Why Awareness Sessions Are Not Enough To Tackle Bullying At Work

I have been bullied throughout my life. I was bullied more or less continually through my school years, I have been bullied at work multiple times, and I have been bullied in a relationship. Do you know one major thing that all the people that have bullied me had in common?? Not one of them would have agreed that they were bullies if challenged at the time.

Most of us, in my experience, could do with a bit more self-awareness. It is something that I am trying to work on, but the bottom line is that we all have an ugly side that we prefer to pretend does not exist.

There are very few people in the world that could self-identify as a bully and be ok with that. Most of us like to think that we are basically good but have occasional lapses when highly provoked. Most of us are probably right about that. I am in no way suggesting that we all have a dangerous dark side!

But what I am saying is that bullies in the workplace are very unlikely to change their behaviour left to themselves to do so. This is the problem with thinking that awareness sessions are enough to tackle a bullying problem in an organisation.

I appreciate the sentiment behind the awareness raising approach. Perhaps there are people who occasionally act in a bullying way without realising it. Most of us have done things we are ashamed of in retrospect on occasion.

But occasional, out of character lapses are generally not the problem in my experience. The issue is people who bully others day in, day out, sometimes for years. Do you think that these people recognise themselves as bullies? I don’t.

Raising awareness is the easy way out for leaders. If we make everyone do some training, those who are bullying others will realise that they are doing wrong and stop, and those who are being bullied will feel empowered enough to speak up. Wrong on both counts. Do you really think that people who regularly reduce others to tearful wrecks, who drive colleagues to leave jobs that they love or even contemplate self-harm are going to have a sudden epiphany at a 2-hour seminar run by a couple of volunteers with a slide deck from HR?

Bullies will either think that awareness sessions do not apply to them or that they are just a load of woke nonsense. They will either attend and go through the motions without seeing anything that relates to their behaviour, or they won’t go at all. Anyone with enough self-awareness to see their own behaviours as a problem when they are discussed at a seminar would have stopped acting in that way long ago.

It is easy to say that you do not tolerate bullying. But I suspect that most leaders that say this do not understand what this needs to mean in practice.

I am all for giving people second chances. I am not for a moment suggesting that the first incident of bad behaviour should immediately lead to summary dismissal. But in an organisation of any size there are almost certainly some bad apples who are well beyond changing for the better. They may say the right things when challenged, talk about assertive management styles and misunderstandings, and they may even get great results. But they are almost certainly not going to stop treating people badly.

What is worse is that generally most people in an organisation apart from senior leaders know exactly who these people are. Maybe the leaders know too, but choose to do nothing, either because the bullies get good results in terms of sales or other metrics, or just because it is hard. They do not want to face the confrontation that tackling the bully requires. It is far easier to just turn a blind eye and roll out a few more courses.

Nobody ever said leadership was easy. Along with the authority, and the trappings and rewards, comes great responsibility, especially for the welfare of those that you lead. The duty of care for those that follow you is truly something that should keep a lot more leaders up at night.

Every time a leader takes the easy way out on bullying, someone else with a lot less power continues to suffer. It is horrible to feel so helpless, but when you are being bullied by someone with authority over you in a job that you need to pay the bills, what choice do you have?

Awareness sessions are great, but they are not nearly enough. Leaders that knowingly ignore bullying in their organisation are just as culpable for the results of it on people’s lives as those who are the bullies.

Enough is enough. Actions speak louder than words, even words in beautifully crafted PowerPoint slides about empowerment and resilience. Either show us that you really do not tolerate bullying, or at the very least stop making empty promises about dealing with it.

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