Beating Workplace Bullying

Well, we define bullying as repeated health-harming mistreatment, and it usually takes the form of either one or more of verbal abuse, or intimidating threatening conduct, and that would include verbal or non-verbal action, or interference with work, where you just – where you find it impossible to get work accomplished, and to the extent that it actually undermines legitimate business interests, and all of that is done on a repeated basis. Now that's a fairly high threshold to define bullying, to throw in that health-harm consequence, but we do want to distinguish it from incivility or rudeness, or any of the other myriad of things that annoy people at work, but don't drive them to distraction, that don't prevent work from getting done, and don't compel people to leave for their health's sake. So we're talking about serious disruption of the interpersonal flow at work that has absolutely no place in the workplace.

How common is it?

There's a recent British survey just came out a matter of weeks ago, that showed that 80% of workers, and this is a random sample of employees, 80% reported bullying, but you'll find that most of the surveys hover around 30%, 20-30% if you ask, in a given year, have you been bullied. If you ask a person if, in their lifetime have you been bullied? It clearly skyrockets over 50% of workers, and, again, I'm amazed at that 80% statistic, recent statistic. But clearly, in Britain, bullying is a very common term and it's well recognized, and so I think people feel comfortable saying that it has happened to them. In the US, our only prevalence estimate is one in six workers, about 16%, and that's true pretty much in Australia, it's in the teens, so it affects millions and millions of workers, and that's a significant portion of the workforce.

So are there some industries which are more prone to bullying than others?

Yes. I have to admit that we get most of our complaints from Healthcare and Education, and we wondered long why this is so. We know the characteristics of a bullying prone organization and there are several, but it's, again, the advancement of cutthroat competition, the lack of accountability; politics plays a bigger role. And don't forget, the bully has spent a lot of time ingratiating up the ladder, so that they have their supporters well placed and prepared to defend them, and all the rest. But we find that, in Healthcare and Education, you've got a target population readymade for exploitation. Any time you get a majority of the workers who are motivated to heal others, to educate others, to make the world a better place they're so easily exploitable because they're typically apolitical. They don't believe that they're – they believe, first of all, contractually they're going to be brought in to do their work, to heal the sick and to teach the children and prepare the next generation. But, in reality, the workplace in Healthcare and Education is as political and rife with bullies as anywhere else, and probably more so, because those target people are nice; they're easily exploited. So in any industry or arena where people are drawn to be providers and do-gooders, if you will, to have a pro-social orientation, to be positive in that regard; they're easily exploited, and that's the sad fact. The reports of bullying that make me the saddest are those that occur at domestic violence shelters. Here these people are focused, supposedly, on stopping abuse of the worst kind, and workplace bullying is a lot like domestic violence; it's domestic violence where the abuser's on the payroll, and yet bullying happens there too, so, yes, there are certain industries that are more prone to bullying. I find that journalism has a lot of bullying, and I talk to so many reporters, I hear all of their stories; show business where rejection is the norm and so people are accustomed to being mistreated and they're told to expect it. Any time rejection and abuse is an acceptable occupational hazard, bullying will thrive.

What motivates bullies to behave like that?

Gosh, why bullies bully? I once taught a graduate seminar on that. Let's see, to reduce it to a simple list, first of all everyone wants to focus on the bully's personality. Those who see evil everywhere they look will be convinced that bullies are all psychopaths that they're all evil, but the truth is 58% of bullies are women, and they're not all psychopathic. Men and women who bully are just normal folks like you me. I hope like you and me. And what happens is they're transformed when they go to the workplace, where opportunities present themselves to exploit other people, so the three part explanation I have for why bullies bully focuses more on the work environment. The opportunities to engage in cutthroat competition, where you wipe out the other individual; that your only way to advance in the workplace is at the expense of others, is going to be provided by the way work is designed. Now clearly, in a sales organization, where it's a scramble for a top prize and there's only going to be one winner and everyone else is a loser, we understand that, but that's cutthroat competition, but why that happens in Healthcare, why that happens in Education, it baffles me and it – but it's allowed to happen because a lot of times executives and managers love to see people compete, and so they will scramble to exterminate one another. Then the second piece of that puzzle is you have to have people of a certain bent. Yes, personality plays a role, but they're not disordered or dysfunctional, rather they're just ambitious and zealous and what we would call Machiavellian. To be Machiavellian is to be willing to exploit other people, to manipulate them to accomplish your goals, and that is what the modern workplace actually expects from a lot of people. It's aggressive behavior and it's not only acceptable, in some places it's required for success. It is the definition of success. So you've got opportunities, people who are willing to exploit when the opportunities present themselves, and then bullying gets cemented into the organization and institutionalized and becomes part of the culture if the employer rewards that aggression, and the rewards are often promotion. So you see, of the three parts, two are in control of the employer: the opportunities and the consequences. If they were to shift the consequences to being adverse, if bullies were to experience pain and misery themselves when they were hyper-aggressive to others, bullying would stop, but the way we currently do it, all too often sadly, is they're rewarded and promoted.

The organizational angle there is very interesting. It just hadn't occurred to me that that was where it came from, but carrying that over to the other side, how does that actually influence the selection of the targets? Is it just that they go for weak people? Do targets do anything to provoke bullying? What influences the selection of targets?

Some targets do provoke. If truth be told, they're obnoxious and highly principled people who are inflexible, sometimes, but that's not the profile of the typical target. I say 'some' provoke, and it's very popular to believe that, if people endure misery in their lives, that somehow it was deserved; that bad things do not happen to good people, but the truth is bad things do happen to good people. The selection of who's targeted is entirely in the control of the bully. They select who they're going to target, they pick their methodology, their tactics, the timing, when to turn it on, when to turn it off, when to hide it, and when to come out in public, and everything. That's all in the control of the bully, and that really is at the core of all bullying it is the need to control another person. But the target profile, we found through our research, is pretty remarkable. Perhaps in school it's the weak, vulnerable, lone child in the schoolyard who doesn't have his own gang to defend himself or herself and so they get picked on and tormented, but, in the workplace, actually the people who are targeted exhibit a profile of strength. It's amazing actually. It's almost counterintuitive. They are, yes, feisty and independent, that's the top characteristic, which means they could be seen as provocative. And bullies will always tell you, and we interview them when we go into organizations, they'll always say, "Well, they made me do it, so they made me do it." But if someone refuses to be controlled and to be subservient, they will be seen as a threat to someone who wants to control them. So number one characteristic is they're an independent person. In Human Resources terms they're a self-starter, but this gets people in trouble in the workplace when they have a controlling bully as a co-worker or as a boss. Second characteristic is they're technically usually – usually technically more skilled than the bully, so they're a threat because they know the work better. Third, they're more socially skilled. They're more emotionally intelligent and they're well liked. They possess skills that the bully, him or herself, doesn't have, so those points, two and three, are very threatening to the bully. And fourth, the fourth most prevalent characteristic of a target is actually that he or she is ethical. Now everyone who is a whistleblower and exposes fraud, waste and abuse, will be bullied out of their job. Not all people who are bullied are whistleblowers, but they are ethical and honest to a fault, and this can sometimes, to a sneaky, conniving, thieving, embezzler type bully, which some of them are, they don't want to risk being revealed and exposed. So look at the profile. A self-starting, technically skilled, well liked, ethical and honest person, and that's what gets you targeted for bullying, most of the time. It's amazing. Now what flaw does a target have? The flaw they have, the vulnerability they have, the problem they have, is that when a bully comes at them with aggressive behavior, they do not respond to aggression with aggression in kind. Now, you might say that's a noble thing. It just turns out that it gets people in trouble. I think it's a noble thing. I think they are morally superior in some ways. However, by taking that honest tack, it gets them into trouble because the bully can sink his claws in when you turn your back or turn the other cheek, and it becomes a real problem. So the number one characteristic that is problematic for targets is that they are non-confrontational. They don't choose to confront. They don't match aggression with aggression, and it leads to long-term problems because, to extricate those claws of the bully, will take the co-workers, the employers, and perhaps a whole societal law, to get that bully off their back.

