How I beat a bully in the workplace without stooping to their level.

I went through a really bad situation when I first was a professional. To be fair – I was hired to fix a really bad situation and the result was – I became a target of the bullies – and that targeting continued – after I fired them.  

I now teach how to make unwanted behavior – like workplace bullying stop.  (https://humanistlearning.com)  I also teach these skills to kids and their parents for free through my website The Bully Vaccine (https://bullyvaccine.com)

First – the background. I was hired by a non-profit that had toxic staff/volunteer relations. We had 10 volunteers who thought their job was to spy on staff. The result was – staff didn’t want to work with the volunteers.  I was hired as the director of volunteer services to turn this around. I knew up front – this was going to be difficult and I accepted the responsibility to make this happen.

First – the good news. I succeeded. And within 3 years I had 500 volunteers donating 20,000 hours a year (the equivalent of 10 full time employees). Our volunteers were assisting every aspect of our agency’s work. I was being loaned out to sister agencies to help them learn how to do this and was often the point person to help organize volunteers for disaster response.

How did I do it? A combination of professionalism, honesty and behavioral science.  Was it easy to do? Nope. At one point – the blow back against me was so bad – I thought about quitting. I didn’t because I had enough allies asking me to stick it out for the good of the organization. That is the only reason I didn’t quit. Being targeted can be brutal.  REALLY brutal. To get through it – you need allies who need you to succeed to improve the organization.

What did I endure? 

Seriously? What didn’t I endure? I was accused of sexual misconduct. My reputation was routinely attacked. What I was wearing was attacked. I literally had to endure a formal investigation into my wardrobe choices and my dating life to get through this. And I did – because a) I hadn’t done anything wrong – these were all lies and b) I had allies.

So – what happened and how did this all go down?

When I took the job, the first thing I did was consult with staff and find 2 that were willing to work with volunteers. I asked them what would be the most helpful thing a volunteer could do. I wrote up a job description (including who to report to and what exactly the work was). I went to the volunteers – explained to them – what we needed them to do. Why we needed them to do it, why it was so important that it needed to be done. And then gave them a choice – do you want to do this – or not? They all agreed. And were paired with staff and staff and volunteers were nurtured in their new relationships so that the volunteers could be productive assistants to the staff.  

9 out of the 10 – were so grateful that I had made this change and created clarity around their volunteer work as they a) had not liked the old toxic environment (who would) and b) they now knew that their time was being used to help make things better.  The one volunteer who did not like it – was the person who used to be in charge of the volunteers. She did not get on board and would not do the work we had requested of her. So I fired her.   That’s when things went south.

She had allies within the organization. Other directors of other departments.  She spread lies and rumors about me. She continually tried to get her job back and make it seem like I was a horrible person who had to be eliminated for the good of the agency. 

I ignored that and just kept growing the volunteer program. As we had successes – other people requested help and I followed the same process. Drew up job descriptions, trained the volunteers and coached the staff in how to manage and work with volunteers successfully.  The more we had success, the more staff wanted volunteers. And it just kept growing. 

Our reputation and my training program were so successful – we got a discount on our liability insurance as our accident rate had dropped substantially – even though we had exponentially more volunteers working with us. I had people requesting internships. I developed a mentorship volunteer program so people with dual diagnosis (disability and mental health) could volunteer with a volunteer partner.  We had adults with the boys and girls club – bringing in their little brothers and sisters in to volunteer as a team. And still – our accident rate dropped. 

The attacks continued for a year

But .. this fired toxic volunteer – was still attacking me. And as she failed to succeed in ousting me, her rumors and lies got worse and worse. It didn’t help that I had broken past the gender roles and joined the old boys network which really wasn’t and old boys network – just the 2 senior males in the organization liked to have coffee in the morning and discuss issues relating to our work. I used to join them – even though I don’t drink coffee. The other female directors were really upset I had broken through when they hadn’t – so they became allies of the toxic volunteer.

It all came to a head in the formal investigation that was requested. I actually requested the investigation to put an end to the rumors and dispense with it once and for all. The people spreading rumors were asked to file formal complaints and those complaints against me were investigated. I was cleared – and that was the end of it. 

