror to a size that makes it only a part of life, to a size that still allows them to find joy, for the children to grow up and love and have their own children, whatever allows them to do that is effective.  If they use the work “forgiveness,” that’s fine.

How can we forgive ourselves? Follow the same approach.  Beating ourselves relentlessly; negative self-talk, self-bullying, self-doubt, self-questioning, perfectionism, blame, shame, guilt and self-flagellation are simply ways of continuing to remind ourselves to do better.  But that’s a hard way to keep the reminder in mind.  The price is pretty high – loss of confidence and self-esteem, loss of will and determination.  When we change our way of being in the world, so we know we won’t act that way again, we won’t need the self-bullying.  Or when we make ourselves into people who are so filled with the best of us that we won’t act that way next time, we won’t need the self-bullying to motivate us to stay on track.

The goal of effective forgiveness is always about behavior:

• We don’t waste our time and energy obsessing on the bullies.
• We recognize bullies, especially sneaky, narcissistic, manipulative ones.
• We protect ourselves.

No specific process is required or is the best, as long as we get to the goal.  Whatever our explanations, psychological rationalizations, excuses or justifications are for bullies’ behavior or whatever make us feel good about forgiving them, the only criterion that really matters is that we get to the goals of effective forgiveness – we don’t waste our time and energy obsessing on the bullies and we protect ourselves.

Notice that I haven’t gone into abstract discussions about the existence of evil, or whether bullies are sinners or whether this world of pain and suffering, of joy and beauty is real or whether it’s a delusion to see through.  Those considerations might be important to some people, but they’re irrelevant to learning how to stop bullies and to protect ourselves from their attacks.

For some examples, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

You don't want dish-breakers in your kitchen cabinet

Good leaders need a “cabinet,” which is a senior team responsible for carrying out decisions and implementing plans. But what about your “kitchen cabinet” – a smaller group of trusted associates; an inner circle that helps you confidentially speculate about possible directions, make difficult decisions or deal with sensitive issues in the workplace?  Do you know who to bring into your kitchen cabinet?  And who to exclude?

To read the rest of this article from the Boston Business Journal, see: You don’t want dish-breakers in your kitchen cabinet http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2008/07/28/story6.html

Most senior teams, or cabinets, have five to 15 people.  You might call these teams your “strategic team,” but they usually become more tactical because members tend to focus on day-to-day operations and functions, and jockey for turf and power.

Your kitchen cabinet will be smaller.  Success is important but is not the major criterion for who gets onto your kitchen cabinet.  What types of people ruin a kitchen cabinet?

• Insecure, defensive, troublesome, whining, complaining, victims, Drama Queens and meddling peacemakers who need constant reassurance.
• Narcissistic, micromanagers and control-freaks unable to get beyond their self-focus – invested in personal agendas, dislikes, vendettas and turf wars.
• Perpetually hostile, critical, negative, cranky, dogmatic and abusive rule-worshippers.
• Sneaky, manipulative, back stabbing bullies.
• Dishonest and lacking integrity.

In addition to success, what are some of the important qualities in people you do want?

• You feel comfortable opening up your thought processes and speculations to them.
• You trust their wisdom and vision.  You trust that they’ll serve your vision and goals first, not their own.
• They can take a big view objectively and they don’t take things personally and don’t engage in bullying to get their way.
• They’re resilient; not defeated by setbacks.
• They trust you enough that when you don’t tell them everything, they assume you have good reasons.
• They don’t gossip but, instead, maintain confidentiality; especially when they disagree with the value of plans you’re contemplating or have decided on.

If you’ve inherited a senior leadership team and a kitchen cabinet, you’ll still have to form your own.  That’ll cause some hurt feelings and you may have turnover.  But that’s much better than opening up to the wrong people or trying to operate without an effective kitchen cabinet.

Learn what you can do to eliminate the high cost of low attitudes, behavior and performance.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Can We Stop Bullies if We Have Sympathy for Everyone?

