Let’s talk about workplace bullying and in particular women bullying other women.
It surprises and astounds me that women would bully other women. I personally have been bullied multiple times in multiple workplaces by women, and I consider myself a kind person, so not at all deserving of such behaviour.
At the end of this article I’ll share a tip for what you can do if you're experiencing bullying and a special offer from me, if this is happening to you.
Let's start with an example. This is probably the first time that I was aware it was actually even happening, and it was confirmed to me by a colleague, when I resigned, who told me that my predecessors had experienced the same treatment.
I was working for an international organisation in a role where I had stakeholders across Europe. The bully in this instance was my manager. I believed the role would be a really, really nice opportunity for me to combine some of my experience and expertise in staff, employee training and development, and also dabble a little bit in the health and wellness space, which I was really excited about.
When I started working, everything seemed to be well and good, and then I started to notice little things. My boss would correct things that I'd either sent to her, or sent out to our stakeholders after she had confirmed and okayed them with me already, or correct things that she’d asked me to change. Other times I would communicate with her that we couldn't move forward with something, but she insisted that we do, so the work had gone out. However she would then pull me up on those things. I would remind her that we had spoken about it, or that she had given me the information, or it was actually something one of my predecessors had done the previous year and she had told me to follow along with. I found the behaviour really quite interesting.
Another interesting thing was her language and tone. She used a lot of really, really long words with more than four or five syllables at times, in email communications to the whole Europe business, which seemed to be an attempt to elevate her status. I found that really strange and peculiar. I have a good grasp of English and some of the words she was using in her emails, even I had to look up. Much of our stakeholder group had English as a second language, so it was strange to me that she communicated in this way.
One of my responsibilities was to organise an event for our representatives from across the region, many flying into the UK from their home countries. I'd asked a number of times for my boss's support in helping me to understand what it was that we needed to do, how long the event was, what the structure of the event was the previous few years, so I had a bit of an idea as to some of the expectations and outputs that were required. I was repeatedly told however, that “It just needs to be a great event”; we need to be able to communicate what the purpose is and what our strategy is moving forward; and they need to be able to go away and implement that.
So, we want to be able to communicate what the purpose and strategy is of our business moving forward for the next year. Great. We want to celebrate the successes of last year. Great.
Where is this information so we can share it? She wouldn’t give it to me.
I was left in a bit of a tizz, really, and was continuously going back and forth and around in circles trying to set up a structure for this event and then coordinate all of the different representatives from across multiple countries to come to the UK.
In the end, she took over organising the event, without discussing this with me first.
When we had a performance review midway through that year, she called me up on that event and said that she had to lead the organisation of it because I was not doing a good job, and as such, she was rating my performance down. In addition to that, she was rating my performance down on another goal that she'd set me. Let me explain that situation.
The global leadership team for our department were putting together a strategy document which was critical to get in order for me to deliver on my particular goal for the year. I’d communicated with my boss that the global team were creating this strategy document and communication rollout, and we had agreed this as one of my goals for our region, but we needed to get the document before we created our regional plan – otherwise they wouldn’t be aligned. Given that we didn’t have the document, we agreed that goal was no longer part of my deliverables. However, in my performance review, my boss determined that I had not delivered on this goal. I reminded her of our discussion and agreement, but she just shut me down.
During that performance meeting we had agreed on my overall performance score. However, when she sent me the final document, she'd marked the score down and changed the comments to something else. I added my own comments and forwarded through to the appropriate channels as per the process.
Let’s consider some of the emotional states that were present through this experience. I was beginning to feel incredibly stressed out coming into work and incredibly worried about what I was going to be able to do or not be able to do. I'm a very proud person when it comes to my work and I strive to deliver a lot of value, and my ability to do that was being challenged and restricted. That was making me even more stressed.
In the evenings, when I would catch up with friends, I was talking about how stressed I was. I was talking about what my boss had done that day or not done that day, so it was constantly on my mind through the evening.
Then the month before I actually resigned, I had started to dream about being at work and feeling stressed out.
Now this is an entirely unhealthy state of being: stressed out in the moment; stressed out after the moment; and stressed out during your sleep so you're not even getting a chance to rest and restore. It's ridiculous.
So I resigned. I mentioned in my letter that my relationship with my manager had broken down and that was the reason for my resignation. The HR business partner who looked after my office invited me for a meeting to discuss the reason for my resignation and wanted to know if I wanted to progress anything further.
At that stage I was absolutely fried. My nervous system was fried, my mental processing capacity was fried, my emotional processing capacity was fried, and I just said no. I said I didn't want to take anything further. I just really wanted out.
Thereafter, a colleague who worked in the same office space as me, reported to me that my predecessors had left for exactly the same reasons. I genuinely felt a huge sense of relief that I wasn't the only one, that I wasn’t imagining it, and that it wasn’t me.
This is often the case when we are experiencing bullying behaviour. We feel like it's just in our head that we must be making it up, or that it’s our fault because surely that person, in this instance, my boss, another female in the same field of work as me, surely that person wouldn’t do something like that. Surely she wouldn’t treat me in that way. It just felt ridiculous!
So I experienced a huge amount of relief.
When I saw friends afterwards, they could see the weight had lifted off my shoulders and I looked more peaceful and calmer, and I truly did.
So what were some of my learnings from that time?
I've had 14+ more years of experience in the workplace since this bullying episode, and in incredibly professional workplaces. I've worked with truly magnificent female bosses and colleagues before and since.
So it's really important, first of all, to acknowledge how much I have had, and that these experiences that have created stress for me are microcosms of human behaviour. These experiences challenged me to step into a part of myself that I was not being bold in.
Here’s my tip for you from this experience and from several other bullying experiences that I've been through: talk it through. Have a conversation with the person involved.
Now of course this is not always something that you'll feel comfortable doing, and that's okay. If that is the case, speak to your boss. If this person happens to be your boss like it was for me, talk to somebody in your people management or human resources department, or somebody else that you trust. If there is a senior manager or somebody in another team that you feel you can confide in, in a professional way, then do it. This is not about gossip. This is about understanding and getting clarity around what you can do to make this relationship have more ease, and also to report that behaviour as being unacceptable.
It's unacceptable in the workplace, just as it is unacceptable in all areas of life.
It is really important to talk to somebody who can guide you in what the processes are for reporting the behaviour and perhaps even support you in having an effective conversation, maybe a mediated conversation, with that individual.
Now, just as a little insight into what I've done with some bullying that I've experienced a little bit more recently than the example above.
Some conversations were shared with me about remarks that had been made about me. I invited the person who had made them for a quick chat and spoke to them directly. I felt incredibly comfortable doing this and that’s as a result of the healing and growth that I've done over the years.
I talked to them directly. Unfortunately they denied they had said anything and that there wasn’t anything that we could do to improve our working relationship. I also spoke with my boss about this event and another instance to explain that the behaviour, the remarks being made, and how I was being communicated with was not in alignment with the organisation’s values and the unacceptable behaviour required formal intervention to ensure that some improvements were made.
My experience over the last 20-plus years has been in the people management and development space. I've coached and worked with managers and employees in effective conversations, communications, managing conflict, managing misconduct, and how to deal with that in an effective and proactive way.
My offer to you is this: if you'd like some confidential support, drop me an email and I will respond to you in the best way that I possibly can to help you find some resolution for the experience that you're having, because it's not something that anybody should ever experience.
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna
