by Lynne Curry
24 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
If, however, you successfully handle yourself and the situation,
others will witness a failed bullying attempt, which will allow them to
see what’s going on.
Your Turn: Where Are You Now?
1. Describe the bul ying you’ve experienced—in particular,
what made you initial y realize you were being bul ied, and
how you responded.
2. Which category or categories outlined in Chapter 1 does
your experience fal into?
3. How recently have you been bul ied?
4. How often have you been bul ied?
5. What have you tried?
6. What haven’t you tried?
7. What thoughts led to your action or inaction?
8. Whom do you think bul ies go after?
9. Do you think bul ies feel remorse?
10. Who has witnessed the way the bul y treats you? Who else
has the bul y targeted?
11. Are there ways in which these individuals could help you? Is
there anyone else who could help or are you on your own?
12. Might you be able to describe the bul ying to your supervi-
sor or manager in terms of your company’s reputation and
bottom line rather than your personal hurt? If so, how?
13. If you’ve been hiding, how might you benefit from coming
out into the open? Name one step you can take, and take it
this week.
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3
DOORMATS CAN CHANGE:
HERE’S WHAT IT TAKES
Courage is being scared to death
but saddling up anyway.
—JOHN WAYNE
ADAM’S PROMOTION TOOK GEOFF by surprise. Geoff, a tal,
good-looking “golden boy” with a penchant for expensive, tai-
lored suits, had thought the promotion was his as he’d worked for the
company longer, had an advanced degree, and considered himself
more talented than his coworkers.
Adam, a slender, Asian-American man with a gentle face, reached
out to Geoff and the other employees after his promotion, saying, “I
want us to be a team.” Bitter, Geoff rebuffed Adam, making it clear he
planned to stay in the job only because he needed the income, adding,
“Hope you don’t f--- things up too bad.”
Adam didn’t respond and didn’t mention this conversation to his boss
because he wanted his boss to think he could handle the chal enges of
a newly promoted supervisor.
Adam’s silence emboldened Geoff. Each week Geoff emailed Adam
a “helpful” critique of Adam’s actions as manager, copying Adam’s
boss. Adam wasn’t sure how to handle these emails, as Geoff cloaked
his comments in statements of apparent concern for the department’s
future.
Over the next months, Geoff openly questioned Adam’s decisions in
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26 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
conversations with other team members. At team meetings, he asserted
himself so forceful y that he usurped the leadership role. Adam didn’t put
a stop to any of this because he hated conflict and hoped things would
settle down.
PROBLEMS DON’T JUST GO AWAY
If you’re like Adam, you wait for problems to fade away by themselves.
You hope staying out of the bully’s way solves the problem. Perhaps
you’re a person who’d rather work things out than argue. The idea of
fighting back when attacked may even make you feel sick. It may be
that in your family, no one called bullying what it is.
Can you learn to stand up for yourself? You bet. Your past doesn’t
predict your future, unless you bring the past with you. Which you
will, unless you consciously decide to change.
Let me show you how this can happen to you unless you make a
midcourse correction.
Try this experiment. Intertwine your arms as if you’re pretzeling
them and notice which hand comes out on top. Then, re-cross your
arms so your other hand comes out on top. You may find this sec-
ond position awkward to do and uncomfortable to maintain. That’s
because when you crossed your arms the first time and one hand came
out on top, you initiated a pattern. If the same hand came out on top
the next two times you crossed your arms, you locked into a consistent
pattern for how you crossed your arms.
Every habit you have started with doing something and then
repeating it several times. Try this experiment to see how quickly you
develop habits. Spell these words out loud:
J O K E
S M O K E
F O L K
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Doormats Can Change: Here’s What It Takes ❚ 27
Now spell the word for the white of an egg. If you caught yourself
spelling y-o-l-k instead of egg white, shell, or albumin, you spelled the
word for the yellow of an egg because you had quickly formed a habit.
Similarly, if the first time an angry individual walked over you or
verbally roughed you up you backed down because you didn’t know
how else to handle the situation, you initiated a pattern. If you backed
down more than once, you developed a habit for avoiding conflict.
You can change any habit you’ve fallen into by making and repeating
new patterns, which you’ll learn in Chapters 5 through 11.
THE FIRST STEP ON THE ROAD TO CHANGE
Train yourself to see new possibilities. We tend to believe that when
we look at something, we see what’s there. Yet do we? What do you
see here?