Of course, it’s easy to sympathize with most people.  If someone has been abused, bullied or worse as a child, our hearts go out to them in sorrow for their suffering.  Or we can see someone’s beautiful spirit, the spirit of God, in them and our hearts will go out to them with compassion and empathy. But if a friend, neighbor or co-worker comes to you full of hurt, anger and outrage, does that mean that someone else actually did something wrong to them?

Maybe or maybe not.

For example, Linda recently moved next-door to Carrie in their friendly, family-focused block. It was a cul-de-sac and all the families had kids approximately the same age.  They’d organized many activities, birthday parties and car pools in order to create a community feeling.

Carrie and Linda started becoming close friends.  One day, Linda came to Carrie crying and angry.  As Linda struggled to stop her tears, Carrie felt herself becoming angry on Linda’s behalf.  Who’d caused this much pain and suffering to her friend?

Linda explained that one of the other women had made cutting remarks about Linda’s husband not being as successful as many of the other husbands and that Linda’s children weren’t as athletic or smart as the others.  Carrie was furious.  How could that woman say such things and hurt Linda so much?  What kind of neighborly welcome was that?

In an act of sympathetic friendship, Carrie said she’d never liked the other woman, who was always pompous and inflating her husband and children.  Linda shouldn’t pay attention to what the other woman had said.  Linda should know all the other women liked her much more than the other woman.

None of that was true.  Carrie actually liked and admired the other woman.  She’d never been negative, insensitive, righteous or arrogant before.  She’d always gone out of her way to help everyone.  Actually, Carrie couldn’t imagine the other woman saying those things to Linda.  But, obviously Linda’s pain meant that she had, indeed, said those things.  And Carrie thought it was her responsibility to comfort Linda and make her feel better.

The tactic worked.  After Carrie’s statement, Linda seemed to feel much better.  She thanked Carrie and left.

Two days later, Carrie noticed that the other woman had snubbed her in public and was whispering with Linda and a few of the others behind Carrie’s back.  Linda seemed to be accepted as part of the group and Carrie was glad for her.  But she still felt the cold shoulder.  Over the next week, it got worse.  She felt defeated, being cut out by the other women.

Episodes like this were repeated, sometimes with Carrie as the target and sometimes with other women as targets.  Carrie realized that it was like being back in junior high or high school again.  There was the clique of “in girls,” now led by Linda, and a shifting group of “targets-of-the-day.”

Carrie later discovered that after she’d sympathized with Linda, Linda had gone to the other woman and told her what Carrie had said behind her back.  Of course, the woman had reacted and had started snubbing Carrie.

In this article, I won’t go into how Carrie learned what Linda had been doing to each of the women or how Carrie managed to combat it.  Carrie might have been Linda’s first target, but she was not a victim.

Linda’s narcissistic, sneaky, manipulative, back-stabbing behavior was her tactic for breaking in to a new group and taking control of it.  Linda was a Queen Bee.  She wanted to control the turf.  She wanted everyone to be either so worshipful or so afraid that they sucked up to her and did what she demanded.

If Carrie had let herself be ruled by her sympathy for a friend trying to break in to a new group, she’d have never been able to protect herself.  Instead, she did not accept defeat.  She took power over her actions.  She was able to bring the women together in friendship and to return the block to a friendly, activity-filled community.

Carrie and the other women found that acts of friendship did not change Linda’s behavior.  She could not be won over to acting nicely.  All their sympathy and compassion didn’t stop Linda from harassing or bullying.  She would not be a true friend.  She remained a “mean girl.

As Carrie discovered the hard way, sometimes sympathy can be a trap.  Her sympathy only aided and enabled a bully to spread her poison.

