Newsday, June 12, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Copyright 2005 Newsday
Newsday

June 12, 2005, Sunday

HEADLINE: Bully bosses can wreak havoc on morale, company's bottom line

BYLINE: By Carrie Mason-Draffen

BODY:

For five years, Christopher Morgano worked as a marketing-sales rep at an Internet health-information company, where the Long Beach resident was accustomed to excellent reviews and double-digit raises. Then, in his last few months there, he reported to a bully boss, a woman based in Atlanta whom he believes begrudged his MBA and that he was a telecommuter from New York.
As she piled on the work, she loved to announce, "You're a New Yorker, so you should have no problem doing this," Morgano, 33, said.
So he quit.
In this case, the company lost a high-producing employee. But bully bosses can wreak havoc on more than just career plans. They hurt morale and even the bottom line. Now they're in the spotlight because bullying-behavior allegations have stalled the approval of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the very citadel of diplomacy.
Bolton's past became public in the sometimes tense and contentious Senate confirmation hearings. According to one report, when Bolton was a private attorney, he yelled and threw things at a foreign-aid worker as he chased her down a hotel hallway in Moscow in 1994.
While bully behavior can take many forms, the result is the same: Bully bosses typically make their employees feel humiliated and demeaned in front of others, said Elizabeth Carll, a Huntington psychologist who works with companies on stress and workplace-violence issues.
"Obviously one can offer negative criticism, but if it's humiliating and done in front of others and it's constant, that is a red flag as to the difference between a negative evaluator and someone just really being a bully," Carll said.
Why do companies put up with these tyrants?
They may simply be unaware, Carll said.
"People are afraid to talk," she said. "They don't want to burn their bridges."
And the company culture may validate the bully's behavior, she said.
"The actual people in charge are like that, too, and don't see [the behavior] as a problem," she said.
Moreover, she said the company may look the other way because the bully is a big producer.
"The company may recognize that [the manager] has this flaw, but it puts up with this person because of the other positive qualities," Carll said.
However, in the long run, bullies and their companies overestimate the executives' value to the organization, especially as a motivator, experts say.
"You might get people to do what you want in that instant," said Bradford Bell, professor of human-resource management at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, "but you aren't going to be able to build the commitment, a sense of job satisfaction that really motivates people to perform at their best."
The bottom line costs could even extend to the price of litigation if the bully singles out people based on their race, gender, age, religion, national origin or disability, and those aggrieved employees sue the company as a result.
For example, "it's not illegal to demean unless that's how [the bully] talks only to women," said Jeffrey Schlossberg, a partner at Ruskin Moscou Faltischek in Uniondale. Bullies "don't always have control. So they say things out of either anger or just mean-spiritedness that then have the result of creating a hostile work environment" for classes of workers protected by anti-bias laws.
Ironically, bullies are usually the last to be aware of their actions.
"Many of them don't understand what they are doing," said Kathleen Dockry, a senior executive coach with Marshall Goldsmith Partners in Manhattan.
One high-energy client of hers thrived in a rough-and-tumble segment of the energy industry. But when he joined a company with a more "more relaxed, civilized approach," he was sent to see her after "he came on like gangbusters because it was the only sort of behavior he knew.
"He knew things weren't working for him," she said, "but he didn't really understand what he was doing to cause that reaction in people." But she said that when he and other bullies actually start to see what their behavior is costing them in productivity and career aspects, "it's a big 'Aha' for them."
Sadly, most bullying bosses were once the victims of bullies at an early age.
"The person who bullies ... has been bullied by their mom and dad and are just using the tactics they learned," said psychologist Jay Carter, the author of "Nasty Bosses: How to Stop Being Hurt by Them Without Stooping to Their Level" (McGraw-Hill, $ 8.95).
