Corporate Bullies. It’s time to fight back!
Bully Bosses! It’s time to fight back.
Leader - defined by the dictionary to be the person who leads or mentors a group, organization, or country to achieve set objectives.
Manager - a person responsible for controlling or administering an organization or group of staff.
Notice how a manager is defined to be a person who controls as opposed to leading a group of people.
I, for one am more inclined to believe that this is the core reason why so many organizations are currently struggling with the stigma of appointing poor leaders.
Businesses are not looking for good leadership but instead appoint people who seek to control their teams and expect to achieve success.
It is fundamentally incorrect to call any person responsible for a team a “manager “ because in order to get the best out of people you have got to showcase competency in understanding the human mind and how to mentor and develop your team to achieve. It goes without saying that integrity and respect are traits that any good leader should embody. South Africa and particularly the Western Cape is plagued with under qualified corporate bullies running large organizations and breaking people’s spirits because they themselves lack the knowledge, capability and talent to succeed. When they are faced with pressure they divert all attention to their teams and label them incompetent and bully them out the door.
I have witnessed horrific scenarios where staff is not coached, guided, mentored or engaged in constructive conversations.
It is high time that employees rally around each other and develop a backbone to know when their basic human rights are being abused. We all need development, some more than others and it is the responsibility of the leader to identify their team’s specific needs and build structures to support them to overcome their challenges. It is utterly unacceptable to be an employee and face daily bullying in the workplace.
Workplaces are more competitive and more and more people revert to survival behaviour that’s less than dignified.
Workplace bullying is defined as ‘‘repeated, health-harming mistreatment, verbal abuse, or conduct which is threatening, humiliating, intimidating, or sabotage that interferes with work’’.
Workplace trauma has a devastating effect on the victims’ productivity and emotional and physical health. Research shows victims can waste up to 52 per cent of their time at work defending themselves, networking for support, thinking about the situation and being demotivated and stressed.
In 55 per cent of workplace bullying cases the victims end up suffering from depression or feel so disempowered and helpless that their only option is walking away from the constant torture and humiliation.
Some bullies are obvious – they slam doors, yell angrily and are insulting and rude; others are much more subtle while a select few are both!
While appearing to be courteous they engage in vicious character assassination, petty humiliations and small interferences . . . which poison the working environment for the targeted individuals.
A bully boss might set you up to fail by demanding unrealistic deadlines or overloading you with work then replacing it with demeaning jobs.
If you’re a victim don’t just cower and take the abuse while simmering angrily in silence. Take concrete steps to change the situation, especially through the the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration of SA (CCMA).
I have spent a lot of time reading up on Labour law and what it can do to protect the rights of employees in our country.
Help is out there and while I know how it can all get so overwhelming, it is worth it to restore your dignity and expose the disgusting working conditions some fellow South Africans are forced to work under.
As a parent, you are doing everything you can to be a positive role model and provider to your dependents. You do not need to suffer in silence and watch a corporate bully take your livelihood and food out of your children’s mouths.
Get up and get help, take a stand against corporate bullies!
Thanks for reading :)
Thank you for this. Sometimes its really not easy to try and stand up for yourself. #bossbulliesmustfall
ReplyDeleteTrust me, I know that feeling of helplessness, depression and defeat.
DeleteIt becomes very important to know who and what you stand for. Do your research, back yourself up with documented evidence of your interactions and outputs. More often than not, it is personal and the bully lacks the integrity to differentiate between personal and professional agendas. The workplace has no place for such individuals and no human being should be treated with disrespect!
Human rights can never be violated no matter what your ranking. Cape Town is littered with horror stories about how some of these bully bosses move from one job to the next reeking the exact same havoc! It is spoken about in tea rooms and corridors and that is where the problem starts. Expose it in the correct platforms and trust the law. We owe it to ourselves and all future employees to be the advocates for positive change! #bossbullies must fall...I couldn’t have said it any better myself! ✊🏽
Thank you for sharing this page with me and for your blog. This is so hard-hitting and true and I have experienced this more than once in the last decade or so. Your advice, though sounds, lacks I think the viewpoint from employees who are maybe not emotionally strong enough to stand up for themselves. It is a lonely journey despite the camaraderie that is shared around watercoolers and break rooms. Also, when you are feeling like David against the Goliath that is your manager/leader/boss, and there is no catapult/stone to slay them, it become a pie-in-the-sky dream to get out from the circumstance you find yourself in.
DeleteI have seen how, with complicity from a biased leadership team and ill-equipped HR rep, people still get bullied out of their jobs by manipulative managers, despite a wealth of evidence to support them. Even though there should be proper due process, when you get bulldozed out of the door before you can build your defense, or blind-sided into a hearing without representation, shouted down and spoken-over without said HR rep mediating, then its not just the manager who has failed you, but the system and the law. Where do you then stand in a CCMA evaluation when you are cut off from the people and resources needed for them to accept your case?
The CT culture is too buddy-buddy and lets-sweep-this-under-the-carpet for corporate justice to really work. The problem starts when the bottom line results are more important than how it was achieved. Top leadership tends to wear blinkers to the practices of their staff and they bask in this ignorance, not wanting to challenge the status quo or make waves or put a target on their own backs, so they ignore the high staff turnover rate and call it culling, or raising the bar, or whatever helps them sleep at night. They are filled round and rich with the smoke and lies being blown up their ass by their managerial staff and in turn hand out timely pats on the back for a job well done.
Meanwhile, you have a workforce who are slowly being broken down, demotivated, walking on eggshells, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and so they dont make waves, they do the bare minimum, they become invisible, because the moment your personality becomes more than a manager can contend with, or know how to deal with, or requires just a little bit harder work on their part...you may as well be that matador with a red cloak, because for sure they will be coming for you.
I've recently been the recipient of one such attack and got out of it by the power of my mothers prayers. Let it be known, there is no force more powerful in the world, than a mother praying to God to save her child. My nightmare was over when my manager was let go...or in her words...leaving to take care of a sick relative (unbeknownst to her I was aware of her asking about vacancies at another company). But besides that, it was really a matter of weeks before, what I felt, would be the day I was fired, that she left. The weight that was lifted from me...for the first time in months I slept more than 3hrs...my health improved, the cloud that hung over my life had dissipated and I could breathe for the first time in almost a year...I was free...I had escaped her.
Others I have known, were not so lucky in the past and so I pray for good leadership, because, unless you have known good leadership, and I have, you will not recognise the sly manipulations from a bad one.
I look forward to more of your writing my famous-author-friend!
I couldn’t help but relate to every word you shared! I’m so happy God intervened on your behalf and you escaped. Your story has affirmed just how many people are affected directly or indirectly. Victimization is a real thing in our workplaces and while people may emphatize with you, very few are willing to place themselves at risk by speaking up in favor of what is right! The entire employee structure is flawed and this has left me thinking just how much bigger this problem is and that there is a desperate outcry for a breakthrough.
Delete