Welcome an investigation

I always tell people, welcome the investigation. If you are innocent – the investigation will clear you and the people who made the complaints and started the rumors – will lose. It increases the cost of spreading rumors. They can no longer hide what they are doing. They either have to put their own reputation on the line, or shut up. If someone is spreading false rumors – and they are found to be false – it’s the rumor spreader that is hurt, not the target. 

This wasn't easy 

The stress was immense. My reputation and honesty were being questioned. I was enduring attacks from all directions. I got through it by being honest, competent and professional, and – because I had allies who were rooting for me. I got through this – for them. To make their lives better! 

It is much easier to endure the sort of backlash stopping bullying in the workplace generates – if you know you are helping to make things better.  And we must do this. If one toxic part time volunteer can cost you the equivalent of 10 full time employees – imagine how much productivity a full time employee with authority is costing you!

Companies need to take this seriously

 Support your whistleblowers and change agents. Most importantly - you MUST be willing to fire the toxic person or things will never get better. 

Learn more:

If you want to learn more about how to do what I did - take one of my online courses: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Women who bully in the workplace.

Yes – some women bully. Yes – some powerful women bully.  And yes – it can be related to toxic masculine culture.  Sometimes.

I was recently asked by a reporter to give my opinion on women bullying women in the workplace. 

First – bullying is about power and control. It is about having the ability to deem someone as part of the ingroup or part of the outgroup.  In other words, a bully gets their power by including some people and excluding others.

Women who are the first to do whatever, to succeed, may have to adopt the traits of the dominant bully – to be accepted by them and to function.  I think there was some research done that showed, this dynamic is more prevalent when there are fewer women competing for scares roles and resources, than in situations where there are more women and the competition is more – friendly and collaborative.

But we do see this – queen bee – dynamic is women only groups as well. And what is happening is the same. It’s about creating control. Who is included and who is excluded. And aggression and bullying, allows them to control who is in and who is out.  That dynamic has nothing to do with toxic masculinity. Both men and women play this game. Men tend to do it more overtly, women – more covertly. But both men and women bully in roughly equal amounts. It’s just rare to see women bully using the same techniques men use. We only see that when there is only one or two women in a group that is otherwise dominated by a toxic male who bullies.  So let’s define toxic masculinity as – sexist bullying. 

Let’s turn to the questions

There's been a surge in toxic masculinity around women

No – there has not. What is happening is women aren’t’ tolerating sexist bullying anymore and what we are seeing is a surge in reporting of incidences – not a surge in sexist bullying. It’s always been there – and honestly – it used to be a lot worse. It’s better now – because people are reporting and talking about it. The surge is in women’s willingness to reporting it.

How does toxic masculinity impact women in power in the workplace?

Women are impacted by toxic masculinity because some men are sexist and use sexist bullying to keep women out of positions of power or to exclude them from decision making processes. Men are impacted by this too by the way.  Anytime they are put down as being too – feminine in some way – they are a victim of toxic masculinity that sees gender roles as rigid and that degrades and devalues females and holds masculinity as the ideal. This is a form of sexist bullying. It impacts both genders.  It’s purpose is to control ingroup and outgroups – or inclusion vs. exclusion in the decision making process.

Is this the only reason they're bullies?

No. People bully because it works to create control over group dynamics.  Toxic masculinity/sexist bullying is generally a more masculine form of bullying, but women bullying too and for the same reasons. The form the bullying takes, depends on what is considered socially acceptable. It is well known that a bullying boss, creates a bullying culture where people try to emulate the boss to curry favor. It is in these situations that a woman might engage in sexist bullying, more than say – passive aggressive behavior.

What can workplaces do to combat this? What steps must be taken?

Workplaces need to learn how to make unwanted behavior – like bullying stop. There is a behavioral science protocol called – extinguishing a behavior that they need to learn. It’s slightly technical – but most people can understanding. For any stimulus – you can respond in a positive, negative or neutral way. If you want to eliminate a behavior – neutral is what works. And then how often you do this – consistently or variably. Consistency works – variably makes the unwanted behavior stronger.  And finally, you need to know that when you remove the reward for the unwanted behavior, the behavior will escalate for a bit. This is predicted and is known as an extinction burst or blow out. The key to making unwanted behavior stop – is to manage the extinction burst through to completion. Meaning – you have to keep removing the reward 100% of the time through the escalation and increase the cost associated with the behavior. There is no way to address this once and succeed, you have to keep on it until the behavior stops and that can take a few weeks. As for steps to take – I normally recommend training HR, then upper management. Then – redo your processes to maximize behavioral extinction. Then – train middle management and then lower management on the new processes and expectations. Then – train staff and then manage the change process over the next year as people start to use the system. You have to positively reward people who report and manage the extinction process. The reason you have to have executive buy in – is because – some people won’t be able to change. Maybe only one or to in any group of 100. But they will have to be let go and if there is not a willingness to do that – there is no point in going through this process.

