Defining Toxic and Bullying Behaviors at Work and their Impact

Have you experienced or witnessed hostile or toxic behaviors of bullying at work?

We use many names to rationalize them until we cannot anymore – hostile, conflict-oriented, unhealthy, harmful, and psychologically impactful – they effect the individual at the heart of who they are.

Why?

Because so many of these behaviors attack at someone’s self-identity. They effect the individual at the heart of who they are, what they believe, and their personal attitudes.

Bullying is not a one-off occurrence of sarcasm or insult.

Research says that these actions take place over a long period of time – at least six months – and because of how often and how long they occur, these microaggressions and outright abuses create considerable “psychic terror .” A worker is subjected to systematic stigmatizing, injustices, hostility, and unethical communications. This person is left powerless. In addition to the pain involved, a target is often threatened with job insecurity creating outright fear and anxiety.

The effects are felt as social misery in the environment; physical and mental health are notably impacted. In fact, not only does the individual experience trauma, witnesses to this behavior experience poor mental or physical health as well. Naturally, they weaken one's resilience and coping resources.

It has been identified as one of the most significant job stressors among decades of scientific research. Based on recent research , a toxic culture is the number one reason employees left their jobs as part of the Great Resignation.

Bullying is an escalating process; it increases in severity and others may behave in the same toxic way (this is called “mobbing”).?The person involved becomes isolated and excluded from social activities or opportunities for promotion and job growth. As more people repeat and model the hostile behaviors - scapegoating, blame, and negative characteristics are attributed or applied - when failures or poor outcomes occur in team projects.

Exclusion is not limited to any age, gender, or race, although other discriminatory, stereotyping, or harassment may already exist among some coworkers.

These conflicts are very often power driven; in the U.S., U.K., and Western Europe, over 65% of toxic behaviors are between a manager or someone who is in a superior position and someone with lower autonomy.?Bullying begins most often where there is an imbalance of power .

This is why people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers or leaders.

Direct and ongoing aggression is based on work effect and intention.?These include isolation, control and manipulation of information, emotional and verbal abuse.?Professional discredit and devaluation of one’s role in the workplace is also common with the spread of rumors and lies about an individual – further isolating them.

These behaviors include verbal aggression, spreading gossip and false information, attacks on the person’s private life, attitudes and culture, beliefs, and organizational measures to withhold resources to do one’s job.

Employees are not capital, resources, tools, or assets; they are human beings.

They have also occurred online as cyberbullying throughout the past two years of remote work. Once it hits the internet or someone’s business intranet, it is very hard to remove and may harm an employee when trying to get another job as employers search social media.??

In my next post, I will discuss the effect on the organizational dynamics and culture of an organization.

If you have experienced or witnessed these behaviors, your input is very important to me. It truly creates trauma for some people and they fear going back into the workplace.

How did it affect you?

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