The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #165559 Message #3972681
Posted By: Helen
21-Jan-19 - 02:41 PM
Thread Name: BS: my cautionary tale
Subject: RE: BS: my cautionary tale
Thank you keberoxu.
As Iains said, the consequences of being honest should not make you feel guilty. If you had been lying or back-stabbing that would have been different.
And like pfr said, I will always be honest to the best of my ability, although over the decades I have learned to be honest in a more diplomatic way - most of the time. LOL
I also second Senoufou's book recommendation, but the book I have is by Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***
I have a long story, which I won't bore you all with, about being bullied relentlessly by a serial bully who was a high level manager. I was just one in a long line of serial targets.
It took me a while to wake up to what he was doing and during that period of waking up a former lecturer of mine, a clever, brilliant, articulate woman I respected greatly but didn't know personally, came to work there. I noticed that the bully had her sitting in his office one day while he rabbited on and on, but I couldn't hear what he was saying to her. I resolved to take her aside and tell her what I knew about him, including that he felt greatly intimidated by women with better management qualifications than his own. I had been left isolated and vulnerable by almost all of my work colleagues who were too scared to put their heads above the trenches and risk becoming a target. Only two brave souls stood up and helped me to see what was really going on but that wasn't until I was almost a year into the experience, so I vowed to stand by this woman and help her to see what the bully was doing.
Unfortunately, I couldn't talk to her that day and being part time I didn't get back to work until the following week, by which time she had committed suicide. I carry that guilt around with me. I thought there was enough time to talk to her, but being such a brilliant, creative, clever mind, I think she also had vulnerabilities in assessing her own capabilities in a new work environment, working for a slippery, sociopathic bully who would have started manipulating her from day one.
Following that, I started my own campaign to make sure that his superiors and people in positions of power knew exactly what he was up to, and had been doing for all the years he had been there.
His contract was renewed not long after that, but the next time the contract came up for renewal he was out of there.
I have never regretted what I did because I know that I probably helped a long line of other people who would have been targeted. He would have moved on, found new targets, but at least he was recognised for what he was in that organisation, and possibly that whole industry because he never worked in that industry of loosely linked state organisations again, as far as I know. He went freelance after that.
After one of my two saviours mentioned the word "psychopath", I Googled it and found this site: Tim Field: Bully Online
I wrote to Tim Field afterwards and thanked him for saving my life. I was a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wreck for some years after that, but without my two saviours and Tim Field, I don't know whether I would still be here.
This is the page which started me on my healing path: Tim Field: Bully Online
BTW, the experience Charmion referred to is known as 360 degree feedback. I have never known a manager brave enough to use it because honesty from subordinates can be very confronting.
Helen