 Have you ever been impacted by toxic masculinity from a woman?

Yes. I had fired a toxic volunteer at a non-profit I used to work at and she retaliated and got a few of my fellow directors (also female) to attack me. And I was accused of sexual misconduct among other things. Even if I had done what they had accused me of (coming on to the son of a donor – which I hadn’t – the mother had asked me out on behalf of her son – which was sweet but weird).  But even if I had flirted and come on to this young man – there was literally nothing wrong with me doing that.  So the attack was just sexist nonsense. They also accused me of wearing slutty clothes to a fundraising event – which I hadn’t. You get the idea. These were overt sexist attacks on me – and were designed to get the men running the organization to think less of me. In other words, they were hoping that the men in charge of our non-profit were sexist and so they could manipulate them against me. It didn’t work. Mostly – because those men – weren’t sexist in the slightest - and I hadn’t done any of the things I had been accused of.

What steps did you take to resolve this?

First – I had allies. Lots of allies. And I had those allies because I am fundamentally honest and caring and helpful and professional. The allegations made against me – were things that no one really believed and that were easily disproved. Most importantly – I had allies among the male leadership of the organization. The sexist attacks against me were targeting them to get them to think less of me as a woman by painting me as a dishonorable woman with a quite normal sex drive – because apparently – being interested in men as a young single woman – makes one – dishonorable. Seriously – the whole thing was stupid. Anyway – when the attacks came, my allies warned me of the rumors and that allowed me to prepare my defense – which was to basically tell the truth – no – I had not hit on this guy – he hit on me and had his mom come into my office to ask me out on his behalf – to which – I said no – I already had a boyfriend. And to address the clothing choice charges – which was quite easy – because the night in question – I had been with my boss – a man – for 7 hours while wearing that cocktail dress my mother bought me and he couldn’t remember what it looked like – so it was definitely – not inappropriately sexy. I just happened to be skinny and beautiful and that isn’t a crime.  I’m not going to lie, it was an incredibly unpleasant thing to go through. I thought about quitting. But I had been hired – specifically to change the culture of the organization and I was succeeding which is why I was attacked. I had allies who really liked the changes that had occurred, and they worked to protect me and gave me encouragement to stay because they needed me to stay and succeed. If it had not been for the allies – I would have quit. It was really seriously unpleasant.

What advice do you have for companies to fix toxic masculinity in their workplace when it comes to women abusing their power?

First – don’t just focus on toxic masculinity.  Focus on toxic culture period. Women don’t engage in toxic sexist bullying unless they believe that is what the men want. So toxic culture, bullying of any sort – sexist, racist or whatever ist – cannot be tolerated – ever.  Learn what is required to make unwanted behavior stop. Change your processes for handling these things to maximize behavioral extinction, then train everyone. And commit to the change process. When you take power away from people who are using bullying and harassment to create power – they will fight you. Be prepared for that and be prepared to fire anyone who doesn’t adapt the new ways of being. Most people will be super glad the culture is changing. The few that resist will eventually get on board. The people who fight it – actively – and whose behavior gets substantially worse – will need to be fired. Without a realistic willingness to do this – don’t even try.

My main lesson for leaders who want to change the culture? Recruit in change agents. Be honest with them about what needs to change and why. Actively protect your change agents from the attacks – which are predicted to occur (make sure they know they are needed and appreciated so they don’t quit on you). Only then – will you succeed.

