Managing Harmful Behaviors at Work

In 2021, Jennifer Wisdom and I co-authored the Millennials Guide to Workplace Politics as part of her Millennials Guide book series. It had done incredibly well and this month marks our 2-year book-iversary!

So to celebrate, I'm sharing one chapter that receives a lot of attention given how many of us deal with this issue: how to respond to harmful or problematic overt behaviors at work.

This is the first of 17 brief, direct, and practical chapters on how to thoughtfully go into "reactive mode" once you have tried all the proactive measures (first 21 chapters).

We start with identifying overt and covert problematic behaviors. In this chapter we focus on a few overt behaviors.

Identifying Problematic Behaviors

Harmful behaviors are those that serve the purpose of trying to create a power imbalance so that the initiator maintains control over financial, management, status, or other resources. They are manipulative and may even be emotionally and psychologically abusive. They persist for as long as they are tolerated or enabled by others. Addressing them early, clearly, and directly is important, especially by people in higher power and at higher levels of the organization. Before we can intervene, however, we must be able to identify harmful behaviors when they are occurring to know how to manage them effectively. Harmful behaviors can often be identified by asking, “Does this serve the company, its mission, its staff, and its customers well?” Another signature mark of harmful behaviors is that they lead to some groups of people consistently being excluded and few being included.

Many times, harmful behaviors are initiated and maintained by a small group of people within a department or division. Unfortunately, however, these behaviors can also be contagious and spread to many more people when there isn’t strong leadership to squash them. The perpetrator(s) of harmful behaviors may or may not be fully aware of their poor behavior or its impact. For example, fear or insecurity sometimes drive these behaviors. In many cases, a direct approach to calling it out may be an important initial response to bring this kind of behavior to someone’s awareness. Note that many behaviors we will describe go together. For example, when someone tries to undermine you or a process, they may use many methods, such as gossiping, upstaging, and dismissing.

Overt problematic behaviors

We start with overt behaviors. These are the ones that are more obvious to catch. The next chapter describes covert behaviors that often happen behind closed doors and harder to catch. All types of harmful but may require different tactics to address. Those tactics will be described after these two chapters on overt and covert behaviors.

1. Undermining is when someone gradually lessens your power, status, expertise, success. People can also undermine a new process or system if they do not want it to work. People don’t always know that they are actively trying to undermine you or a process. For example, they might fear a new change but are unsure how to express their concern. Maybe they had negative experiences in the past when their concerns have been dismissed. In these cases, they might demonstrate their fears through more passive-aggressive means, such as undermining. An example is someone who makes persistent comments to coworkers right before a new system is launched, such as “You know I have read that this new way of doing things doesn’t actually work as well as people think. I personally don’t think it’s better and not sure I feel all that confident it will work. I’m not sure we should be working that hard to make this work out since we’ll probably have to go back to the old system anyway.”

2. Belittling is when someone makes you feel unimportant or less valued. Someone might belittle just one person or many people in general. Examples include repeatedly correcting or discrediting someone publicly; questioning someone’s decisions; giving advice to an expert at their job; ridiculing, teasing, or making fun of someone; or condescending or patronizing behavior. There is an element of superiority involved in belittling someone else, with the perpetrator sending the message that they believe they are better than the target of their behavior.

3. Invalidating is when someone denies, rejects, ignores, or dismisses your thoughts or feelings. It sends the message that your concerns or thoughts are not worthy, valid, or acceptable. This sounds like, “It could be worse, at least...” or “You shouldn’t feel that way – you’re lucky to even have....” Or “Let’s not get overly emotional about this. This is just business.”

4. Gaslighting is a form of invalidation that is intended to make you doubt what you experienced and wonder whether you’re perceiving reality accurately. Gaslighting could be statements like, “No, it didn’t happen that way,” or “You must be forgetting the conversation”, or “[Rolling eyes] That’s so ridiculous, you’re making no sense.”

5. Dismissiveness is sending the message that your concerns have no merit or are not worth spending time on. Think of it like when a judge dismisses a case when it does not have enough evidence to be worth the time for a full hearing. Sometimes dismissiveness can come in the form of nonverbal behaviors like eye rolls or a hand waving away an idea. Other times it might come in the form of passive actions like not taking a meeting with you or only agreeing to set up a very brief meeting to hear your idea (because there is no true interest in hearing your idea). More active actions include quickly rejecting your ideas before giving you sufficient time to share them, with the message being that your ideas are not worth the time. (Note that this is different than when busy leaders are interested but simply need you to cut to the chase quickly for them to understand your message.)