But most bullies can be reformed because few are sadists who terrorize their employees for sheer pleasure, Dockry said. And for their companies' sake, it's imperative that this brand of difficult bosses gets professional help.
"If you have bad leaders, ultimately you end up with bad employees," Dockry said. "Those employees will reflect those leaders' strengths or will reflect their weaknesses."
WHAT TO DO
Choose a name -- bullying, psychological harassment, psychological violence, emotional abuse -- to offset the effect of being told that, because your problem is not illegal, you have no problem. This claim makes people feel illegitimate, and the cycle of self-blame and anxiety begins.
The source of the problem is external. The bully decides whom to target and how, when and where to harm people.
Bully-proof yourself, seek respite, take time off.
Check your mental health with a professional you find on your own, not the employer's Employee Assistance Program. Get emotionally stable enough to make a clear-headed decision to stay and fight or to leave for your health's sake.
Check your physical health. Stress-related diseases, such as high blood pressure, rarely carry warning signals.
Research state and federal legal options. In 1/4 of bullying cases, discrimination plays a role. Talk to an attorney. Maybe a demand letter can be written. Look for internal policies on harassment and violence for violations to report.
Gather data about the economic impact the bully has had on the employer. Discover turnover rates. Calculate the costs of replacement (recruitment, demoralization from understaffing, interviewing, lost time while newbie learns job), absenteeism and lost productivity from interference by bully.
Start a job search.
Make a business case that the bully is too expensive to keep.
Present the data to let the highest-level person (not human resources) you can reach know about the bully's impact.
Stick to the bottom line. If you drift into tales about the emotional impact of the bully's harassment, you will be discounted and discredited.
Give the employer one chance. If officials side with the bully because of personal friendship or rationalize the mistreatment, you will have to leave the job for your health's sake. However, some employers look for reasons to purge a difficult bully. Help good employers purge.
The nature of your departure -- either bringing sunshine to the dark side or leaving shrouded in silent shame -- determines how long it takes you to rebound and get that next job, to function fully and to restore compromised health. Tell everyone about the petty tyrant for your health's sake.
--SOURCE: "The Bully At Work'' By Gary and Ruth Namie (Sourcebooks, 2003)
FAMOUS BULLIES
--Bobby Knight: The infamous head basketball coach at Indiana University whose temper is cited for ending his tenure at the school. Knight threw a plastic chair the length of a basketball court and put a chokehold on one of his players.
--Donald Trump: The real-estate mogul of "The Apprentice" fame gloats arrogantly as he belittles his business partners and reduces his overachieving apprentices to tears weekly on prime-time television.
--John Bolton: He's President George W. Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations. An aid worker in Moscow accused him of chasing her down a hotel hallway, yelling and throwing things at her in 1994 while he was working as a private attorney.
--Gen. George S. Patton Jr.: The real-life World War II general was known for carrying pistols with ivory handles and for his intemperate manner.
--Martha Stewart: The domestic goddess-turned-felon is rumored to have a bad temper around employees. Stewart is often the butt of jokes on late-night television. She was convicted of obstructing justice and lying to the government in 2004 in connection with a well-timed stock sale and served five months in federal prison.
"Bill Lumbergh": The boorish boss in the movie "Office Space." Gary Cole plays the office manager at Initech computer company. He harangues employees and makes them come in on the weekend, warning them as early as Friday afternoon.
"Katharine Parker": Sigourney Weaver plays narcissistic boss Parker in the 1988 movie "Working Girl." Parker has a penchant for stealing ideas from underlings. Melanie Griffith stars as an executive secretary who suffers at the hands of mean boss Parker.
"Ebenezer Scrooge": He's the chief character in Charles Dickens' novella "A Christmas Carol." Scrooge is a miserly businessman who begrudges his workers a holiday on Christmas.
"Gordon Gekko": The greedy boss played by Michael Douglas in the movie "Wall Street." He coined the phrase "lunch is for wimps."
--George Steinbrenner: The New York Yankees owner is loved by fans despite episodes of firing managers and publicly embarrassing star players.