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Yes - I did get quoted in the article - forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2020/02/19/women-bullied-at-work-heres-why-your-female-boss-dislikes-you/

More importantly - if you want to learn how to make workplace bullying stop - while still maintaining your professionalism - take this online course - https://humanistlearning.com/how-to-humanistically-handle-bad-bullying-bosses/  or get the book/audiobook

Bullying Management is Bad Management

I came across this quote and loved it. You don't lead by hitting people over the head- that's assault, not leadership. - Dwight D Eisenhower. 

If you have read this blog for a while - you know I spend A LOT of time talking about how to manage effective and how to eliminate bullying/harassment in the workplace. There is a reason for that.

Bullying Management is Bad Management

Don't believe me - here is an article from "Fraud Magazine." http://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=4294967680 

Management by Intimidation (MBI) is managing or governing people based on fear. Costs increase, productivity diminishes, and revenue decreases. MBI also has adverse effects on the morale of employees and the ethical climate of an organization.

From the prospective of the author - the big problem is that management by intimidation increases the likelihood that fraud will take place because - intimidation reduces transparency.

Can we finally put an end to the myth that bullying is necessary to management? It isn't. It's counterproductive. Let's work together to make it stop.

To help you and your staff learn more effective techniques - consider taking - - any of the following courses:
https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/

Economic theory applied to the problem of harassment

I was recently in New Delhi for a Happy Workplace Conclave #HyWe2018 – organized by my new friend Mukund Trivedy.  One of the speakers, Adam Cox, a strategist who sits on several executive boards, said that corporate culture is set by the last person promoted. He’s right and that has a direct impact on why harassment is still a problem despite everyone for years knowing that it’s a problem.
So how do we fix it?  By applying science. While I focus on teaching how to use behavioral science to fix the problem, economic theories can also help. 

Here is an article that does just that – it claims that the next Harvey Weinstein can be stopped using the theories of Nobel Prize Winning Economist Richard Thaler.

https://work.qz.com/1098756/the-next-harvey-weinstein-could-be-stopped-by-the-theories-of-nobel-prize-winning-economist-richard-thaler/

 The article is worth reading, but it comes down to how we encourage behavior we want and discourage behavior we don’t want. Which brings us back to my specialty – behavioral science.  Basically – you reward the behavior you want. Provide nudges and reminders of the behavior you want. Reminders about the expected behaviors you want etc etc etc.

The article rightly points out that since 75% of women report being harassed, instead of thinking it doesn’t happen and designing your processes for one off complaints. Expect it to happen and build stopping it from happening and reporting it when it does – into your processes.
But even that won’t be enough.  From the article.

“Ultimately, no reporting mechanism works unless the organization takes action when incidents are reported. One of the dispiriting lessons of Fox News—where O’Reilly and Ailes allegedly harassed women for years—is that the patterns of abuse were widely known by employees who had no faith the company would act. Organizations send messages about the behavior they value by who they choose to promote, and who they let go, says Amy Wrzesniewski, an organizational-behavior professor at the Yale School of Management.”

Which brings me back to Adam Cox – the culture is set by the last person promoted.
If there is a behavior happening in the workplace – it’s there because it’s being rewarded. If you don’t like the behavior – you need to understand that – it’s being rewarded somehow and if you want to fix it – you need to change your rewards and incentives so that you reward the behavior you want – like reporting. And create disincentives to the behavior you don’t want - like harassment. 

Don’t assume your incentives are working the way you want them to.  Perverse incentives come from well-intention-ed people.  If you aren’t getting the results you want – there is a problem with your incentives. Period.

To learn more – take my comprehensive program – Workplace Bullying for HR professionals (or for lawyers).

Dealing with Sexual Harassment - from Hillary Clinton?

It recently came to light that Hillary Clinton did not fire a man on her 2008 staff who had harassed a young lady on her team.  Hillary responded by posting an article on Facebook about what she did and why she did it in response to what happened.  I don't want to discuss the relative merits or demerits of Hillary as a political candidate, but I do think her sharing of her thought processes and how she handled it is worth discussing from an HR/humanistic business management perspective.  So here goes.

First - her essay:

Key points:

1) She believed the alleged victim and took immediate action to make sure the accused no longer had access to this person. She also gave the victim a better job - promoted her.
2) She demoted the person accused but did not fire him. She did ensure that his access to other people and women in particular was limited.  She says she took this route because as far as she knew it was an isolated incident and she believed in giving him a second chance - but in a trust but verify sort of way so that he would not be able to hurt others on her campaign.