6. Gossiping is when people share secret or personal information about someone who is not in the room, and often in a sensational and negative manner. Gossip is often judgmental and puts the subject of the discussion in a negative light. Sometimes gossiping is an attempt to demonstrate having power through access to insider knowledge (“Look what I know that you don’t!”). Other times they say they are sharing “to vent” frustrations, but they never actually ask for help to address the problem. Sometimes, they are shared under the guise of being “helpful” or “on your side” such as when someone says, “A lot of people are feeling this way and I’m just the only one willing to be honest with you about it.” Either way, gossip conveys a lack of regard for someone’s privacy or personal information. Like many of these behaviors, it leads to an erosion of trust and increases divisiveness among employees. If you are not sure whether to consider it gossip, ask yourself, “How would the subject of this discussion feel if this conversation was recorded and shared with her later? Would she feel pleased? Glad the person was asking for advice on how to handle a problem? Or would she feel betrayed?”

7. Bad-mouthing is like gossip but with a specific intention to slander someone’s reputation. Bad-mouthing is spiteful and often comes from feelings of anger toward someone. This might include blaming someone for the failures of a team project or describing a boss as being incompetent, all within the context of a “secret” discussion in which the subject of the discussion is not present. Both gossiping and bad-mouthing are harmful actions that, when discovered, will forever damage someone’s professional optics and label them as someone known for their lack of trustworthiness. Be careful if people like this try to get in your good graces – you may be seen as someone who supports their behavior, or they may take advantage of you. You can be sure they will eventually bad-mouth you.

8. Upstaging is when you try to overshadow or divert attention from someone else to yourself. Upstaging sends the message that you believe you have more important things to share than the person you just upstaged. In meetings, it often comes in the form of interrupting someone else to demonstrate your superior knowledge. There is an element of competition involved in upstaging in which instead of showing up or communicating as a team, one team member has a need to outshine and outperform others. Observe your own behaviors to make sure you aren’t inadvertently doing the upstaging. For example, excitedly interrupting to share your own accomplishments while someone currently has the floor might be seen by others as upstaging.

9. Bulldozing and railroading are both pushy, overbearing, controlling behaviors that can also involve bullying. Bulldozing is when you push someone to do something they don’t want to do or when you dominate a conversation or relationship. Railroading is when you force a decision to be made quickly or unfairly before someone has enough time to think about it clearly. In work settings, it can often involve dismissive, invalidating, and belittling behavior (see above) combined with more direct and aggressive efforts such as threats or insults. Here’s an example of what this sounds like: “This is ridiculous, Sonja. How could it take you this long to make a simple decision? Just check the box and move on already. There’s honestly nothing left to think about. Why is this so hard for you to complete? Let’s move this along already!”

Enjoyed this chapter? Want more? You can buy the Millennials Guide to Workplace Politics book here where you will learn the answers to the rest of this section, including:

• Chapter 25: How to evaluate the problem to choose the right solution
• Chapter 26: How to directly address minor harmful behaviors
• Chapter 27: How to respond to others persistently taking credit for your work
• Chapter 28: How to respond to backstabbing, undermining, and sabotaging
• Chapter 29: How to respond to colleague gossip and bad-mouthing
• Chapter 30: How to respond to hidden agendas
• Chapter 31: How to respond to hostile comments and behavior
• Chapter 32: How to manage the personal toll of unhealthy workplace behaviors
• Chapter 33: How to respond to scapegoating
• Chapter 34: How to address treatment that appears to be unfair or inequitable
• Chapter 35: How to minimize further harm to yourself
• Chapter 36: How to minimize further harm to 164 others
• Chapter 37: How to intervene on behalf of others
• Chapter 38: How to best work with Human Resources and legal counsel

Importantly, this first half of the book is focused first on creating a healthy, positive workplace environment for yourself, your team, and your organization in order to minimize those harmful behaviors.

We hope you enjoyed this and happy book-iversary

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PS - I'd like to give a special shout-out to one of our biggest supporters, Lorianne (LA) GLASSFORD who wrote an awesome post about the 7 B-words she took from this section of the book:

1. Back Room Deals
2. Back Stabbing
3. Bypassing (also called triangulation or splitting)
4. Blaming
5. Blindsided
6. Bashing (or sabotaging)
7. Blocking

BRILLIANT is what I call this translation of our book!