English (UK) 
Nederlands Education about bullying at work
Our team coaches provide education and training on tackling bullying at work. Besides education on the consequences of (allegations of) bullying in the workplace, team coaches focus mainly on what is needed to improve the situation. It is our experience that a combination of education and training are more than worth the investment.
Bullying at work
A surviving work situation can have many sources. For example, a crisis or recession with competition between team members, a bonus culture, pecking order, or coercive leadership and unwanted backlash from the workplace. It may have a short lead time, but usually there are long-felt problems. What are the consequences for a company if it turns out that the working atmosphere is under such pressure:
- An unwanted percentage absenteeism.
- Including long-term work-related burnout.
- Departure of (often the best) employees because they no longer pull the group culture.
- An elusive or surviving atmosphere, one feels it is psychologically unsafe to raise an issue that demands attention.
- Change comes with resistance, people do not trust intentions and changes take a long time.
- The results are disappointing. A team does not perform as expected.
- The organisation's good name and good employment practices are under pressure.
Loss of confidence
Colleagues may have lost confidence in such a way that blaming someone else is a safer option than being blamed themselves. We call such a situation Struggling. In a Survivor situation, people usually see the less pleasant side of each other. There is an unpleasant atmosphere. Blaming, bullying at work and being bullied become possible in such an atmosphere. Sometimes cultural differences play a reinforcing role.
Culture of fear
A survivor culture has many manifestations, anyone in the organisation can become a victim, including perpetrators. The fear of coming under pressure is the main driver to resist or retreat into negative behaviour to keep oneself out of the picture.
Fear, negative behaviour and avoidance are highly undesirable for a healthy business and organisation.
Time for action
Once an executive, board or management realises that there is a culture here that is not wanted, it is time for action. Taking action costs money. Not taking action costs much more and not just more money.
A first step could be to get inform to face the consequences of any kind of pressure, intimidation, fear culture and bullying.
- An employee satisfaction survey is used (in large organisations) but has limitations because it does not look 'forward'.
- Moreover, a negative score in a small team cannot easily be discussed without clarifying who wrote down what.
- A poor score on cooperation and trust does not give advice.
Attention to cooperation
Attention to collaboration and team centricity is an underexposed aspect. Yet any successful team will be able to tell you that paying attention to each other made the difference! Good cooperation comes first, content (results) and process (the way we work) go tremendously better when content and process are balanced with attention to cooperation.
A team coach from Team4Teams accelerates this process.
No one wants to be accused of bullying someone else at work. Accusing someone of bullying behaviour is therefore in the taboo area.
And yet there are situations where a team (member) excludes someone, scapegoats them, casts them aside as unproductive with: 'there is no way to work with that'.
In fact, it happens regularly. As soon as the team adopts this 'condemnation' and takes actions accordingly, we speak of bullying behaviour. It quickly becomes impossible for the victim to succeed anymore, upon which rather clumsy behaviour of the victim follows, further reinforcing the negative spiral.
Negative humour plays an important role in this process! Exclusive humour 'sends' the victim further into the abyss. Everyone laughs, no one comes to the rescue.
Psychological safety is the first thing to fall. It becomes an unsafe team to work in. The tool of exclusion makes it unsafe for everyone, even when the victim has long left, a negative culture (first in the background) remains in search of a new victim.
Now you may be thinking: where is the manager in this story? That's right, a director, manager or supervisor can play an important positive role. But just as often, the supervisor himself is the victim.
The team first
In this, we believe the team is the key, along with a leader. Namely, the team can also put the opposition on the table to avoid excluding team members. That takes guts and a positive learning approach. And a collaborative team.
Exclusion then becomes inclusion.
Thus, in a bullying situation, the team as well as a manager is either absent, looks the other way, or contributes negatively, so that the learning returns fail.
In a safe team, problems are put on the table, taken seriously and options sought. This may also mean that a colleague leaves, but now by mutual agreement. Much more often, the team is built and problems are solved.
Do you also want to build psychological safety in your team from an unsafe situation?