Just because someone is hurt and angry does not mean that someone else really did anything wrong to them

Carrie should have been more careful of what she did to make Linda feel better.  And she should have trusted her knowledge of the other woman’s good character.  She should not have believed Linda’s report, no matter how convincing.  She should have spoken face-to-face to the other woman in the beginning.

If a person who’s hurt, angry and complaining is a snake or go-between, who likes to pour gasoline on fires and stir up trouble between other people – who plays the game of “Uproar” – they’ll use any sympathy, opinions or information to enmesh you in a fight with someone else.

I haven’t mentioned the “Linda’s” in our extended families because we already know who those manipulative tricksters are.  We’ve already been sucked in to their manipulations so many times that we’ve learned to protect ourselves and to maintain good relations with the other people who act nice in return

A big learning for Carrie was that we may see someone’s shining, Godly spirit, but we’ll probably get to deal with their personality and the consequences they cause us.

It’s not the sympathy that’s a problem.  It’s how we express that sympathy or the dumb ways our sympathy can lead us to act in order to make someone feel better.

For some examples, see the case studies in “How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks,” available fastest from this web site.

Since all tactics depend on the situation, expert coaching by phone or Skype helps.  We can design a plan that fits you and your situation.  And build your will and skill to carry it out effectively.

Managers must be decisive in handling problems

Good managers don’t clean up messes caused by their staffs.  They prevent messes from happening. Carl, head of a division, finally had to fix the problems in a department run by a senior manager, Brenda.  He transferred one supervisor and three high-ranking staff members to other departments.  He was satisfied: once again, he showed that he could be decisive and clean house.

But Carl had consistently ignored my advice that the head of that department was a problem.  Even with the housecleaning, he didn’t make the changes necessary to keep the problems from resurfacing later.

To read the rest of this article from the Jacksonville Business Journal, see: Managers must be decisive in handling problems http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2009/02/02/smallb5.html

I discovered a dark side behind Brenda’s behavior.  She was both conflict avoidant and passive-aggressive.

Carl’s permissiveness allowed Brenda to create a toxic culture of conflict-avoidance and passive-aggressiveness that diminished productivity throughout her department.  Abusive, harassing, bullying, unprofessional behavior included back-stabbing, innuendos, rumors, negativity and warring cliques; leading to widespread paranoia and over-reactions.

Carl and Benda ignored the widespread evidence that some people simply didn’t like each other and wouldn’t collaborate, and that for some people, personal agendas took precedence over company goals.  Also, some people behave decently only when they are actually held accountable by meaningful consequences.  Real-world bullies won’t behave, no matter what.

Carl and Brenda wouldn’t hold staff accountable in any consistent and meaningful way.

Learn what you can do to eliminate the high cost of conflict-avoidant, passive-aggressive low attitudes of managers and staff.

All tactics are situational.  Expert coaching and consulting can help you create and implement a plan that fits you and your organization.

Stop Bullies: Start Here

You may be the target of a bully, but you don’t have to be a victim. Bullies can go after you in many ways; physically harming you or threatening to hurt you; inflicting emotional pain through harassment, relentless criticism, taunting, put-downs, cutting out, manipulation, controlling, back-stabbing, spreading rumors, telling secrets, embarrassing you or generally mean behavior; cyberbullying.

In all these situations, the first step in defending yourself and in stopping bullies is the same and always has been.  This is the first step, even before you use any programs that are designed to stop bullies in schools or at work.

For instance, we can go back to Homer’s “Odyssey.”  At the end, after Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, have killed all the abusive suitors, they flee with two faithful servants to the mountain home of Odysseus’ father, Laertes.  They know they will pursued by all the older men of the city, the fathers and uncles of the dead suitors.

In the final confrontation, hopelessly outnumbered, Laertes kills the father of the most evil suitor.  Odysseus loses control of himself and goes berserk.  He advances in a murderous rage to kill all the fathers and uncles.

Athena suddenly appears and speaks the words that that exemplify a central belief of the Greeks about how to face whatever the world throws at you – whether overwhelming odds, verbal and physical abuse, unfairness, your fear and hesitation, your loss of self-control, bullies.

