Sometime in your working career you will come across someone who will bully you or attempt to bully you. It happens to one in three people in the work force and the bullying continues when you do not take steps to make it stop. As a person who is not shy with words working with hostile patients for the last 23 years in mental health – I have grown accustom to people screaming and shouting. It has never bothered me coming from the clients due to the fact that they are sick and do have a purpose to be in the hospital.
Did you know that 49% of Americans have been affected by workplace bullying and most bullies are bosses and 12% have watched it happen to someone else and did not say anything about it. 50% of the bullies are women. 62% of the time the bullying is ignored and nothing is done about it by management.
A bully is usually a person who likes brings their personal life to work or finds themselves not a popular as the other people to be around them. The hostile bully will do their best to make another person look bad in front of a group, in their job performance or give job task that are not possible to complete. It makes them feel powerful when they can point out someone else’s failures or short comings.
Nursing is supposed to be a caring profession, and in lots of ways it is. However, over the years I have literally watched nurses eat the young and brag about running them away. Because nursing does have a root of being a caring profession it is hard for some of them to admit they have hurt their co-workers to the point of bullying them.
Spending our shifts feeling pulled in an impossible number of directions, day after day after day, can in the end be too much. A lot of nurses find a way to regroup and stay, while some burn out and quit. But a few nurses will, like cornered animals, bare their teeth and fight back.
Workplace bullying is a serious problem affecting nursing. Abusive workplaces result in lack of job satisfaction, poor retention. The news talks about the nurses shortage and they have as long as I have been a nurse – I wonder if it is because of bullying and stressful work situations instead of lack of actual nurses.
The Top 10 Signs you are being Bullied at work – (this was found on ezinemark.com)
You Are Being Bullied and Abused At Work If:
* You are physically sick the night before the start of every workweek
* You have a history of positive appraisals and solid work performance, but if feels like your boss or co-worker never stops criticizing your work and you personally
* Your boss or co-worker yells at you, insults you, or otherwise humiliates you in front of other people at work
* You are accused of making errors when you did not
* A manager or supervisor continually brings up past mistakes as a type of club to hit you with – not in a constructive manner to help you improve
* Someone at work quietly tells gossipy lies about you or your job performance
* You boss freezes you out of his or her “circle” by moving your desk, not including you on meetings or even social lunches
* On your days off work you feel exhausted and lifeless, or you spend time away from work obsessing about work
* Your boss tries to make you fail, by not reviewing or signing off on your work, shuffling your schedule or calling meetings when he or she knows you have a conflict
* When you succeed at work despite your boss, he or she takes the credit for your success (but always blames you for the failures)
If you think you may work in a hostile work place caused by a bully boss or co-worker, you can learn to fight back by firmly asserting your legal rights. Document each event and time that it occurred, make your management aware of the behavior, and document any witnesses to the behavior. Very few people want to work in a hostile environment, even if they are not the target of the hostilities. It is not pleasant to see the people you work with and rely upon humiliated and stripped of their dignity. Bullies can be stopped.
Angela was voted 110th Leading Moms in Business celebrating the top mom owned businesses. She has been promoted in her job from a night shift staff nurse to the day shift as a Education and Training Educator for the new nursing employees, she has built her direct sales business part – time, while working a full time job, with her blog, newsletter, and smart phone. She has never picked up the phone to call cold leads or have home parties.
She has been invited to speak in Orlando Florida October 6-7, 2012 with ARealChange Int.
You’re invited to attend!
Angela I have shared with you before that I too am in healthcare. Unfortunately for the last year I have had to deal with one of the meanest, nastiest people I’ve ever come across. I think God is making me use some mental muscles I have not used since high school, or ever for that matter. Thank you for the article. FYI I’ve been listening to one of my Sandi webinars for the last 2 hours just planning my escape from my “regular” job. Keep up the good work girl!
Hey Michelle I would love to help you make the escape. I know the feeling
Some solid advice. Successful bullies know how to make a benign pleasing impression on those in power, contributing to management inaction, as they also do with shameless lies that make it an unwelcome investigative project most managers avoid. Written testimonials sent to the appropriate officials make a big difference sometimes, as a manager no longer has the option of pretending the issue doesn’t exist. There are also effective strategies that one can use: I suggest the book Getting Past No, which covers negotiating with people who refuse to play nice. In the final analysis, bullies live and breath power, and any way you can gather enough power, you can achieve a respectful bully who seeks other targets instead.
I have found that the bullies befriend the boss and almost ‘suck up’ to them. Then they tell tales on the people who they find a threat, the ones who do not want to be in their circle, because they find that nurse lazy, her behaviour to other nurses demeaning and confrontational and she is unprofessional. But all but the brave, challenge that behaviour, the rest want to keep the status quo, thou are deeply unhappy.
I have challenged the behaviour of several in the ‘gang’ and have been singled out, ignored, told lies about, which the boss believes, but does not give me a chance to defend myself, because I am not told the details of this so called ‘situation’.
I am also not believed as I am not a person to ‘suck up’, I tell it how it is, and I get on with my job. I do not sit in the staff room gossiping and organising my social life. More and more people are taking into the gang and the others are isolated.
I am seen as a trouble maker and the more unhappy I get, the more my work performance has suffered and make mistakes, I have been threatened with a formal warning because I am told I am snappy, but no more than others, I have become frustrated by not being supported or believed. I have sleep problems and is making me physically ill. Of course I look unhappy. As it is a small private hospital, there is no one else I feel I can go to and my only option is to leave.
Yes I agree – people want to avoid this as often as possible. Many times is it let go to long before it is handled. The few cases I have seen do get taken care of but after many people are hurt from them. Yes they do breath the control power
Naisy – true true true! That has happened before and it is sad to see people set up to look like they are doing something they are not. As the bully smiles behind his back. It comes back around – it just seems to take a long time. You can’t be mean to people for ever and get away with it.