| Bullying boss: do you bark orders? |
Do you have a boss whose idea of leading a team makes Gordon Ramsay sound like Mother Theresa?
Stressed-out employees
Threatening and bullying behaviour is increasingly under the spotlight as employers are looking for new ways to make sure their stressed-out employees get along in the recession. That’s according to communication coaching specialist Personal Presentation.
‘We have been getting increasing numbers of enquiries from companies needing to address bullying bosses,’ says Personal Presentation founder Julia Goodman.
Sorting out senior management
‘We have been approached by three FTSE 10 companies in recent months with the agenda of “sorting” a certain person out.
‘Very often that person is in senior management and is very good at their job, but their colleagues or staff view them as a bully and companies are getting increasingly concerned about being taken to court.
Redundancy claims
‘This is especially true right now, with employees facing the prospect of redundancies looking to cash in by claiming they have been bullied.’
Personal Presentation’s You Brand programme shows people how to be themselves in the workplace without having to hide behind bullying – or bullied – facades. Goodman says even the most ferocious bullies can be turned around if shown how they impact upon others.
| Julia Goodman. |
Pressure
‘Most of the time they are under enormous pressure,’ says Goodman, ‘but it is vital that companies and employees act against the bullying trend if they want to hang on to staff, avoid negative publicity and survive the economic downturn.’
Are you the office bully? Three key signs to look out for:
- You are quiet and non-communicative, leaving your thoughts open to general interpretation. ‘This could be seen as being judgemental, moody, rude or cold,’ says Goodman.
- You bark orders without explaining the reasons. Communicating your motives and intentions to your staff will mean they respond better. If people don’t understand why something is being asked of them or are unable to question, they may feel belittled. This could lead to people feeling angry or resentful, and not doing the job properly.
- You take up most of the room in a conversation. Do you give your staff the chance to explain themselves? If you are dominating the dialogue, the other person will feel intimidated or resentful in some form or another.
How to deal with a bully:
- Recognise that a bully’s behaviour is probably the opposite of how they really feel. An aggressive manager may well be hiding a frightened interior.
- Don’t seek approval. If possible, find out where this behaviour is coming from and accept that it probably has nothing to do with you. Do what you are asked, and do it well.
- Check in with your feelings and articulate them. It is your responsibility to be visible and challenge bad behaviour – in a calm, controlled and considered fashion.
You Brand coaching methodology uses tools drawn from the world of professional acting and communication in tandem with psychological interventions. The full You Brand programme lasts four days and is spread over several weeks, although there are other bespoke programmes that can take place in one or two days.
Questions & Comments
bullys in sales
Hi Julia,
Grea to see this topic covered, and the examples given. I also think the harded for of bullying is one that is incormporated in the process of mangment! AN excample of this is the way comanies use CRM sytems.
In 1980, I moved into the corporate world and sales, I loved my job! I believe I am intrinsically motivated just like everyone else, and need to have autonomy, purpose and mastery to have job satisfaction. We had few targets and since the sales figures only emerged monthly, I spent my time with the customers rather than analysing my activity on a daily basis. I was highly motivated to do a good job and new sales followed.
By the late 1980s, I was a sales manager and enjoyed the role. However, in the mid ?90s after 12 years in the company and despite my team achieving top sales, the new management decided ?my personality was no longer a fit for the company!? Thus I left and spent a year learning to sail!
Around that time clearly the thinking in industry was to increase sales by increasing the number of sales people on the ground trying to gain more frequent access to the same customers. Mass recruitment was afoot, which incorporated assessment centres and psychometric testing enabling managers to recruit only those who matched the narrow profile determined by the organisation!
My personal belief is that when recruiting like-minded people this leads to teams being formed with individuals who all have similar strengths and weakness. Therefore, by definition they are not a team! Clearly those who rise to the top are there because they fit the mould of those who are already at the top ? in these organisations what happened to diversity of thinking?
Technology was being used to manage everyone, targets were set on every conceivable parameter of the work, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, sales v target, call rates, completion of reports, etc., all were electronically monitored daily! Coercion, manipulation, micro-managing and bullying were also on the increase. Trusting employees to do a good job without being measured day in day out had vanished.
Corporate thinking became group-think, and these often static systems and strategies were repeated allbeit with a new twist. It was indicative of working for 10 years and having one year?s experience 10 times over ? just like ground-hog day! Individuals who challenged the systems to try to improve working practice and results were perceived as not being in the corporate mould.
One of my many experiences was around a target being set to complete 95% of the company?s CRM database by a given date! Easy, I completed the database, and at the same time achieved the highest market share world-wide for the key product sales!
I received many congratulations and a bonus! Then the ultimate accolade, being interviewed on stage about my sales success and achievement of 95% completion of the CRM database, in front of hundreds of colleagues at a corporate world conference.
I felt daunted and asked if I could see a copy of the interview questions prior to the interview so that I would feel better prepared. I had no intention of being manipulated in front of the company and my colleagues, and being constrained to give the impression that I believed in the value of the CRM system, and that the sales and marketing tactics had led to my success when I believed it clearly had not. I hasten to add, my views on the CRM system were no different to those of many colleagues.
As you may have guessed, the offer to recognise my success at the conference was hastily withdrawn! Nevertheless I attended the conference and many colleagues within breakout workshops enquired as to how I had achieved my sales results, and why I was not being recognised for my success! Absolutely no public reference was made to my sales success and shortly afterwards I was selected for redundancy!
Unfortunately I can give many more examples of such experiences - both my own and others?.
I have worked with some wonderful people within my industry. It?s the system that needs to change; we need radically new and different thinking at the top of organisations. The current thinking of management does not serve well the customer, employee nor shareholder, and is no way to run business sustainably for the future.
Posted by Fiona Savage on
The changing faces of selling...
Hi Fiona - fancy you finding this story!
We have a "problem" here at ModernSelling.com, in that we had 5 years of publishing these articles from 2006 to April 2011, and attracted hundreds of thousands of "readers", but hardly a whimper of comment - other than here and there over in the rather disjointed and equally "old school" Forum.
Since April this year, what you're looking at now is a "re-skin" of all those articles, and this one you can just about see was published in July 2009. So, personally, I know nothing of Julia there (we had an Editor in those days who did all that), nor whether she's around or willing to comment / discuss now.
The simplest guide I can offer you to "current" is to spot the "HEADLINES" that now come "In sentence case" - or with a date stamp after April 2011 - or where you can hover over the author / discusser's name, and find a LinkedIn link.
Full re-working of the site to amalgamate it all, and the people, and build forward from there is not "cheap", and therefore on my "to do" list. But I thank you anyway for getting involved.
Very best - Neil
Posted by Neil Warren on
My Question / Comment Is...
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