Take Athena’s command out of context – it’s not about the trigger; it’s about your necessary first step in response to any situation.

Athena says, “Odysseus!  Command yourself!”  And when Athena commands, we best listen.

There it is; the key to all success; the start of everything we must do – “Command yourself.”

• Don’t give in to your feelings, no matter what they are.  Don’t give in to embarrassment, weakness, hesitation, anxiety or fear.
• Don’t give in to self-bullying blame, shame and guilt.
• Don’t give in to your racing mind – when your reasoning and logic might talk you out of following your accurate intuition, might discourage and depress you into giving up or might spook and panic you into doing something dumb.
• Don’t give in to your lust or greed or laziness or any other of the Seven Deadly Sins.
• Don’t give in to your old beliefs, roles and rules that would trap you into enduring abuse and bullying.

Begin by commanding yourself.  In Odysseus’ case, commanding himself meant not starting a bloodbath, which would lead to generations of vendettas that would ruin the country.

In the case of facing a bully, we must take charge of ourselves, gather ourselves and command ourselves.  Even when we don’t know how things will turn out, we do know that we want to act bravely, resolutely and greatly.  Therefore, command yourself and go for it; 110%.

If we give in to fear, anxiety, perfectionism and self-doubt, we’ll do nothing to protect ourselves – we’ll become victims of our own panic and terror.  If we give in to anger and rage, we’ll explode, act unskillfully and do things we’ll regret.  If we don’t command ourselves, we’ll lose confidence and self-esteem; we’ll get depressed and become easy victims of the predators.

If we don’t command ourselves, nothing we do will have the power and energy needed to succeed.  We’ll be weak, hesitant, vacillating.  We’ll become victims.  We’ll take our first steps down the path to suicide.

With expert coaching and consulting, we can learn to command ourselves.  We can overcome the voices of our fears and self-bullying.

We can become strong and skilled enough to resist being targeted by bullies and to stop bullies in their tracks.  We can look at individual situations and plan tactics that are appropriate to us and to the situation.

When we command ourselves, we can overcome whatever confronts us.  We will let nothing crush us; our spirits will remain strong.  We can plan and take charge of our actions.  We can act with strength, courage and skill.  We can act with perseverance and resilience.  We can get the help we need.  We can succeed.

“How to Stop Bullies in Their Tracks” and “Parenting Bully-Proof Kids,” have many examples of children and adults commanding themselves and then stopping bullies.  For more personalized coaching call me at 877-8BULLIES (877-828-5543).

Stop Toxic Coworkers and Other Bullies

There are toxic people in every environment – toxic family, toxic friends, toxic lovers and toxic coworkers.  If you don’t recognize and respond effectively to toxic, bullying coworkers they can make your life miserable, harass you, turn the rest of your team against you, scapegoat you and even get you fired. For example,

Jane is known to be difficult, obnoxious and an out of control retaliator.  But she’s very bright and hard working so management tends to minimize the problems she causes, overlook the tension, hostility and chaos she creates, and explain away her behavior by saying, “That’s just Jane.  She must have a good heart.”  She specializes in vendettas.  Most people are afraid of her; they usually walk on egg shells around her and try to avoid setting off one of her tirades.

The bosses make you the leader of an important project that requires tact and people skills because they don’t trust Jane.  Jane is enraged.  Sometimes she blames and threatens you – you stole her job, she’ll report everything you do wrong, she’ll ruin your reputation and she’ll get you fired.  Sometimes she acts sweet – as if she wants to be your best friend.  Sometimes she tries to make you feel guilty so you’ll refuse to lead the project she thinks should be hers – that’s the only way you can prove to her that you’re a good person and her friend.

Is Jane right?  Are you sneaky and manipulative and have you wronged her?  Or is this a misunderstanding you can overcome so she’ll still be your friend?