While it is very easy to second guess her decisions given that the man in question did go on to harass someone else at another job. I will not be doing that here. Instead I want to highlight what I thought she did right.

Too often, when people complain, they are isolated to protect them while the accused is left free to do whatever they want. This has the impact of socially isolating the victim and limiting their ability to do their jobs. When we do this - we are punishing the person who was brave enough to come forward and report what happened. Hillary not only supported this young woman - she rewarded her for coming forward.

Now, before anyone gets all antsy about how if we reward people for reporting crimes we are going to end up with a lot of false reports, don't worry about that. False reports are pretty easy to spot and don't stand up to basic scrutiny and investigation. Also, the rate of false reporting is quite low. Our problem isn't that we have a bunch of false reports, it's that people aren't reporting crimes of this nature when they happen in the workplace.

The person who was isolated and demoted was the harasser, not the victim. She gave him the benefit of the doubt, but did not leave him free to hurt others. He has monitored so he would have no opportunity to hurt other women on the team. Yes, that seems harsh - but it does give the accused the benefit of the doubt.

We do not know what actions Hillary took to verify the story of the young lady. I assume she did not demote someone without first verifying the story.

What I do know is that unless you take reports seriously and verify them - you won't know. So take reports seriously. Verify. There are not 2 sides to this. Either someone behaved inappropriately or they did not. If they did - they should no longer have access to other members of the team. If you don't fire them, isolate them so that they no longer have the ability to harm others.

And, if you verify that a claim was true - reward the person who came forward and notified you.

Which is worse? Dealing with someone who has behaved inappropriately - or allowing a predator to prey on your staff for years because people are too afraid to come forward? In case you are wondering - it's the latter. Not only in terms of harm done but this impacts workflow and is an enormous legal liability. People with courage to honestly tell you what is going on and that crimes are occurring in your workplace - should be rewarded.  People who are found to have behaved inappropriately need to be monitored closely and if necessary isolated so they no longer have access to their victims and other potential victims.

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To learn more about how to stop harassment and bullying in the workplace take my online course: Workplace Bullying for HR Professionals

https://humanistlearning.com/workplacebullying1/

Compliance related issues when it comes to harassment in the workplace

If you are a business owner or a manager, you are responsible for keeping your employee safe. And yes, that also means safe from harassment.

Harassment & discrimination and bullying are all about the same thing. Power and social exclusion. Social exclusion is about getting and wielding power. In the workplace it results in high turnover, the loss of good employees, lawsuits, bad decision making and more. Oh – by the way – bad decision making leads to errors. Errors are always bad for business and in some industries – can be fatal (think Deep Sea Horizon which if anyone thinks wasn’t caused by a culture of harassment that negatively impacted decision making – they are deluding themselves.)

There is a reason why companies with over 50 employees should be giving employees regular training on harassment. Notice I said employees. Some just train the managers, as if that will do any good. Train everyone.

Here's why.  Judges like it. IF you are ever accused of not protecting an employee from harassment – you can at least claim that you tried.

That isn’t enough of course and that’s not why you should conduct trainings. Ideally you should teach people not just that harassment is bad so don’t do it. But also – if it happens, here’s how to get it to stop. Not just – report it, but step by step, here is how you help us create a corporate culture of respect.

A good harassment training can actually change your corporate culture for the better. And don’t tell me – oh – we don’t have any problems. You do. You know you do. Even if no one is “breaking the law” in terms of harassment, you still have nasty interpersonal politics going on. All companies do. They are collections of people with different skills and experiences and they are all trying to get their work done. Arguments happen. Office politics happen.

Compliance training done right is a beautiful thing

Want to fix it. Use your harassment training to teach your staff how to not feed the beast and at least be part of the solution. I gave this training to a lawfirm and they reported dramatic improvements in the interpersonal dynamics. They didn’t have any bullies, but they did have inter office politics.


What a good behavioral based training did for them is it gave everyone on the staff the tools to do and be better. And they did. This wasn’t about telling people not to do things wrong. It was about telling them how to do things right. They took it from there.


