How to identify the workplace bullies

WORKPLACE bullying is destructive, abusive, erosive and irrational behaviour which is perpetrated by inadequate, insensitive, self-obsessed people.

It involves control, manipulation, entrapment, confusion and lies. Nothing positive, constructive, or enlightened is contributed to organisations by those who bully.

Status, qualifications and power are acquired and used as a means of creating an image that belies the reality of dysfunction.

Incompetence is promoted for loyalty and unquestioning support.

Real competence and integrity are deeply resented, mistrusted and perceived as threats. Any means, even the cruellest and most unfair, are used to disempower and destroy.

Appalling abuse is cleverly covered and explained away. A total inability to introspect critically or feel remorse enables the perpetrators to justify their behaviour.

Bullying behaviour continues, worsens, filters upwards, is well known and yet remains largely unchallenged.

Organisations that tolerate or encourage bullying behaviour, particularly at a high level, inevitably reach crisis point. Without confronting and challenging intervention, these organisations eventually crumble and fall.

Consultants and media who analyse and investigate consequential organisational fallout frequently examine the symptoms but fail to recognise or identify the cause.

Jacinta M Kitt

3 Pine Valley Drive

Rathfarnham

Dublin 16