You mentioned long-term problems there, what typically happens to targets if bullying goes on unchecked for a long time?

The impact that we care most about in terms of targets is the impact on their health. First, in terms of physical symptoms and physical health complications. There is a whole host of stress related diseases that – whose onset can be pointed to – that can be attributed to bullying, and that starts with cardiovascular problems, hypertension, all the way up through strokes, heart attacks, death. And there's a marvelous study, the Whitehall Study, of British residents and workers long-term that shows that, if they are exposed to an unjust workplace, they experience a 30% increased risk of coronary heart disease, and that's just simply injustice, whereas bullying is a laser focused, systematic, interpersonal campaign of destruction, don't you see, and so, can you imagine the cardiovascular compromise there. There are neurological problems that develop and it's amazing the whole – with the new technology with functional MRI technology, that a lot of these social and medical researchers are teaming up, exposing people to social stress that bullied targets experience in the workplace, and they check the way – the neurological impact of that exposure to stress, and it triggers pain pathways and trauma pathways. So that old axiom of "sticks and stones break my bones, but words never hurt" is not true. Words do hurt and, of course, it took this marvelous technology to prove the obvious, but insults and social deprivation, two tactics of bullies, very common tactics, lead to a great deal of impact on people. And on the physical side we've got – you've got skin disorders and shingles and you've got stress related rashes; you've got hair loss, you've got gastrointestinal problems; the list is pretty long and well established medically. On the psychological health side, you clearly have people who suffer debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. That's in roughly 80% of bullied targets, and in about half of those, 39% suffer clinical depression. And of the women who are bullied, 30% suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, so they suffer these 'war wounds' if you will and, for bullied targets, some bullied targets, the most severely affected, the workplace is a war zone. And the third type of impact on the target is economic. They lose their jobs. Seven out of ten, once targeted, will lose the job they once loved; partly from quitting voluntarily for their health's sake and some are constructively discharged and pushed out. And it's about 17% transfer, so they pay; bullied targets pay the price of being selected, involuntarily. To endure an unwanted, uninvited assault, is amazing that they will be – they will bear the brunt of the solution. They will have to fix it themselves, and they usually pay with the job they once loved.

That seven out of ten figure, losing their job, that's again horrendous, but what tends to happen to people, then? The natural thing to do is to complain about bullying. What tends to happen to people when they do complain?

Most people don't complain. From the same British study I just cited, they found that only 11% were comfortable even bringing this up to Human Resources, because they also believe that the organization would either ridicule them or totally ignore it. And it is a problem, most people don't complain, and this is probably why the health impact is so great, because they internalize the problem and they stay silent. As long as bullying stays shrouded in shame and secrecy, the bully wins and, if they're not revealed, then this can go on for years, and I will tell you that the average time that a person stays under a bully's thumb is 22 months. So it's not that these are whining, complaining people they have such a strong work ethic, they are convinced that, when this bullying happens to them, that they can overcome it; that they will simply jump higher and run faster, to appease and please the bully. And because of the shame involved with being humiliated, often behind closed doors, then what happens is this secret stays with them and they're not about to burst out and say, "Look what happened to me," and they don't take the message home. We started the entire US movement because of Ruth's experience, and she hid her bullying experiences for four months from me, and so it's remarkable. It's all shame based, and so while they stay secret and don't complain, unfortunately their health declines.

What are the emotional consequences of not complaining?

