Empowering females with ways to prevent being a victim to workplace bullies and find outlets for the negativity it can bring in how you view yourself and into your life
"Bullying is conduct that cannot be objectively justified by a reasonable code of conduct, and whose likely or actual cumulative effect is to threaten, undermine, constrain, humiliate or harm another person or their property, reputation, self-esteem, self-confidence or ability to perform."
Tim Field Foundation 2015
There are ways to try to stop a workplace bully. There are also ways to try and prevent yourself being a victim to workplace bullies. Your workplace should support you, even if the bully is your boss - perhaps its HR or perhaps your team can come up with strategies. Keep focused on the goal that bullying - anywhere including your workplace - is NOT ok. Its best to try to get the bullying behaviour stopped so it doesn't move onto someone else. However, if there is absolutely no way to get it stopped then give thought to getting out of the situation as it can be damaging to your mental health - that might be a new team or a new company.
Be sure to also deal with the consequence of how the bully is making you feel and your perception of yourself as its likely to be distorted and not reflect reality. What bullies say and the way they make you feel isn't likely to be factually correct - bullies can just be mean, manipulating and controlling. Spend some time thinking about how you feel about yourself and whether its true or just a result of the mean behaviour of the bully.
Websites Offering Support:
Suspended Coffees
No one should ever feel alone in the world. Unfortunately we’ve all felt that way at one time or another. Suspended Coffees believes that everybody matters and deserves to be cared about. Their mission is to bring communities together in hope, to inspire and empower people to change lives, and to restore faith in humanity.
Citizens Advice
aim to provide the advice people need for the problems they face and improve the policies and practices that affect people’s lives. They provide free, independent, confidential and impartial advice to everyone on their rights and responsibilities.
If you’re bullied at work or your colleagues behave in an offensive or intimidating way towards you, it could be unlawful harassment under the Equality Act 2010. Harassment as a form of discrimination under the Act. This website includes a page to find out more about harassment at work and what you can do about it.
Bullying UK
Bullying at work can take shape or form in many different ways. If you feel as though you are experiencing bullying in the workplace, this can be a very devastating and distressing issue and bullying can affect your emotional health. You may be feeling very low and anxious at the thought of going to work and facing the individual or group that may be subjecting you to this and the bullying may also be affecting family life. Read their advice articles below for help and support.
Bully Online
offers advice for those being bullied. Bully Online is the website of Tim Field’s UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line.
Books on this subject:
What Doesn’t Kill Us: A guide to overcoming adversity and moving forward
People confronted by tragedy, horror and adversity emerge as wiser, more mature and more fulfilled people. Research shows that this number is somewhere between 30-90% of people. Relationships become stronger. Perspectives on life change. Inner strengths are found. Even if sadness persists, trauma and tragedy can make us stronger.
Stephen Joseph has a long history of experience working with survivors of trauma and sufferers of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Stephen challenges the concept that trauma and its aftermath – often labeled as PTSD – devastate and destroy the lives. His studies have shown that a wide range of traumatic events – from separation, bereavement, illness and assault to natural disasters, accidents and terrorism – can act as catalysts for changing one’s perspective, positive change, strengthening relationships and revealing inner strengths.
This book looks at a six step process that we can all use to manage our emotions and navigate adversity to find new meaning, purpose and direction in our lives.
Water Off a Duck’s Back: How to Deal with Frustrating Situations, Awkward, Exasperating and Manipulative People and… Keep Smiling!
shows you how to:
- Win more arguments
- Deal with workplace bullies, irritating, awkward, and exasperating people
- Deal effectively with ‘unreasonable’ people
- Take greater control over how you think about situations and events
- Respond to people and circumstances in ways that leave you laughing with tears, not crying!
- Spot and then control people who manipulate, use verbal tricks, or play ‘mind games’
- Deal decisively with people who exaggerate, make unfair judgements, distort facts, spread rumors, or twist things to suit their own ends, and much more
Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks
The modern working world is a dangerous place, where game-playing, duplicity and sheer malevolence are rife. Do talent and hard work count for nothing? Is politics everything?
In this fascinating exposé, Oliver James reveals the murky underside of modern office life. With cutting-edge research and eye-opening interviews, he highlights the nasty practices that propel people to the top and shows how industries and cultures are fostering this behaviour.
He then divulges strategies and techniques for not only surviving but thriving in these difficult environments. With the right mindset, you can distinguish and deal with toxic and overpromoted colleagues, charm your way through interviews and use office politics to your advantage.
Fighting Back: How to Fight Bullying In the Workplace
looks at how to recognise a bully, how to protect yourself, how to gather evidence, and the steps to take to make an immediate and lasting difference.
This book features real life case studies, which will arm those being bullied with realistic advice to remedy the situation. Practical and inspirational, the book shows you how to:
- develop assertive behaviour
- gain control and assert your rights
- recognise stressful behaviour and deal with it positively
- recognise when you are being bullied and when you are not
- tackle ‘flaming’ (a form of bullying via e-mail)
If the bullying persists, the book provides you with practical advice and information on the tribunal and legal issues both in the UK and Europe.
Bullying At Work: How to Confront and Overcome It
Through personal accounts and revelations, this book explores bullying at work and offers solutions to help overcome this stressful, often isolating experience facing many women and men. Based on three years of research, Andrea Adams plots the destructive forces currently eroding the professional lives of many people. By tracing the psychological origins of bullying at work this book investigates the effect of past relationships on the present, providing both individuals and organizations with a deeper understanding of why things can go so badly wrong. Through advice and guidance, it offers a way forward for all those who value the need for psychological well-being at the workplace.
Bully in Sight: workplace bullying
How to predict, resist, challenge and combat workplace bullying
This book seeks to help overcome the silence and denial by which workplace bullying and abuse thrives.
Be Bulletproof: How to achieve success in tough times at work
Business trainers James and Simon Brooke reveal the top practical solutions for strengthening your resilience – so you can bounce back from every setback, rejection or criticism. You’ll learn to be confident, positive and self-assured – in other words how to have resilience – in the face of any office adversity. However good you are, there are always times you come under fire at work. But how do you turn a crisis into an opportunity, and make yourself bulletproof?
Arm yourself against workplace hazards like:
– Company politics and bad bosses
– Rejection and failure- Harsh criticism and hostile colleagues
– Redundancy or losing your job
– And – dare we say it? – your own mistakes
Videos on this subject:
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