If you want help and a harassment training that will actually positively impact social relationships in your workplace – contact me!  Compliance training done right is a beautiful thing.

https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/compliance/ 

A Humanist Approach to Sexual Harassment Training

Humanists approach problem solving a little bit differently than most people.  We use science and critical thinking to figure out what will work to solve our problem and we combine that with compassionate ethics for effective decision making and problem solving.

When it comes to the problem of harassment in the workplace, we have laws requiring training. It's well intention-ed, but the training doesn't ever seem to change anything.

There is a reason for that and that reason is because the training we receive almost never includes information on what works to get unwanted behavior to stop. Isn't it time we changed that?

Here is a slide show on what a good sexual harassment training should include - science wise - so that the next time your company offers harassment training - you can suggest a better way.



And if you would like this type of training for your company - here is a link - https://humanistlearning.com/sexual-harassment-compliance-training/

Reasonable Management Action vs. Bullying

What constitutes reasonable management action vs. bullying is a question of ongoing concern for many companies, especially since there is an increased awareness of bullying and legal remedies being sought.

I had this same question come up when I spoke at the FL SHRM conference so it’s something that needs to be clarified. Bullying is harassment and harassment is normally defined as a pattern of behavior that is intended to harass the recipient and serves no legitimate purpose. (FYI - your state law’s definition of harassment may vary – this is a synopsis of Florida State law.)

For it to be bullying or harassment – it has to be a pattern of behavior. In other words, it has to happen more than once.  It has to harass the recipient of the behavior. AND the behavior has to serve no legitimate purpose.

When we apply this to the workplace, the applicable term is reasonable management action. Was the behavior part of normal management responsibilities or was it unnecessary.

Australia passed a Fair Work Act in 2009. It has an anti-bullying component. The first cases are now being tried and in one of the first, the concept of reasonable management action was clarified. (see: http://www.awdr.com.au/first-bullying-decision-defines-reasonable-management-action/)

In the case linked to above, receiving complaints and investigating them is reasonable management action even if the effect of receiving complaints and investigating them harassed the person being investigated. The management’s action in this case served a legitimate purpose.

What you are looking for when investigating and responding to reports of abuse/harassment/bullying is whether the behavior served a legitimate purpose or not. How someone responds to another’s behavior may vary. They may feel harassed even when that was not the intention. To avoid the subjective quagmire of hurt feelings you can simply ask – was this behavior necessary? Or did it serve no legitimate purpose?

If it served no legitimate purpose – it needs to stop. To learn more about this – consider taking one of my workplace bullying programs at Humanist Learning Systems: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/ 

Harassment Compliance Training Done Right

If you have more than 50 employees, chances are you offer sexual harassment training to your supervisors. Such training is mandated by law in CA, ME and CT and is strongly encouraged everywhere else as a way to reduce liability if a harassment situation were to occur.

Most companies offer a legal compliance training that covers the law and basically tells supervisors – it’s against the law so don’t do it. Legal compliance satisfied. If you are ever hit with a lawsuit, you can now argue – well – we told them not to do it, it’s not our fault if it happened.

This is a REALLY cynical way of viewing harassment training.

My feeling is that since you have to offer harassment training, why not use it is an opportunity to teach your staff something useful. Like – how to deal with obnoxious people using behavioral techniques.

Bullying and harassment are normal human behaviors. They happen to be really destructive behaviors, but they work and benefit the bully, which is why they do them.  The good news is that we have decades of research on how to get unwanted behaviors to stop.

Teaching your supervisors and staff how to help shape and train your employees to behave better while at the same time teaching them how to stop harassment behavior in the workplace is a win win win!

Don’t just give your employees a boring legal training and consider your job done. Teach them how to stop harassment by teaching them useful behavioral skills that they can apply immediately to all aspects of their work.  You will be glad you did.

Check out my harassment training options at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/compliance/

If you are an employment lawyer or know one - consider taking this course to learn more about what specifically we should be teaching people. https://humanistlearning.com/stop-bullying-in-the-workplace-for-lawyers/

It’s been too long that these behaviors have been tolerated in the workplace

Bullying in the Workplace has been tolerated for far too long. It’s time we do something about it.

Bullying which can manifest as harassment or discrimination is tough to stop. This is because it’s hard to get any behavior to stop. We are all creatures of habit. Habits are hard to break. Harassment/discrimination and bullying are habits. People who do them don’t even necessarily understand that they are doing something wrong. It’s just how they learned to behave.  And yes, that’s very sad.