Self-blame, primarily the consequence is self-blame. Doubt, you come to believe that you're thoroughly incompetent, when you were once an award winning worker with the certifications to prove it. You come to believe the lies. Basically it's a disassembly of your adult personality. It's harmful. Clearly bullying is harmful to schoolchildren during their formative years, but they're much more resilient than intact integrated adults, who are then ripped to shreds when they've had several successful years in their careers, and then suddenly they bump into, quite by accident and without invitation, this destructive bully that comes into their lives, and they're first – they're thunderstruck. The first response is, "I can't believe this is happening." The second is they ruminate for a long time on why is this happening, which of course we coach people to say "This is a waste of time." You don't worry about the bully's motives, simply get safe, get healthy, figure out what to do, but they're stuck like a deer in the headlights because they're immobilized by panic and fear and disbelief. Those who go on to be traumatized, the most severely damaged, to experience what the clinicians call acute stress disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder, are most likely to believe that the world is a benevolent place. One of our favorite traumatologists has conducted studies to try and determine when all of us are exposed to potentially traumatizing incidents, why is it that some are traumatized and others are not? And the defining – and the distinguishing characteristic is that those who are traumatized actually have a belief, perhaps a naïve belief, that the world is a fair place, and they will hold on to that. And what we found, through the coaching of thousands of individual bullied targets over the years, is this is clearly a part of their makeup and their personality. They're optimistic; they don't believe that people have evil intent or bad things happen to people and when it happens to them, it's such a jarring, jolting violation of their expectations, of their world view, that it stuns them, and I think that's – that being stunned is left way too long; it prevents them from taking action. When they're immobilized and relatively distant, their co-workers come to abandon them. Co-workers would be a marvelous source of support. They witness it and perhaps they've experienced it themselves from the same – at the hands of the same bully, but the point is they're glad it's not them at the moment and they actually then, 49% of the cases, the co-workers side with the bully against the target. Sometimes by invitation a bully will play a divide and conquer game, "Are you with me or with her?" Or they will simply imply that, "If you do not side with me, the shoe will drop and you will be the next victim," and therefore it's problematic, and so, out of fear, co-workers gravitate towards the bully and abandon and isolate the targeted person. And we know that, to deal with stress, social support is critical and, if you lose the social support of family because you haven't told them about it, and you don't have co-worker support because they've abandoned you, you do feel very, very alone and you're at greater health risk.

So how should people deal with bullying then? What's the best way of doing it?

Clearly they need to take action, but we know this is difficult, so here's our three step model, as described in The Bully at Work. And we've come to find that this is the road to positive, good mental health and, as I've said, you have a seven out of ten chance of losing the job you once loved, so you're already at risk. You suffer no more risk to follow these steps. Step one: you've got to come – you've got to name bullying. If you claim illegal harassment or discrimination, as Human Rights violations allow you to do, you can go to Human Resources and say, based on gender or religion or age or any of those protected categories, "I want to claim that I'm being harassed." The employer must take it into account and must investigate. But if you go down and you say you're bullied and there's no specific law that has compelled the employer to have a policy against bullying, they will tell you, "You know, it's a shame what has happened to you, but it's not illegal, there's no law against cruelty and, sorry, there's nothing we can really do." That has a funny effect on a person. That delegitimizes the person. They feel that they're worthless because of something that's happened to them. Now this is backwards thinking, but this is the way, this is sort of a victim thing, this is a target thing. So, as soon as people name it, when they stumble upon our website or the myriad of other websites on workplace bullying, and they suddenly know what to call what happened to them; when they can name the phenomenon, they can point the finger to a wrongdoer and say, "That person is the source of the problem; I'm not." That's the first step toward mental health, and the journey toward resolution is naming it. However, it takes people a long time to get there because of their work ethic and their unwillingness to complain and come forward; they stay silent to long, but step one is name it. They need to know they're not alone; they need to know they didn't cause it.