How can you distinguish a friendly coworker who’s justifiably upset from one of these toxic bullies?  Simple.  You look for patterns in how Jane acts and how you and others feel when you’re around her.

Typically, toxic coworkers have patterns in which they:

• Are selfish and narcissistic – it’s always about them; only their interpretations and feelings matter.  Only their interpretations are true.
• Are sneaky, manipulative, back-stabbing stealth bullies.
• Are over-reactive, control freaks – their interpretations give them permission to search and destroy, no matter how slight or unintentional the insult.  They throw fits and attack or embarrass people they’re upset at.
• Act sweet one time only pry out people’s secrets and look for the opportunity to strike back even more.  Remember, they’re acting polite doesn’t mean they’re nice.
• Will openly lie and deny it.  They’re always 100% convinced and convincing.
• Relentlessly disparage, demean, spy on and report “bad” conduct (often made up) about their targets.

Typically, teammates of these bullies should ask themselves:

• Are you afraid of what Jane might do or that Jane won’t be friends with you?
• Does she threaten you?
• Have you seen Jane attack, manipulate or lie about other targets before you?
• Does Jane apologize but not change or even strike back later?
• Does Jane tell you that you’re special and she’d never go after you?
• Does Jane make efforts to be reasonable and to overcome misunderstandings, to say that the problem is partly her fault and then does she make amends and change?

Of course, you want to be careful that you’re not overreacting.  You want to know if you’re seeing their actions clearly.  But if you answer the first five questions with “yes,” and the last one with “no,” you should beware.

When you identify Jane as someone who is relentless, implacable and has no conscience in pursuing her targets, you know what you’re dealing with.  She’s out to destroy you just like she went after other coworkers in the past.

Your first thought may be, “How can I win her friendship?” or it may be, “She’s suffered so much in her own life, how can I not forgive her?”  If you follow these thoughts with feelings of kindness, compassion and compromise, if you don’t mobilize to protect you life, limb and job you will be sacrificing yourself on an altar of silly sentimentality.

I take a strong approach: Recognize evil and recognize crazy or out of control people who won’t negotiate or compromise.  The Jane’s and John’s of this world are bullies, abusers and predators that do tremendous damage.  They’re why well-meaning people have to consult with experts.  Remember, you would have already resolved situations with coworkers who are reasonable, willing to examine their own actions honestly, and to negotiate and compromise.  You need help with the terminators that you face.

So what can you do?

Divide your response into two areas:

1. Will – determination, perseverance, resilience, endurance, grit.
2. Skill – overall strategy, tactics and the ability to maintain your poise and carry out your plan.

Will

1. Convert doubt and hesitation into permission to act and then into an inner command to act effectively.  Until you have the will, no tactics will help – you’ll give in, back off, bounce from one strategy to another and you'll fail, even with the best plan.
2. Don’t let your good heart blind you to the damage she’ll do to you.  You’ve already given her second and third chances.  That’s enough.  She’s not merely misunderstanding you in any way you can clear up; logic, reason and common sense aren’t effective with the Jane’s of this world.
3. See Jane as a terminator – she’s relentless, implacable and has no conscience.  Under her human-looking skin she’s out to destroy you.  Your good heart and attempts to reason politely won’t stop her.
4. Assume that you can’t rehabilitate or convert Jane in your life time.  That’s not what they pay you for at work anyway.  You’re merely Jane’s coworker with an important personal life, a personal island that needs protecting.  Let Jane’s therapist change her in professional space and on professional time that she pays for.
5. You don’t owe her anything because she got you the job or rescued you from drowning.  She’s out to get you and you must protect yourself.  Let Jane struggle to change on someone else’s professional time.  Don’t put your reputation, your job or your family’s livelihood in harm’s way.  Don’t minimize or excuse.  Deal only with Jane’s behavior.

