A team bully doesn’t only want to remove power from you, their target, and retain that control for themselves. A team bully also wants to remove power from non-targeted team colleagues so that they can retain as much control as possible over the entire team.
A true team bully uses behaviour in 1-2-1 encounters with you, and in wider team meetings, which limits the choices available to you at the time of the attack in order to create a bullying dynamic between you.
Importantly, the team bully also wants to alter the wider team dynamic from one characterised by co-operation and goodwill towards one in which relationships become strained, team members defer to them, refuse to confront them, fail to support you, and regard the bullying as ‘normal’ and not noteworthy. Under these circumstances, the team bully will be able to continue their campaign without hindrance, disempowering you and the entire team.
Here are three effective ways for you, the target, to confront a team bully:
- Recognize bullying remarks for what they are: tactics designed to undermine you. A true team bully wants to make you ‘the problem’. Their bullying remarks highlight what they regard as your deficiencies or errors, issues which they focus on to undermine your self-confidence and to sully your reputation. But as soon as you recognize these comments for what they are – devices through which the bully tries to impugn your credibility in the eyes of colleagues and injure your self-belief – the remarks cease to have the same impact. They are not the truth about you. They are not valid comments about you or your performance. Seen from this standpoint, you can mentally take a step back from a bullying remark and use your energy to formulate an effective rejoinder.
- Clarify truth from fabrication. Many bullying remarks contain a kernel of truth dressed up in fabrications and slanders. The bully takes a fact about you but then embellishes it with a cobweb of deceit before relating these ‘facts’ to colleagues in your hearing in the hope of undermining your self-esteem and impugning your reputation. The bully hopes that your colleagues will recognize the kernel of truth and swallow the falsehoods whole without questioning them. Should you find yourself on the receiving end of this tactic, your primary task is to clarify the truth from the lies. Repeat back to the bully what you heard them say, before clarifying the truth from the falsehood. A bully who recognizes that you know your own mind, can stand up for yourself, and are not rendered vulnerable by their slanderous attack is likely to back down, at least for that encounter.
- Create a consequence for the bully to deal with. A team bully wants to keep the spotlight on you, their target, and often does this by highlighting what they regard as your shortcomings both as a person and as an employee. Their aim in doing this is to intimidate you and put you on the back foot. Creating consequences for the bully to deal with in the moment of an attack means putting the issues back to them, requiring them to give account for their behavior. Switching the conversation away from your supposed shortcomings back to the bully interrupts the bullying dynamic the bully wants to create, and puts them onto the back foot. A pithy well-directed question from you to the bully can derail an attack, and send back the message to the bully that you will not be a straightforward person for them to target.
However, it is vital that non-targeted members of the team confront the team bully as well to prevent them from giving their power away to the bully. Here are a couple of effective ways a non-targeted team member can draw the line when they hear a bullying remark in a team meeting:
- Tell the bully that their remarks are out of step with the tone of the meeting, and invite them to re-phrase them.
- Remind the bully of the business purpose of the meeting, and tell them to restrict their remarks to relevant work topics only.
Learning how to use the influence available to you to combat team bullying is a key learned skill. You could upgrade your toolkit by:
- Reading my new book Bullying in Teams: How to Survive It and Thrive for input on how to retain your dignity when you are attacked in a team situation, stand up for team colleague who is being bullied in front of others, prevent a bully from controlling your team, and how to develop a bully-proof mindset.
- Accessing free audio and written downloads on how to detoxify, recover from and combat workplace bullying www.oadeassociates.com/downloads