Step two: once you discover that you're bullied, and usually it's your physician who tells you that you've been bullied, oddly enough, because you are so ground into this pattern of proving to the bully that you will not be conquered, that your health has declined and it's your physician who catches it, usually through high blood pressure, and says, "For god's sakes, what's going on? If that's what's happening at work, then get out of there." Just get out of there. They always say, "Just leave." But of course that's impossible for some folks because that's – they're the only livelihood, they're the only income in the household. I worry about mostly the single parent who has no-one else to rely upon, so these are not easy choices, but what you need to do is take time off. The physician will tell you, your health will tell you, your family will tell you you're bullied. Rarely do you discover that you're bullied, but it's the throwing up on Sunday night prior to work; it's the inability to rest and relax during off time; it's staying in bed all weekend long with depressive symptoms and the like. That's how you know you're bullied. It's the absence of a joyful productive life that you once had, but people are blind usually to their own – to the impact on their own lives, so it's the physician discovers it. Step two, take time off. You need rest, but to do four things: check your physical health; there are stress related health complications that have already begun because it's taken you a while to discover bullying, so consult your physician. Two, check your mental health; see a counselor, be validated, know that you're not crazy, it is not you. If friends and family are reluctant to give you this kind of validation, use a professional to do it. Three, see if there's any recourse within the company in terms of existing policies, and also consult a legal professional to see if there are any laws. Most companies don't have – well, here in the States almost no companies, unless we've been consultants to them, have anti-bullying policies. They all have harassment and anti-harassment policies, Human Rights-orientated type policies, but they're loathe to deal with bullying 'cause they don't have to 'cause there are no laws.

Now, in the UK you may be dealing with it differently, and since workplace bullying is on the tips of many people's tongues there, it's much more likely that employers will have anti-bullying policies, but at least, in 25% of bullying cases, harassment does play a role, illegal harassment. So you would have grounds for a discrimination complaint, so you can compel the employer to pay attention, but see what avenues there are for redress within the organization and/or within the law, so you need to be away from work to do that. And now the most important thing to do during your respite period, during your time off, is I want to have targets, focus less on this emotional cloud that has overwhelmed them. I want them to be able to escape from that social misery that Heinz Lehmann, the Founder of the whole International Movement termed it at one point, social misery. You just feel lousy and people don't want to help you anymore and they don't want to hear your lengthy stories anymore; they've been told in infinitesimal detail. Instead, what you need to do is refocus your energies and start the healing, and here's what we tell you to do: build the business case that the bully is too expensive to keep. You knew that intuitively, but now I want you to start gathering data, while you're off work, on trying to affix the financial, fiscal impact of bullying. Not the emotional impact, 'cause when you tell that to everyone it scares them away and, though they might want to – might have wanted to help you, they will find it very difficult to help you, but, instead, you're going to tell this disembodied, impersonal, consultant sounding type argument, that the bully's expensive. Document the cost of turnover; document the cost of absenteeism; document the increased healthcare cost; document the cost of Worker's Compensation and Disability and those sorts of things; document the cost of lawsuits that have been brought and paid, paid out in settlements and the like. And you're going to need to be telephoning people, and now you're going to actually probably talk to the person who you replaced at that company. Did you ever wonder when you first took that position, why that position was open? There was a good reason most likely, and that organizational terrorist who's been working there as a bully is the reason that several people have been chased out. You weren't the first and you won't be the last, unless that person's stopped, and so turnover is the number one financial impact, and you'll learn to put dollars and cents to that, and it'll be a marvelous argument instead of an emotional argument.

