Bullying and mobbing (Part 2)

Gates, George

"Until evil is named, it cannot be addressed."

- Daniel Maguire, professor of ethics,

Marquette University

LOOK AROUND. NINE OF 10 PEOPLE you see will deal with a brutal boss at some point in their career. Two out of 10 already face some workplace bullying on any given day. It's not demanding bosses who expect high performance; it's those who routinely belittle, undercut, and intimidate. That's bullying. Mobbing is its ugly cousin.

Not long ago, while training employee work teams, I noticed a young man, relatively new to the company, who sat alone. Whenever he spoke, someone hurled a wisecrack his way. If he entered or left the room, jibes from his "teammates" followed.

At a break, I asked if this harassment was typical. "Oh," he answered, "it's been like that since I got here. It's not everybody, just four or five guys. I guess I have to put up with it because I'm new." I offered to address the obnoxious behavior or get help from his manager, but he refused. "Don't," he pleaded, "that'll only make it worse. I just try to put up with it."

That eager new employee was a victim of "mobbing." A term familiar in European and Australian workplaces, it is increasingly used here to describe a nasty workplace cancer. With any luck, naming it is the first step toward addressing it.

Emotional abuse with serious repercussions

"Mobbing" has been defined as emotional abuse in the workplace by authors Noa Davenport, Ruth D. Schwartz, and Gail Pursell Elliott. It is "ganging up" by coworkers, subordinates, or superiors to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation. Mobbing is malicious, nonsexual, nonracial, general harassment causing emotional injury that impacts mental and physical health.

Dr. Heinz Leymann, whose work first named "mobbing" and brought it to serious attention in the 1980s, has called it "psychological terror." When one or more people direct hostile communication and behavior toward one individual-and do so frequently (at least once a week), over a long period of time (at least six months)-this is mobbing. According to Leymann, "This maltreatment results in considerable mental, psychosomatic and social misery."

More bluntly: it's a killer. A Finnish study indicates that 10% of suicides there are attributable to workplace mobbing. In another study, 98.7% of those victimized had reported being affected in their work ability, demotivated, suspicious, nervous, insecure, or forced into "social isolation" and "resignation." More specifically, 43.9% became ill, 30.8% changed their position in the establishment, 22.5% left their job, and 14.8% were dismissed. Amazingly, of those who had perpetrated the mobbing, only 11.1% had to change their place of work in the establishment, and a mere 8.2% were dismissed. The consequences for the targets of mobbing were steeper than for the mobbers.

The consequences for organizations are equally serious. Mobbing results in high turnover, low morale, decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and loss of key individuals. More broadly, it shreds teamwork, trust, and common purpose.

Mobbing far exceeds the routine workplace conflict at its root. Five phases comprise the "mobbing syndrome." First, it begins with a conflict. second, aggressive or passive-aggressive acts and psychological assaults follow. Third, management gets involved to the detriment of the target. Most often, there's a desire to "get rid of the problem," i.e., the mobbed person. Fourth, misdiagnosis: The target is branded as "difficult" or "mentally ill." Finally, expulsion occurs. The target is forced to leave his/her position or the organization.

This cancer grows because of a toxic workplace culture rather than because there is a particular "mobber" or "target" personality type. It also results from the dominant group "outing" or "othering" those who are not accepted.

Prime targets of mobbers are high achievers, enthusiastic workers, those with high integrity and ethical standards, promoters of human rights, possible whistleblowers, those who don't belong to the "in group," women with family responsibilities, and those with "different" religious or cultural requirements.

What to do

Attacking this cancer first requires naming it and recognizing its patterns. That falls squarely on management (and union) leaders. Preventive measures include clear guiding principles and specific policies aimed at keeping conflicts from escalating. Employees must know where to turn when conflicts are out of hand.

For early intervention, managers, union reps, and team leaders must be able to read the first signs of mobbing and are expected to resolve conflict before it escalates. Finally, procedures that diagnose mobbing cases-without blaming the victims-must be established. Without these basics, the employee has no viable support and is at the mercy of the mob.

GEORGE GATES is president of Core-R.O.I. Inc.

Copyright Paperloop, Inc. Oct 2004
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