The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #94661   Message #2400000
Posted By: Rowan
28-Jul-08 - 09:51 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Serial Bully
Subject: RE: BS: The Serial Bully
I stumbled across this thread quite by accident but it has had relevance to my past activities and some of my current existence. A couple of books published in Oz might be of assistance but their details are elsewhere and it's quite possible that some details are not applicable elsewhere. BUt here's a start.

For anyone who feels they're on the receiving end of bullying you must document everything; without documented evidence of incidents there will be no action. Depending on your situation (type of employment, context, confidence levels etc) the documentation may be a personal diary or journal or may take other forms.

Because of the nature of my work I have found it useful to "mirror" requests so that potential confusions are nipped in the bud or avoided altogether; email works well in this regard and has lent itself to more serious documentation of phone and other conversations. A contentious exchange can be summarised in an email which you then send to the other party with comments such as "I understood you to have said ...." (avoiding direct accusations such as "You said ...", which a bully will use against you) and inviting the recipient of your email to "amend errors of fact" as otherwise your email will stand as a definitively correct record.

There will be situations where you will send such an email only to the "miscreant" and there will be situations where it will be advisable that the "miscreant" knows that the email has also been sent to another recipient the "Cc:" option is very useful, as (sometimes) is the "Bcc:" option.

There have been times when such documentation has been useful in changing the recipient's behaviour for the better and there have been times when the documentation had to go to the Ombudsman to achieve the desired change but, without documentation your argument is less supportable and thus less effective at producing change.

Where I am employed there is a set of policies covering grievances, conflict resolution etc and all require such documentation. The evidence (outlined in one of the books whose title is something like "Bullying as an OH&S issue" and was written by two women) is that mediation between a bully and the bullied is rarely effective, as the institution regards the more senior person (most often the bully) as more valuable to the enterprise than the bullied (most often a subordinate). For this reason, OH&S legislation (in NSW, "psychological health" is specifically mentioned in the Act and the Regulation) may be more useful as statutory legislation overrides "institutional policy"; documentation is essential.

The list of criteria in the initial post is very similar to those in another Oz book written by John Clark; this is not the John Clark who does the political satire with Brian Dawe (well known by Oz residents) but a forensic psychologist. Its title is "Working with Monsters: psychopaths in the Australian workplace". Clark goes to great lengths to warn against amateurs indulging in diagnosis of their fellows but makes it quite clear what sorts of behaviour are associated with those he classifies into four types of psychopath; the organisational psychopath is the consummate workplace bully.

I hope this helps.

Cheers, Rowan