Step three. I'll just review: step one is name it, step two is take time off to do a myriad of activities that'll refocus you; step three is expose the bully. Take the business case to the highest level person you can and make the business argument, and have your next job lined up if they do not agree to make you safe, but this is – this can be done with or without Union support. You see, I'm stuck here in the United States dealing with workers where only 10% of the workforce is unionized, so people are left to their own devices. This is very much an independent task, but could be coordinated well with a Union Representative, but that's your – that's the – you give the employer the chance during the exposure period to make it right and, if they do not, then you know you need to be somewhere else to be safe and healthy. This job will kill you if you don't get out. And this documentation of the business case is a very powerful way, I would have thought, of actually dealing with this problem. I would have also thought though, it's going to take a while to do. What should people do in the meantime to keep a positive viewpoint on life?

The key to managing stress is not simply the cognitive control of your belief structure and your perception. That's sort of the approach to stress management. The real key to stress relief is to get the stressor out of your life, so you've got to change your work environment very – at the very beginning, ask to transfer. Most targets never think of transferring because they've injustice. They didn't invite the bullying; why should they have to pay and give up the job they once loved. And you know that, after years of being bullied, people still will tell us, while they're in the throes of being bullied, "But I love my job." They've forgotten that their job was transformed the day they were targeted and, through the months of misery, they still hold on to the belief that they love that job, but you deserve to be safe and healthy and should not get sick just from trying to accomplish the job for a paycheck, so we think that people should transfer in the short-run. I also think another tactic that people should use is to tap the power of the co-worker group. Now I've said the co-workers turn their back on targets all too often, but they're rarely asked to support them. You know, you can make a direct appeal to say, "Did you see what happened to me? Will you stand with me? Let's all go in and say, "You can't mistreat us like that or we'll all leave."" And by the way, I'm talking stereotypically about the bully always being a boss. Our statistics, and some of the Union statistics in Britain, show that, in 70-90% of the cases bullying is done by a boss; a person with the title power to actually take away your livelihood, but let's not forget co-workers are a great source of bullying too but, when it is a boss, the co-workers united could go in and dress the bully down, because what we do know is that they're full of – they, the bullies are full of bravado and bluster and they will back down when confronted and, oddly enough, they will respect and respond positively to aggression. They only – when they see acquiescence and co-operation, they exploit and close in for the kill, if you will, but they do respond to aggression and the group that could – can muster the courage that no single individual member of the group has could go in and say, "Apologize. We need to stop."

In fact nurses do that in operating suites with surgeons all the time. They're a more powerful group of nurses and they go in and they encircle the bully and they demand a retraction, demand an apology, before they continue work, and this is a short process because they're in the operating suite with a body opened on the table, and it works all the time. Bullies can be backed down, but if I could only convince co-workers they have this kind of power to help the target, but instead they cower in fear, and the rest. So transfer, solicit help from your co-workers and, whether you feel it's just or not, if the place is not going to let you be safe, if your workplace cannot give you that buffer from, and protect you from the bully, you really have to get another job. Despite the economic hardship, despite the tough times of finding a position, despite the sense of injustice, "Why should I have to do it?" Do it to live.

We've looked at what you can do if you are being bullied. What should people within the workplace do if they see that one of their co-workers is being bullied? Or what should someone who's a boss do if he or she sees bullying going on within his or her team?

I'm glad you said, "She" because it startles some people who are unfamiliar with bullying to know that half of the bullies are women, and 50% of all bullying is woman on woman, so let's not make the mistake that this is a phenomenon that respects gender boundaries, it crosses them, without a doubt. Clearly, I – my strategy for what co-workers should do is take action and not cower in fear; assemble and use your common experiences and talk about it. Bullies thrive on shame and secrecy. If you all talk about what happened to you, for instance Ruth, my Ruth, took her new position within this large employer and she moved to a different clinic. She was a clinical psychologist and she moved voluntarily, transferred to a different clinic 'cause she wanted to be closer to home and she had no hint that it was problematic place or that the bully was the supervisor, the first line supervisor, until her first luncheon with the co-workers. Now they said nothing during the interview process or the transfer process but, at the first lunch, when they finally felt free to talk to her, they said, "Thank goodness you're here. The misery will all fall on you, and she's been hard on us since this position's been open and she drove the last guy out. In fact she's totally unhappy all the time and now the misery will be yours. Thank you for being here."