The problem is that any attempt to get a bully to stop will almost always result in retaliation. Retaliation is predicted in the behavioral model.  The good news is that even though this behavior is predicted that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate it.

Bullying is a learned behavior and it can be unlearned. Decades of research by behavioral scientists have taught us what works and what doesn’t to get unwanted behaviors to stop. It’s time we start applying that knowledge to the problem of bullying in the workplace.

The fact that we don’t have to tolerate harassment/bullying makes it all the more important that we start actively teaching these skills to our employees. You can’t teach what you don’t know.  The first step is to learn what the specific skills are that work and why they work so that you can then teach them to your supervisors and your staff.  In that order.

Imagine what the average workplace would be like if there were no bullies.  We have been tolerating bullies in our workplaces for far too long because we didn’t know there was an alternative. Now that we do, it’s time we put the knowledge we have to work to get it to stop.

My company Humanist Learning Systems offers a variety of bullying and harassment training programs to teach the behavioral psychology techniques required to get bullies to stop. Learn more at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/ 

Motivated Learners

Are you teaching the right people the right thing?

I teach how to stop bullies using operant conditioning. In addition to teaching parents of kids who are being bullied how to help their kids, I also offer sexual harassment training to companies. The law requires this training occur in several states and for the rest of the states, this sort of regular training is highly encouraged.

Here is the problem. These laws general require that supervisors be trained on the law. A lot of bullying in the workplace is done by supervisors so it makes sense. If you want to stop harassment, teach the people doing the harassing not to do it. Right?

Wrong. People who bully have no incentive to stop. In fact, bullying benefits them. Telling them they could get in trouble or that it’s against the law isn’t enough to change their behavior. They haven’t had a negative consequence yet, so they aren’t worried about getting one in the future.

Most larger companies offer sexual harassment training. The supervisors or staff sit in a class for 1 to 2 hours learning about how it’s against the law. Pretty much everyone already knows this already. Most people consider these trainings a joke and are bored during them. And then once it’s over, everyone goes back to work and back to the status quo. Nothing changes. And yet year after year companies across America, Canada and Australia submit their employees to the same ineffective training. Why?

We are training the wrong people on the wrong material. 

The reason the training is ineffective at changing behavior is because we are training the wrong people on the wrong material. Someone who is not personally affected by harassment might have a professional interest in it. But since they aren’t being negatively affected by it, it’s abstract knowledge. They aren’t motivated to learn it.

Who is motivated to learn? Victims.  People who are being negatively affected have high motivation to learn how to get bullying/harassment to stop. But instead of teaching them the behavioral skills required to fix the situation, we generally teach them the same things we teach the supervisors. It’s against the law so don’t do it. And if it does happen to you, you should report it.

This doesn’t really do a victim any good. They already know it’s illegal. They also know if they report it, they are going to face retaliation. Yes, retaliation is against the law, but it still happens and everyone knows it. What victims want to learn is how exactly they get it to stop. This is why I teach what I teach and why people LOVE my trainings.

Motivated Learners make the difference

When I speak to prospective clients about my online training, they often want to know what sort of interactive elements I have in the training to keep people’s attention. In their experience, people are unmotivated to learn during your typical sexual harassment training so an effort has to be made to put some lipstick on that pig to keep people engaged.

What I tell them is that my courses don’t need all that window dressing. If you have a motivated learner and you are teaching them something they desperately want to learn, they are going to learn it. It doesn’t matter the format. A motivated learner will learn from a book, a video or through a live lesson. If they are motivated to learn and the material is helpful, they will learn it.

Teach the right people what they want to learn and they will learn it. If you really want to create change, you have to find people who are motivated to change and then teach them what they want and need to learn. In my case, I teach the victims how to get their harassers to stop using behavioral psychology techniques that are based in science and really work.

If your training program is ineffective, perhaps you aren’t teaching the right material to the right people.

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If you want to learn how to create a sexual harassment training that actually works – consider taking my free 2 hour class - https://humanistlearning.com/sexualharassment101/ which is approved for 2 ours ce through HRCI and 2 hrs pdc through SHRM.

Or check out our compliance training programs at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/compliance/