T B 5 5 S
Do you see the word trees or the top half of the word trees?
Or do you see the top half of what’s really there?
Take another look:
T B 5 5 S
What do you see now?
We see what we expect to see.
Next, read this phrase aloud with its words jammed together:
Opportunity isnowhere.
How did you read it?
Opportunity is no where or opportunity is now here?
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28 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
Changing your mental patterns requires seeing what’s in front of
your eyes and even yourself from a new and more positive perspective.
GET READY TO CHANGE: EXPAND YOUR COMFORT ZONE
Are you ready to believe you can see things in a new way? Or are
you locked into your current view of yourself and your bully, even
though you’d like the situation to be different and better? While
you’re a walking history of everything that’s happened to you, as
long as you live, you’re not frozen in your history. You can change
your habitual responses in the same way you can learn to see oppor-
tunity is now here rather than nowhere. You no longer need to allow yourself to be bullied.
The solution to handling bullying begins within you.
Here’s an example of one strategy that works. Imagine that you
are handling multiple tight-deadline projects given to you by two of
your three supervisors. While you are completing these rush assign-
ments, your third supervisor, a bully, gives you a new assignment,
angrily barki
ng, “Complete this immediately!”
In the past, you may have quaked inside; your face may have red-
dened. You may even have felt that the bully, and perhaps others lis-
tening, saw you as someone who worked too slowly. This may have
hurt your feelings or embarrassed you.
Now imagine handling this differently. You take a deep breath
and realize, “This bully is barking. If he were a dog, would I freeze
inside or think, ‘there’s a barking dog’?”
If you view the bully’s barking that way, you might straighten your
shoulders, stand tall, and say “I’ll get it done.”
If the bully demands, “I need it done now!” and you hear it as
simply louder barking, you can answer, “I’ll get to your project as
quickly as I can.”
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Doormats Can Change: Here’s What It Takes ❚ 29
By calmly handling your bully supervisor, you may gain his
respect. Bullies have more respect for those who stand up to them.
Do you have to stand up to every bully? No. You can choose
which bullies to handle in new ways, what changes you’ll make, and
the degree to which you’ll stand up to the bullies in your life. You
never have to (nor should you) do something you feel is unwise or more
challenging than you can handle.
Three Immediate Results of Taking the First Step
What can you expect when you stand up to a bully for the first time?
First, even if handling situations or bullies in new ways feels diffi-
cult, you can feel good about standing up for yourself.
Second, the first time you stand up to a bully generally proves to
be the hardest. After that, confronting bad treatment gets easier.
Third, new habits replace old habits more quickly than you might
guess, even when the old habits represent years of behavior. Have you
ever noticed that most past events, no matter how vivid, fade from
memory? New experiences replace them. Similarly, a new habit, even
one repeated only eight times, grows stronger than an older habit not
recently revisited.
THE NEXT STEP: DO IT AGAIN
When you start a new habit or behavior, you automatically build a
new neurological pathway in your brain to support the habit. Each
time you repeat the habit, your thoughts move across this new neural
pathway.
As the new mental pathway becomes more frequently traveled,
it becomes the route more likely to be instinctively traveled. Experts
maintain that those who repeat a new habit for eight to twenty-one
days, even with occasional relapses, form a new habit that eventually
“takes over” the earlier pattern. This means the more often you han-
dle bullies in new ways, the more those patterns become yours.
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30 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
So, decide now. Do you want to create new habits and behaviors?
It’s up to you. You can change.
The past or the future? The choice is yours.
Your Turn: Where Are You Now?
1. Sometime in the next three days, do one thing you consider
out of the ordinary. For example, approach and speak
to someone you don’t know. Or, if you don’t normal y do
it, compliment someone. If neither of these suggestions
places you outside your comfort zone, be creative and push
yourself.
2. Do you accept being bul ied even though you’d like your
work life or you to be different? If so, the first step is to
expand your thinking. Ask yourself: What would you like
to be different in your work life? How do you want to be
treated?
3. We’re all complex people. We might be afraid in one area
but brave in another. In what areas of your life do you now
handle situations assertively and pursue what you want? If
you currently face a workplace bul y, what tools or beliefs
from those other areas could you employ against the bul y?
