Culture vs Collateral Damage

But what happens when the behaviour you are challenging sits at the very top of the organisation(?), what happens when the people who are supposed to set the culture are the people creating the fear(?), that is where the conversation about workplace bullying becomes much more uncomfortable.

Because not all bullying looks like bullying.

Sometimes it is loud and obvious. Once upon a time, The Wolf of Wall Street was almost a caricature of workplace excess - outrageous, blatant and impossible to mistake for normal behaviour; it was wrong (very blinking wrong), of course, but at least you could see it.

Stealth bullying is different, there may be no shouting, no slammed doors, no dramatic confrontation.  Instead, there are the small things, the comments that can always be dismissed as “just a joke”, the subtle digs, the exclusion, the meeting you suddenly aren't invited to, the social event you somehow no longer know about, the WhatsApp group you are no longer part of.  Nothing, individually, seems big enough to challenge, but collectively?  They leave invisible bruises.

Nobody necessarily sees them, there isn't a black eye, there isn't a recording of somebody screaming, there isn't necessarily one spectacular event that you can point at and say, “There. That's the bullying.”  Instead, there is the person sitting on the edge of their bed at 3am, crying so hard they can't catch their breath, wondering whether they're losing their mind, the Sunday evening dread, the dry retching anxiety that arrives before the working week has even started.  There is the sudden, visceral fear when “HR” appears on your Teams screen.

And perhaps the most damaging part is what starts happening inside your own head, Was it really that bad?  am I overreacting?  Did I cause this?  Maybe I'm just being too sensitive.

That is the insidious nature of stealth bullying. It can make the person experiencing it question themselves before they ever question the behaviour.

Then there is the contradiction; organisations proudly publish their values, they talk about psychological safety, inclusion, respect and speaking up, but culture isn't what is written on the wall, culture is what happens when someone actually speaks up.

What happens when they challenge someone senior(?), when they aren't part of the “cool club” (?), when they aren't a favourite of senior management(?), when they say, “This isn't okay”?

Because if speaking up means quietly losing invitations, being excluded from groups, being treated differently or suddenly finding yourself on the wrong side of an invisible line, people notice and people learn.  They learn that there is a price for speaking up.

Eventually, some people leave, they don't leave because they can't do the job, because they don't care.  They leave because they can no longer cope with how they are being treated while doing it.

That is the collateral damage.

Perhaps the hardest question we need to ask is this:

What is the point of telling people to speak up if the culture makes them afraid to do it?

A culture that asks people to speak up, and then quietly punishes them for doing so, isn't psychological safety.

And barbs?  They aren't “just banter”, they aren't leadership, they aren't culture, they aren't welcome.

It's a culture of fear with better branding.

Louie-Mae Gibson, Head of Facilities Management, Bespoke Property Management