Dealing with difficult colleagues can be overwhelming and toxic to workplace culture. Catherine Mattice, MA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP is a workplace bully expert, author and consultant with Civility Partners, Inc., a consultant firm focused on turning around toxic behaviors and cultures. She joined Negotiate Anything to share her expert advice for understanding workplace bullies and successfully navigating difficult scenarios and conflict.
Understanding the “Bully” Perspective
Catherine’s specialization in workplace bullying brings her a unique perspective, as often times she’s the one working directly with the person others deem toxic. Her work, in addition to her own experience in academia, has led her to develop a level of empathy for bullies and a deeper understanding of their behavior.
According to Catherine, most bullies are good people with positive intentions for themselves and the people around them. They want everybody to be successful, but because they’ve had to fight for a certain level of respect they react strongly whenever they feel their competency or perceived ability is being questioned or threatened. This may be especially common for people who have overcome childhood trauma or difficult circumstances to achieve the career success they have.
More often than not, they don’t realize the impact they are having on those around them.
“They’re not out to hurt you, they just don’t know they hurt you,” Catherine shared.
Additionally, oftentimes their behavior is either ignored or rewarded (with promotion), making it even more difficult for them to recognize that a problem exists.
Keeping this in mind, Catherine typically begins by helping bullies understand the way they are making others feel, while simultaneously reminding them that they don’t have to fight as hard for respect anymore.
While none of this excuses a person’s behavior, empathy can help to take the edge off of some of these difficult conversations and allow other professionals to communicate their boundaries in a more effective way.
Addressing Bullying Behavior
According to Catherine, toxic workplace behavior should be addressed, regardless of the reason. She offers insights for communicating with leadership and the bully themselves.
For those looking to bring this issue up with a boss, she recommends first considering what type of leader you have. An emotional, charismatic, visionary type of leader may be more responsive to hearing how this behavior is making employees feel about coming to work. On the other hand, a data-driven leader will likely respond more to seeing the costs of turnover as a result of a toxic work environment.
As a last resort, mentioning the potential legal ramifications of this behavior may inspire leadership to address it.
It’s important to prepare for this conversation by fully analyzing the situation and its impacts, both direct and indirect, while also considering which approach will be most effective based on your leader’s personality, values and priorities.
When it comes to addressing the bully directly, Catherine emphasizes the importance of timing. The sooner you can express your feelings or set a boundary, the better. As more time passes, you lose credibility and persuasive power. It will be much easier for someone to dismiss or underestimate the impact of their behavior because you allowed it for so long. In other words, your colleague may suggest that the behavior couldn’t be that bad if you didn’t feel the need to speak up for an extended period of time.
To combat this, Catherine encourages people to express their feelings as quickly as possible after an incident. A good timeline is within 24-48 hours depending on the severity of the conflict. Questions are a great way to do this without appearing too abrasive. She recommends questions like:
Do you know that you are yelling?
Do you mean to be condescending right now? Because that’s how it’s coming across.
Catherine’s final piece of advice is to consider how you can rally the troops or build allies to address this behavior. The goal isn’t to gossip or intimidate a person, but rather to see if there is a common perception that can be safely and respectfully shared with leadership or in a group setting.
If five people express that they are perceiving a person’s behavior as toxic (as opposed to just one) it strengthens the argument and increases the odds that this issue will be addressed.
Empowering Yourself to Speak Up
Confronting a bully can be scary, but according to Catherine, empowerment can come from all of those difficult moments you’ve endured. It’s about concluding that enough is enough and realizing that any consequences of speaking up will be worth if it means moving you to a safer space mentally and emotionally.
If this means losing or leaving your job, get ahead by preparing alternatives to your current situation. Position yourself to find the next best opportunity for you. That said, Catherine’s found that in most cases speaking up won’t cost you your job and will almost always generate more respect from your colleagues.
The key is to identify what success looks like you for you and allow that to guide your communication and next steps.
Toxic work cultures can be tough to navigate, but not impossible. With empathy, confidence, and a solid preparation strategy you can equip yourself with the tools to speak up and create a healthier working environment.
Follow Catherine Mattice on LinkedIn. Click here to listen to the full episode.
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