What would it feel like to approach this situation with more
confidence?
4. Choosing gives you power. This week, think of one way you
can stand up for yourself and test it out. As an example,
if you’ve shut down in the past when a bul y made snarky
comments, decide how you’ll handle it differently the next
time. What if you responded “Pardon me?” in a tone that
said you couldn’t believe anyone would be so rude? You
may find it helpful to rehearse potential responses so that
they’ll come quickly to mind when you need them.
5. Have you put off confronting a bul y, hoping things would
get better? Did they get worse instead? How will you ben-
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Doormats Can Change: Here’s What It Takes ❚ 31
efit from handling the bul y today, or this week, rather than
next?
6. Has a bul y made you feel to blame for how he or she has
treated you? Would your best friend see it that way? How
do you plan to get the bul y’s indictment of you out of your
head? (In Chapter 8, I offer specific strategies for removing
bul ies from your mind.)
7. What’s an action step you feel comfortable taking to
improve your future success in handling bul ies? (It might be
continuing reading this book, or planning and practicing
how you’ll handle the next bul y interaction, or talking to
your supervisor about the situation. Whatever you choose,
decide on an action step and take it—this week. The solu-
tion lies within you.)
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4
WOUNDED RHINOS, SHAPE-
SHIFTERS, CHARACTER ASSASSINS,
AND OTHER BULLIES
You will never do anything in this world without courage.
It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
—ARISTOTLE
ON WHAT TURNED OUT to be Sam’s last day at his job, his boss,
Bernard, a stout man with tree-stump legs, a broad, glisten-
ing forehead, and a jutting jaw, sent all employees an email reading
“Assemble immediately in the company lunchroom for a motivational
speech.” When the employees gathered, Bernard stomped in as though
he was putting out small brush fires and instructed the Human Resources
manager to hand an envelope to each employee. He then ordered the
employees to open their envelopes.
As Sam read what was in his envelope, a printed statement listing
his salary and benefits, he heard another employee mutter, “What the
hell?”
“None of you deserve your paychecks,” shouted Bernard, spittle
spraying from his mouth. “You’re unmotivated, incompetent, and de-
serve to be fired,” As Sam stood in shock, the person next to him started
to tremble; another began to cry. Bernard marched in front of the rows
of employees as he spoke, jowls quivering, his face bright red.
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Wounded Rhinos, Shape-Shifters, Character Assassins, and Other Bullies ❚ 33
“There is blood in the water. You’ll get results or you’ll be gone. Go
/> back to your desks and prove yourselves.”
Sam returned to his desk, wrote a one-sentence resignation letter,
packed up his personal belongings, and left.
What leads some people to bully?
THE BULLY MINDSET
Growing up, bullies learn how to push others’ emotional buttons to
get what they want. Because button-pushing works, bullies discover
they can get what they want through fear, guilt, or intimidation.
Bullies view the rest of the world as revolving around them and
others as subservient to their self-interest. A bully thinks, “I want this
and I’m going to have it,” or “If I take this and you let me, it’s mine.”
While others might do what a bully does and feel bad later or push
to a certain degree but then back off, bullies lack internal brakes and
enjoy exercising power over others. Bullies see themselves as the cen-
ter of their universe, rationalize their behavior, and feel confident and
justified in what they do.
Many wonder if bullies are born that way or made. The answer
appears to be “made,” though several personality disorders—narcis-
sism and antisocial and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders—
overlap with classic bully types.
When confronted, most bullies state, “This is just the way I am,”
and while many bullies and those who work with them believe this,
bullies also think, “Why should I change? What I’m doing works
for me.” Bullies rarely examine their own behavior. Ask a bully why
he exploded in rage and he’ll say you made him do it because you
screwed up, challenged him, or stood in the way of him implement-
ing his vision. Bullies may even brag about expressing anger instead
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34 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
of bottling up emotions. This lack of guilt, empathy, or compassion
means that bullies rarely change voluntarily.
Bullies feel no remorse, believing that those who don’t have their
savvy, ambition, strength, or aggression deserve to be walked over.
Pleading with or trying to appease bullies backfires as bullies have
little respect for those they consider emotionally weak or vulnerable.
Bullies imperviously ignore protests, often responding, “Too bad if
you don’t like it; take it or leave it.”
You may wonder if the bully feels bad about hurting and exploit-
