Regaining Civility

Dr. Debra Stewart

Regaining civility in your world is simple because it only involves returning to the arts. Changing the world with music, art, writing, journalism, photography, dance, and so many more art forms has always led to lasting, positive reform.  Lashing out with unbridled emotions about topics that you are passionate about is a waste of time and is viewed as hostile, aggressive, and challenging. More importantly, hostile behavior only contains a fraction of what you genuinely want to express.

 

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Getting Your Point Across

Cross-culturally, getting an important point across without being seen as aggressive or a bully can be complicated. Often, the point of interest involves cherished personal beliefs and values and may seem indisputable from this perspective, which creates bias and a host of formal and informal fallacies. To get your point across without being seen as the aggressive communicator or a bully requires a substantial effort for the compassionate, effective communicator. For example, compassionate and effective communication involves gathering valid and reliable information on the subject, exploring alternatives, understanding the person receiving the communication's culture and sociopolitical and socioeconomic environment, and having a theory of mind that allows you to accept that others may think and feel differently about the subject. 

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Cyberbullying and Unmet Needs

As long as there are unmet needs, there will be bullies, victims, and bystanders. Organizational psychology examines the systems that foster the formation of these bully triads in schools and workplaces. Examining unmet needs may provide clues to the changes needed, such as improved policies and procedures, communication, education, and development. Cyberbullying is a systemic problem that needs to change because the delivery and scope of the interface are unbridled and lack checks and balances. The bully feeds off the rewards that temporarily meet the bully's perceived unmet needs, and victims and bystanders receive the effects of bullying, which mimic the negative control of instrumental conditioning, creating feelings of loss concerning safety, love, and belonging. The educational opportunity is to identify the triad's unmet needs and then provide support to change negative attitudes and beliefs into beliefs about empowerment, self-actualization, and self-efficacy. -Dr. Stewart

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Cyberbullying and Broadcasting

Dr. Debra Stewart, Bully Management and Prevention Specialist

 

Communication is said to be 93% nonverbal. When we use social media to broadcast our ideas and opinions, it can be challenging to convey the message with clarity because 93% of that communication is often missing. In today's business world, we are becoming more virtual with less face-to-face interaction and social exchange, which may make our messages seem more hostile than initially intended. For example, when tempers clash in a boardroom or director's meeting, and opposing opinions escalate, there are still signals embedded in nonverbal cues that indicate some form of collaboration, negotiation, and closure to the dilemma. On social media, quick messages are only part of the communication, and they become more obscure when interpreted cross-culturally, across industries, or on the left-right political spectrum.

Dr. Stewart 

 

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Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is different than workplace or school bullying in that it is difficult to describe and identify. Cyberbullying occurs across personal digital devices and social and public media and often involves negative, false, and harmful information that damages the self-worth, self-esteem, or character of another person. In general, cyberbullying intimidates others, is threatening, menacing, and causes mental duress. The definition of cyberbullying is very personal and can be different among individuals, various cultures, industries, and political regions. To harm one's self-worth, cyberbullying may target personal values and beliefs. To harm one's self-esteem, cyberbullying would seek to destroy one's personal beliefs about their gifts, talents, and abilities. The character assassination of a cyberbullyer seeks to destroy personal credibility by spreading rumors and misinformation that is convoluted enough to bring into question the victim's ethics, morals, core values, and integrity. Because cyberbullying damages self-worth, self-esteem, and character, the tangible evidence of a crime can be evasive and difficult to describe and identify; however, the damage that is done by cyberbullying is insidious because it can reduce communication and trust and create a global fight-or-flight mentality. -Dr. Stewart

It Takes More than Playing Nice to Resolve Violence and Bullying

When bullying occurs, it is because of toxic cultures that create unhealthy drives and unmet needs. From the corporate leader to the employee, and even to the school bully or popular cliques, bullying-type behavior is a response to perceived unmet needs and threats. For example, corporate leaders and employees may feel insecure about company stability, performance, education and development demands, being fired, safety, benefits, or just making enough to support the family. Some of the fears students face are failing, gaining independence successfully, finding the right career and major, being responsible for self-care, falling in love, making friends, or just being lost in the system.

It is not enough to ask leaders, employees, or students to befriend bullies or victims of bullying and, all of a sudden, play nice and be kind toward one another.  Primal responses to fear and abandonment can lead to bullying-type behaviors. These primal, fear-based instincts become drives for humans to return to equilibrium, or homeostasis, during or after stressful events or pressures. Leaders, employees, and students often respond to this stress with unhealthy and sometimes unconscious internal drives to dominate and divide.  The unmet needs of individuals, organizations, and cultural groups must be addressed first so that instinctive impulses or sympathetic nervous system arousal do not trigger an automatic fight-or-flight response. The question is, do you know the unmet needs of your leaders, employees, or students?

Finding the Good in the Workplace Bully

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Finding the Good in the Bully  

KIRKUS Reviews: Finding the Good in the Workplace Bully

TITLE INFORMATION

FINDING THE GOOD IN THE WORKPLACE BULLY

Debra Stewart

XlibrisUS (108 pp.)

$29.99 hardcover, $19.99 paperback, $3.99 e-book

ISBN: 978-1-5434-5440-6; September 29, 2017

KIRKUS BOOK REVIEW

A debut guide focuses on eradicating on-the-job bullying and building healthier office environments.

“A lifetime of experience with bully types” led Stewart, who has a doctorate in organizational psychology, to write this book. She hopes that she can teach others to “respond professionally and with compassion and a lasting unquestionable forgiveness” to bullying behavior. It arrives at an opportune moment, as more people have come to recognize that aggressive, cruel, and manipulative behavior is a serious problem in many companies. As the author explains, workplace bullies do more than make life miserable for their direct targets. They also harm those who witness the bullying behavior and do serious damage to a company’s culture and reputation. Stewart’s goal isn’t to provide victims with techniques to cope with their difficulties. Rather, she looks at organizational factors that can create a bullying atmosphere, then suggests ways leaders can change that situation and create a healthy work environment. The key is not seeing the individual bully as the source of the predicament, because he or she is “only using skills and talents inappropriately.” In fact, many bullies are inadvertently created by companies because of policies that reward toxic behavior. While the knee-jerk solution to a crisis might be to fire the bully, that won’t actually solve the problem, since new antagonists will likely arise. Instead, the author offers practical, helpful tools leaders can use to assess workplace culture, identify “bully triads” (bully-victim-bystander), and create an office environment focused on wellness.

A valuable look at the insidious way bullying cultures can thrive at work, and how they can be eliminated.

Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 6411 Burleson Rd., Austin, TX 78744

indie@kirkusreviews.com

Finding the Good in the Workplace Bully

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Finding the Good in the Bully