Skill

1. All plans must be adjusted to your specific situation – you, Jane, the company, your personal life.  Added complications would be if Jane is your boss or the manager of your team likes her or is afraid of her and will collude with her against you.
2. Don’t believe Jane’s promises; don’t be fooled if she acts nice and sweet one time.  Pay attention to the pattern of actions.  If she’s sweet, she’s probably seeking to get information that she can use against you.
3. Don’t expect her to tell the truth.  She’ll say one thing to you and report exactly the opposite to everyone else.  She’ll lie when she reports bad things you have supposedly done.  She knows that repetition is convincing; eventually some of her dirt might stick to you.  Have witnesses who’ll stand up for you in public.
4. Don’t argue the details of an interaction to try to convince her of your side.  State your side in a way that will convince bystanders.  Always remind bystanders of your honesty, integrity and good character, which they should know.
5. Document everything; use a small digital recorder.  Find allies as high up in the company as you can.  When you report Jane, be professional; concentrate on her behavior, not your hurt feelings.  Make a business case to encourage company leaders to act.  It’s about the money, coworkers and clients that the company will save when they terminate Jane.
6. When you listen to voice mails from Jane or talk with her in person, tighten the muscles of your stomach just below your belly button, while you keep breathing.  That’ll remind you to prepare for a verbal gut-punch.
7. Get your own employment lawyer and a good coach to strengthen your will, develop your courage and plan effective tactics.

Each situation is different – you, the toxic coworker and the rest of the company.  The need to protect yourself and your career remains the same, while the tactics vary with the situation.  All tactics are situational tactics.

Stop Gossip Girls' Bullying, Harassment and Abuse at Work

Recent articles in the “New York Times” by Shayla McKnight, in the “Harvard Business Blogs” by Cheryl Dolan and Faith Oliver, and in “Stumble Upon” have focused on the harm done by workplace “gossip girls,” “mean girls” and on the difficulty in stopping these bullies.  However, some academics have even made a case for the benefits of gossip at work. Although men also engage in gossip at work, the typical image of harassment and bullying with gossip involves grown up mean girls using the same tactics they perfected in middle and high school.

Gossip is part of a pattern of negativity, verbal abuse, sabotage, rumor mongering, exclusion, back-stabbing, public ridicule, “catfights,” arguments, vendettas, disrespect, cutting out and forming warring cliques, crowds or mobs that wreaks havoc on previously productive teams.  Conflict and stress, and turnover and sick leave increase, while morale and productivity are destroyed.  These tactics lead to hostile workplace and discrimination suits against companies that don’t actively recognize and remove stealthy gossip girls, their supporters and managers who tolerate the bullying.

Although gossip, harassment and bullying by mean girls are scourges at work, they can be stopped.

Of course there are people for whom gossip is a way of life.  They can’t imagine living without talking about other people.  But if you want to maximize productivity of your team or company, you’ll have to stop these people, as well as the hardened climbers who use gossip to gain power and turf, or who simply like inflicting pain on their victims.

The key to stopping these hostile behaviors is team agreements:

• Ban the practices – have clearly stated company policies and procedures.
• Publicize the no-gossip policy during interviews and new-employee orientation.
• Track behavior as part of evaluations that count.
• Involve the whole team, as well as managers, to hold one another accountable.
• Remove people who insist on their own destructive behavioral code.

Make the overall tone at work be “We have more important things to talk about than gossip.”

Obviously, the burden falls on owners and leaders.  They set the tone.  If they’re the gossip girls or boys, you won’t be able to change their company.

But owners and leaders can’t do it themselves.  They must involve and enroll all the employees.  They must promote and keep only those who actively support the effort to create better attitudes and behavior.

Sometimes the voices of an outside expert and company lawyers are necessary to guide the process.  But ultimately, leaders and employees must take charge of creating an environment where they can thrive without having to look over their shoulders with the same kind of anxiety and fear they had in middle of high school.