Now that's a sick kind of pathological kind of "I'm off the hook and now it'll be your misery" approach, as opposed to wouldn't it be great if the co-workers, when they see this happen say, "Look, this happened to me. I've a shared experience. Here's what I found works with her. Here's a button to use. Here's a way to avoid it, or ignore her, or we'll stand," or, as I suggested, "we'll stand with you; let's go in and make it clear this is too toxic of a workplace when this happens and plus we have – the group has the power of sabotage." Organizations need to know that bullies foster sabotage and resentment all the time and it clearly is going to impact the bottom line, but co-workers are the key to that; they control that. What should a manager do when they see it? I think this is really a marvelous question, because it's a lost opportunity in nearly every organization. When a fellow boss sees this happening at the hands of another boss, it is so easy as a peer to pull that person aside; you don't have to shame and humiliate the bully in public just 'cause they used those tactics, you catch them in a private setting and you say, "Look, driving people like that is – that hard, that much, singling that person out for this type of persecution, is going to come back on you and eventually your productivity numbers are going to go down and the very thing that you're using this fear, this motivation tactic, will backfire," you know. Of course this has got to be a manager who believes in a different style of management and has seen the benefits of collaborative, co-operative work and all the rest, but, I mean, how powerful to come from a peer. It would really be great if an executive or a higher level, more senior manager, were to pull the bully aside and say, "You know, this is not the way I want it done." Unfortunately, many senior managers assign these bullies to go down into the lower level units to "clean up those units" and drive certain people out, so many bullies are doing the bidding of senior management and they're agents if you will, proxies if you will, so it's amazing. But I would love it if senior managers or managers were to confront the peer and say, "This is destructive; it makes us all look like idiots; we're going to lose – we're going to have a talent flight here from these units and we're going to lose the best people." And you would think in fields where workers are coveted for their skills and revered for their skills that it wouldn't be allowed to be driven out, but most organizations will side with the bully because they get very defensive on behalf of the management role. They'll say, "Well, we have to defend him or her because she's the manager." And the other persons who are tormented are non-supervisory employees and they'll allow the turnover to happen, at great expense to the company, because they also fear to confront, but, yeah, I think man – confrontation's the key.

Confrontation, institutional confrontation, by having a policy and then faithfully enforcing it at all levels, is the best way, but interpersonal confrontation would stop it because bullies respond to it. We just need more people with more courage to stand down the bully. You'll remember, in the movie Wizard of Oz, the great and mighty powerful Oz in the Emerald Palace was feared by all when they finally got there, but it was that little dog, Toto, that pulled that curtain back and revealed the little weasel inside working the levers. Well, the bully has a weasel within. There's a smallness to that person. When revealed they will crumble; they will crumble like dust. They are not made of the stuff that they want you to believe they're made of. They're not courageous; they're fearful themselves, they're insecure. So the beauty is, if they were to be confronted by either co-workers who rise up in support of one another or by peers or superiors who have the courage to say, "This is wrong and it's bad for business. It's stupid. With or without a policy this needs to stop and it makes us all look bad and reflects poorly on us. Stop it." They would stop.

Gary, thank you for speaking to us. It's been a fascinating interview, and I'm sure we've all learnt a lot from it.

And, in concluding this interview, I'd like to emphasize that if any of our listeners are experiencing problems with teamwork, they'll find Gary's book incredibly useful. That's The Bully at Work by Dr Gary Namie. Bullying is a complicated issue and you'll find that the book is a comprehensive and effective manual for fighting it. Gary also helps organizations deal with bullying. For more information on this, visit www.workdoctor.com. Our next Expert Interview will be in October, where we'll speak to another inspirational and fascinating guest. Until then, this is James Manktelow, saying goodbye and thank you for listening.