Are You A Bully Boss?

There’s an old adage, “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”

I’m updating that to, “If you have to ask if you’re a bully boss – you are.”

What brought this to mind was this letter sent to a work advice columnist:

I don’t think I’m a work bully. But my team is treating me like I am. They don’t tell me what they really think when we discuss strategies at work and seem to avoid me a bit. Overall, I’d say I don’t have many satisfying personal relationships at the office. What should I do?

The columnist had some – I guess – OK advice:

It doesn’t matter that you just have a bad temper, or you had a hard childhood, or that your past bosses were difficult, so you don’t know better. You are responsible…Don’t change because of the results you want to achieve. Change because you want to be a better person.

My advice:

First, stop thinking of your colleagues as “my team.” You, for whatever misguided reason, are their team leader, paid more than they are, have little or no understanding of what each person does, and couldn’t do their jobs if your life depended on it.

Second, you don’t want your employees to tell you “what they really think,” because you’d run screaming from the room if they did.

Third, what do you mean by “personal relationships”? Work is for work relationships. If you’re looking for personal relationships, try an online site. Losers.com sounds like a good place to start.

It’s gotten so bad that there’s actually an organization, the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), “dedicated to the eradication of workplace bullying.” WBI founders state that “60.4 million Americans are affected” by workplace bullying…