What type
of abuse am I talking about? Bullying, derision, grandstanding always at the
expense of others, total disregard for the feelings of others, lack of
emotional intelligence, verbal aggression, cursing, domination of meetings or
conversations by the same people who flatten anyone who tries to get a word in,
freezing out specific employees, being negative to what specific employees
suggest no matter what the situation, deriding ideas during brainstorming meetings,
making employees feel like crap, embarrassing or harassing them publicly (telling
employees, ‘if you don’t like it, leave’ or telling employees that they’re lazy
or mediocre in a public meeting). The list is endless. Have I seen such
behavior in workplaces? Yes I have. What does an abusive workplace do to its
employees? What are the scars it leaves on them? I would suggest that it
creates a pattern of hope and disappointment that becomes cyclical. In the hope
cycle, employees experience a feeling of being uplifted, perhaps because a boss
has acknowledged their work for once. I call the experience being ‘grateful for
crumbs’. In this case, the crumbs can be, for example, a very infrequent acknowledgment
of employees’ work (or existence) in an environment that otherwise criticizes
or ignores its employees. In the disappointment cycle, employees feel that
their situation is hopeless and that there is little possibility of change. And
then comes the hope cycle that brings with it that feeling that change is
possible. This is very similar to an abusive relationship—between spouses, or
between children and parents, between siblings, and so on.
You can
imagine how children would develop in a home environment where parents were
critical of and negative about most things they did, and only occasionally ‘threw
a dog a bone’. That’s living on crumbs. Or parents who ignore their children,
except to ‘show them off’ to others when it’s time to be politically correct.
Children are highly sensitive to parental behavior, and they will work overtime
to try to ‘read’ their parents. The appreciation of ‘crumbs’ becomes learned
behavior after a while, but the recipients of abusive behavior are so
focused on trying to ‘please’, that growth in other areas becomes stifled or stunted.
They never completely learn self confidence, they become afraid of authority, or
they became afraid to voice their opinions or ideas for fear of being derided,
yelled at, or embarrassed publicly. The scars persist well into adulthood. The
mistake we make as a society is to think that adults can tackle everything that
is thrown at them, just because they are adults. The assumption is
automatically that they have to tackle everything. What happens when or if they
cannot? I’ve seen one example of that recently—someone who hit the wall
big-time. There are bullies in the workplace, just as there were on the school
playground. When the bullies get control of the workplace, the employees who
get beaten up are often the ones who
may not have had a lot of self confidence to begin with. Or they may be the
ones who are living on crumbs in
personal situations as well. Or they may have self confidence, but were raised
to not question authority, to not stick their heads up. So if they are unfairly
treated, there is no real recourse for them. They are not the ones likely to go
over the boss’ head to complain to the higher-ups.
I have been
told sometimes that I bring up problems but that I don’t discuss the solutions
for them. That may be the case at times, but it may be the case simply because
I don’t know what the solutions are. What do you do if you are an older man, for example, whose workplace bullies him, whose wife is sick,
whose children depend on him, who knows that his chances of finding another job
are next to null at his age? What then? What do you tell that person? Go find
another job? Think positive and it will all work out? Blame him for his
situation? And even if he is partly to blame, because he has let himself be
satisfied with crumbs for many years, how does it help him if society blames
him for his entire situation? We like to think that this is not a common
situation; the fact is, in my father’s generation, this was a quite common
scenario, at least where I grew up. It’s so easy to judge others, and in the
end, ourselves. We are often as hard on ourselves as we are on others. The key
word is hard. Maybe things would
change if more people practiced being softer. Kindness is so underrated. We
need more of it in society, in workplaces and in homes. Perhaps the next time a
boss is abusive, we need to remind him or her of the value of being kind. That’s
at least one solution I can suggest; I have no idea if it will work.