What Drives People to Bully

Let's assume that these individuals just need someone to confront them. So why didn't folks confront me? And maybe you can think about this as why aren't you potentially not confronting an individual who could be creating issues for the morale, the productivity, the health of team members and the team as a whole? Well, it could be being apprehensive about getting an aggressive response back. That individual gets very defensive, very confrontational, and that's not something that you're comfortable with. That's not something that you're, you know, skilled at being able to respond to. Maybe there's a concern that there'll be some retaliation in some way, shape, or form. Now, this definitely applies when an employee has a toxic boss, but I've also seen it over the last 16, 17 years that the retaliation could also come from a peer-to-peer. So there is this fear of retaliation as well in confronting an individual. Then of course, there's being uncomfortable with conflict. We're not trained, we're not educated in, you know, handling the bully on the, on the playground, let alone in the workplace. Now, not being skilled in conflict is simply a symptom of which then can be taken care of. You just need to get skilled. All right? There is a fear of legal repercussion. Say all of a sudden, whether it's the individual has this fear, or maybe it got escalated to HR and even HR has an apprehension to pushing on the issue because of fear of legal repercussion. There could be, and many managers come to me in regards to this, there could be the fact that they are just not educated. They're not up to date on the policies and procedures in how to handle difficult employees, or there's just a complete lack of policy and procedure. Lack of process for handling it. So they don't, they don't know what the next steps are. And they're also not sure as to how to necessarily approach HR, especially if it's someone of influence, someone of power, someone of authority, that they don't know how this individual is perceived within the upper ranks, and they don't want to stomp on and create an issue for themselves as far as what this individual's reputation is with the leaders of the organization or within HR. So they're, you know, concerned not only about the policy or lack thereof of the policy, the process, the procedures, and the guidelines, but also whether or not this is going to be— create more of an issue than what they're dealing with. Personally. And of course, then there is that fear of losing that skilled individual. And yet at the same time, that's what's missing at the forefront is the evaluation that this is a very skilled, expert, experienced, high-contributing individual with these issues. And therefore, let's get the issues addressed so we don't lose them. But there is that reason for not because they don't want to lose them. But please consider and put your feet in the shoes of the individual, especially if they have ambitions and goals, which we'll talk about in a minute. Had someone come to me and someone shared with me the experience I was giving to other individuals, there was a part of me that might not have cared. There's individuals like that. There's another part of me that loved my career, loved the power, position, and prosperity that came with it. And therefore, you know, did, did I wanna lose it? And so we're gonna discuss about how for you to also kind of really get under the aspirations, the goals, the agenda of those toxic individuals to see what's driving the behavior, but also what can stop it in its tracks. Had what I wanted, I was jealous of, I felt threatened by, I was intimidated by. I wore such an iron shield around me that I would never convey or never show that I was intimidated, but inside I was just a bunch of nerves and mush. And so The way I projected that was in a very controlling, micromanaging, power-hungry, abrasive, direct, curt type of way.