Adult bullying: Is it happening to you?

Not just at work
Suppose you volunteered on a school committee to plan a fund-raising fair. The commitment requires that you meet once a week with a handful of parents for everyone to share ideas, pool skills and raise lots of money by hosting a great event. But one of the parents is a bully who always wants to have things her way.

At one meeting she criticizes your idea for a silent auction, cutting you off mid-sentence and making sarcastic comments at your expense. In the parking lot after another meeting, she waves an enthusiastic goodbye to everyone but you. A few days later she “forgets” to send you memos outlining everyone’s tasks but remembers to point out how slack you’ve been when the committee reconvenes. You notice some of the other parents are volunteering for fewer tasks and speaking up less often.

An hour before each meeting, your stomach lurches and you hope she won’t be there. You’ve stopped offering ideas. You feel shamed, belittled and silenced. The last time you felt this way was in the schoolyard when you were 10 years old at the mercy of the classroom bully. And that’s no coincidence.

Bullying is learned behaviour. As children, adult bullies were likely not taught how to communicate their needs, wants and goals in a healthy fashion. They may have observed their parents’ bullylike interactions with others and learned to mimic the behaviour.

“Some children watch their parents giving each other the silent treatment or talking poorly about friends and neighbours behind their backs,” says Lynn Glazier, a Canadian filmmaker and journalist who is known for the 2004 documentary It’s a Girl’s World. “Children internalize all these messages into their own social scripts and may grow up, if not stopped, into bullying adults.”

What may be a surprise is that bystanders – people who witness the bullying but do nothing to stop it – hold the balance of power. “With kids, as soon as a bully’s friends say we don’t want to play with you until you stop harassing so-and-so, the bullying stops immediately,” says Glazier who is currently working on a new documentary, It’s a Woman’s World: The Bitch at Work.

The problem is that bystanders all too often become silent because they are afraid the bully will turn her wrath against them. “Even if they don’t join in the bullying, the bystanders become a huge problem because they’re no support,” says Karen Learmonth, cohead of No Bully for Me, a Canadian support group, based in Vancouver, and resource for adult bullying . She says the target of the bullying feels she has no one to turn to and no one to trust.

Forget the negative
As soon as her old boss identified that she was being bullied, Kelly stopped taking the criticism from the Dragon Lady to heart. She still aims to produce the best she can on the job, but when her boss ostracizes her, Kelly just ignores the negative comments.

But like so many bullied individuals in the workplace, Kelly felt there was no one for her to turn to or complain to. And she was likely right. According to the Canada Safety Council, a bully is censored, transferred or terminated in only 13 per cent of cases. Sadly, of the people who complained about being bullied, 37 per cent were terminated.

So Kelly has come up with her own solution: go back to school and create a new career path. And she has fostered an accepting environment for her staff despite the bullying going on in other areas of her company. “I’m at the stage where if my boss doesn’t want me, she can fire me,” says Kelly. “The least I can do is show my staff there is another way.”

*Name has been changed.

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