Holidays bring out many bullies at home

Holidays bring out many bullies at home.  You know; the control-freaks who have to have things their way; the manipulative, guilt-tripping, back-stabbing, super-critical, put-down stealth bullies.  For example, Jane has a mother, brother and two sisters who are masters at these techniques.  She used to dread the holidays with the whole family, until she stopped their behavior. It’s funny how often the family of our hearts and spirits is not the family we grew up in.

What goes on in your family?  Do you have examples for the next posts on the holidays at work and bullying children during the holidays? Jane’s mother had guilt-tripped her all of her life.  Her mother’s voice dripped with hurt and pain when she whined, “You never loved me as much as your sisters did” and “You’re so selfish and uncaring, you won’t do the simple things I want for me, after all I did for you.”

Sister #1 always preened and pointed out how her children, husband and house were better than Jane’s.  At the same time, the sister’s husband hated Christmas.  He sounded just like Scrooge, “Christmas is humbug and fake.  I don’t want to waste my time, I won’t give presents and I won’t have fun.”  He was nasty the whole time.

Jane’s brother insisted that Christmas must be done his way; his way was the RIGHT way.  Jane was supposed to make a big spread for him at her house early in the morning, prepare the food he wanted and make her children do the activities he wanted.

Sister #2 bragged about how much more she gave her children than Jane did, and how much better she took care of their mother than Jane did.  She was the best child and she and her children were mom’s favorites.  Also without telling Jane, she invited extra people to come to Jane’s house.  Her husband was okay until he started drinking.  Then he criticized everything Jane did or had.  And he was relentless.

At least, Jane thought, I don’t have elatives that come to stay when I don’t want them or friends who bully me.  And this year, for the first time, Jane is looking forward to an afternoon with the extended family.  That’s because she won’t allow those old behaviors of theirs in her space.

With coaching and the techniques from the book and CD set, “How to Stop Bullies in their Tracks,” especially the staircase technique and the guideline of being as firm as she needed, Jane got over her own guilt and self-bullying, and set boundaries and behavioral rules for her family in her house.  She started two years ago by not getting hurt feelings, by calling it like it is and even being a little sarcastic.

She said to her mom, “Stop trying to guilt trip me.”  When he mother complained, “I was not.  I was simply telling you how I felt,” Jane didn’t argue.  Instead she firmly responded, “I never thought I’d have a mother who tries to manipulate me using guilt.  You’re just like grandma and what she used to do with you.”

We know that everyone talks about how wonderful their children are, and Jane was glad to listen to Sister #1 for a while.  But when her sister kept going on, and brought every conversation around to the inevitable comparisons, Jane finally said, with a smile, “Yes, you’ve convinced me again.  Your children are much better than mine.”  When her sister indignantly protested that wasn’t her intention, Jane didn’t argue about intentions.  Each time her sister repeated her nasty comparisons, Jane simply repeated what she had said.

Jane also laid down some rules without asking their opinions.  For example, she wants Christmas Eve and morning with her children, and their protests didn’t sway her.  She’s willing to give them the afternoon.  Also she no longer allows liquor on Christmas day.

Over the past two years, Jane has been steady about her challenges to her family.  She rarely debated or helped them do amateur psychoanalysis on why they behaved the way they did.  Their better behavior was her test.

She decided which values were more important to her and then made clear that her family had to change or she wouldn’t have them for Christmas.  More important than a family gathering with nasty people, was a wonderful time with her children.  And she didn’t argue with their protests and justifications.

Jane’s progress was not as fast and smooth as I’m telling in this short post, but it was steady.  She’s seen her family change over the last two years and she thinks that this Christmas will be a test for them.  She’s pretty sure that if she stands firm, they accept her rules for behavior she allows in her life.  Mostly she’s eager for the challenge.

We all have bullies in our family.  The holidays seem to bring out the best in some people, while they bring out the worst in others.

Of course, we need to design different tactics to fit everyone’s unique circumstances and the bullying patterns in individual families.  That’s what coaching and consulting are for.  Some people will be sweeter and softer than Jane, while others will be even more frank and straightforward.

Teach children and teens to be resilient; don’t be defeated by disappointment, hostility, abuse, trauma or bullies.

Are your children and teens resilient?  Do they bounce back after they’ve been disappointed or faced hostility, bullies, abuse or trauma?  Are you resilient?  Do you know how to resist a hostile, abusive, controlling or bullying husband or wife?  Can you resist your self-bullying tendencies?  How about abusive, controlling or bullying friends, relatives or neighbors?  How about at work; hostile, abusive, bullying bosses, managers or co-workers?  Do you bounce back from getting passed over, terminated or fired from a hostile workplace?  You know – lies, yelling, cursing, back-stabbing, verbal abuse, demeaning insults, harassment, false complaints or accusations. According to a Newsweek article written by Mary Carmichael (The Resiliency Gene: A genetic variant may protect some abused kids from depression and other long-term effects) the National Institute of Mental Health is funding studies to find the genes associated with resiliency to hostility, abuse and trauma.  As a former practicing biochemist, I can say that, of course, we’ll find genes associated with almost every pattern of behavior.

But, I think it’s a dead end if we focus merely on the genetic expressions of what’s going on.

Why do I think it’s a dead end?  Because you end up thinking that either you have the right stuff or you don’t.  That belief won’t help your children develop strength of character or as much resilience as they can.  For example, contrast the behavior of the teen in cyber-bullying suicide case with the teen who was acquitted of punching a racist tormentor . . Worrying about the resiliency gene won’t help you be courageous either.  You’ll remain a victim; hoping the system can be made 100 percent safe and fair.  You’re better off thinking that you can develop the right stuff to protect yourself, to create a bully-free environment.  That approach to make the world totally and completely safe is being tried right now in our schools .

Resiliency is something that we’ve seen and studied throughout history.  For example, in their elegant studies of about 700 famous men and women (“Cradles of Eminence,” 1962), Victor and Mildred Goertzel, called the eminent survivors of childhood abuse and trauma, “The Invulnerables.”  Our history is full of men and women who failed and then bounced back, struggled and succeeded.

In my coaching of adults (including parents wanting to know how to help their children), I encourage them to focus on the “free will” aspects of their lives.  You have much more control over what you create in life right now, than you do over your genetics.  No matter what life throws at us, whether we’re subjected to natural disasters, large scale human destruction or individual family brutality and trauma, we all must struggle to rise above those events in order to create as great a life as we can.  We can take charge of our efforts  even though we can’t control the results.

Inspire your children by them to look back at their inheritance.  Think of what their ancestors must have lived through.  No matter what their ancestry, they come from an unbroken line of men and women who survived drought, flood, plague, famine, disease, war, uprooting, slavery, rape and every other form of disappointment, hostility, control, abuse, brutality and trauma known.  Everyone one of their ancestors survived long enough to make a baby who grew up to make a baby who grew up to make a baby … until they were born.  If one of their ancestors hadn’t grown up to do his or her part, they wouldn’t be here.  They have a legacy of survivors.

Also think of their mental and spiritual inheritance.  There must have been people who took in some of their ancestors and nurtured, encouraged and stimulated them; even though they weren’t blood relatives.  Despite all the abuse and trauma, here they are.  They have the legacy of survivors.  Stop worrying about their genes and start training them to be mentally, emotionally and spiritually strong.  Start helping them develop the discipline that’s worthy of all the struggle and effort that went into getting them here.

I remember the stories of what my grandparents went through in order to get here.  They didn’t have credit cards, cell phones, health insurance or own their homes.  How can I let them down by not living as gloriously as I can?  How can I let them down by not encouraging my children to do the same – no matter what their genetics has given them?