Dental nurse Rosie Connell offers her guide to understanding workplace bullies

When we think of the word ‘bully’, we are likely think of awful antagonists, such as Regina George from Mean Girls, J.K Rowling’s Draco Malfoy or Nelson from The Simpsons, with shockingly terrible behaviour they display like a badge of honour.

In real life, a bully is stealthier than these fictional characters, hiding in plain sight, with skills to prevent them from getting caught. Workplace bullies are experienced in using work-related situations as opportunities to rule others.

This is called ‘indirect bullying’, and is intentionally done in a mischievous way – often not directly to you, but in a more secretive manner, which often prevents victims from realising they are being bullied.

Instead, they may question themselves, rather than the perpetrator. It is common for the victim to then have doubts about their professional abilities, which can have a lot of negative impact. After all, performing well at work is one of our basic human needs that, if not fulfilled, causes us to be unhappy.

Bullying does not have to be someone stealing your lunch money or tripping you over in the playground.

It can be in the form of sabotage, gossiping, spreading incorrect information about someone, ostracising a person, harassment, humiliation, manipulation, intimidation or belittling comments and name calling and so on.

What makes a bully?

People often say bullies are just a product of being bullied themselves. But I had cereal for breakfast, does that make me a Rice Krispie?

Joking apart, our behaviour is driven by a multitude of influences – by our conscious and subconscious thoughts, life choices, ability to deal with emotions and our like and dislikes. Our individual behaviour is not a product of any one experience, but rather an amalgamation of all our life experiences and how we process them.

A bully is not born from being bullied once but from several elements, such as their level of intelligence, personality, ambitions, desires, fears and so on. From my own experiences, reading and observations, this is the basic bully formula: Lack of/loss of rapport + low emotional intelligence + a mean-spirited nature.!

The problem: loss of rapport

Rapport develops when you feel connected to someone and often through shared interests, similar personality traits or, over time, through positive interaction. Usually when you have less rapport with a colleague, you might limit your interactions, and only discuss work-related topics.

But, when a bully feels a lack of rapport, they have the urge to cause harm to that person instead.

Bullies do not understand that rapport can be developed, and enjoy it as the opportune moment to feel good by making others feel bad. When it comes to our very deviant workplace bullies, they may display friendly behaviours, which are inconsistent. Their desire to bully often fluctuates in strength according to their mood or what else is going on in the workplace at that time.

This is why a workplace bully can get away with their behaviour for so long. They may divide the work team into victims and allies and then establish good rapport with influential or well-liked team members as a safety net. These serve as witnesses to their friendly nature in the event of being accused of being a bully.

Case study 1
A colleague insisted on introducing the dental nurse to any other clinician or visiting staff as ‘this is [dental nurse’s name]. They’re not a morning person’.
Any rapport they may have once had was lost with this regular use of inappropriate address, and they both felt it.
With this, the dental nurse steered clear of this person to avoid these increasingly awkward exchanges. But the bully persisted and took every opportunity to intimidate and harass him because they no longer had a connection.

Rapport repair

There is always the option to attempt to rebuild rapport. Find shared interests or try to engage positively with your bully to attempt to put an end to this behaviour.

However, this is only a temporary fix. A bully is like an electron – you can change the direction of it but its energy has to be displaced somewhere, and that could be with one of your colleagues. Therefore, bullies do need to be addressed in the workplace, otherwise they hop from victim to victim like a tornado. A victim will feel relief and put the incidents behind them if the bully has moved on, not wanting to feel further stress, as formal grievance procedures can be hard to manage. This is how bullies survive for so long without consequences.

The problem: Lack of emotional intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is the understanding and management of our individual emotions. For example, if a person with a high level of emotional intelligence is upset about something at home, they usually have the inner tools to deal with this without much effect on the outside world.

Those with a low level of emotional intelligence cannot easily pinpoint why they feel irritated or stressed, and therefore dealing with these emotions is harder for them. It seeps out into their daily behaviours, affecting those around them. Bullies, of course, have a low level of EQ (emotional Intelligence) and allow unaddressed inner emotions to dictate how they behave in the workplace, which is often extremely poorly.

Case study 2

Everything was going well for one dental nurse who was often praised as ‘superstar’ for her oral health displays and quick completion of admin tasks by the not-yet bully. One day, the atmosphere shifted and she was pulled in for formal meetings on a regular basis without warning. The bully had split up with their partner and, as a consequence, did not feel emotionally stable in her personal life, and needed to gain control in other areas of her life – the workplace. This bully was terrorising the whole team, calling formal meetings to address staff for minor ‘issues’, but treating them with the importance of something far more severe. This behaviour had its desired effect and staff grew anxious. This was intimidation and the constant questioning of her abilities as a dental nurse led to her resignation.

The high EQ response

It takes confidence and experience to address a bully in the right ways. Document the bully’s behaviour – your reaction in person is just as important. Understanding your bully, having empathy and being calm whilst practising high EQ can help you to cope in these situations. Try to be as neutral as possible. A bully feeds on emotions. Respond with something that highlights that you have noticed the bully’s behaviour.

Try saying: ‘What made you feel like you needed to say that?’ and ‘Is it okay if we discuss this a bit later?’ or a simple ‘Are you okay today?’ This high EQ response does not get rid of your bully problem, but may boost confidence and inner strength, knowing you have dealt with a situation with grace.

The problem: A mean-spirited nature

Victims of bullying often take it badly because they cannot understand how a bully can be so cruel. The truth of the matter is that some people, bullies included, are just naturally a lot more mean-spirited than others. Some people can only gain energy and feel good by being negative towards others, and feeding on the effects.

Mother Nature

Everyone is different and you cannot have fantastic rapport with everyone, and sometimes you just have to cut your losses. We all know that you cannot change another person’s behaviour or personality, but rather we need to react to it in a way that remains true to ourselves. In extreme cases, when no amount of rapport repair or well-thought out replies can stop a bully, the complaint process should be started if it cannot be rectified informally. The complaints process, which will differ from workplace to workplace, requires you to provide examples to substantiate your allegations, accompanied by dates, times, locations, witnesses, direct quotes and how it has impacted your life. Be prepared to be ‘be prepared’ if you go with this option.

Bullies in the dental practice

Bullying at work is too common and too damaging to ignore. We need a completely safe way of reporting incidents of workplace bullying with a body who is not our employer, where a register of potential workplace bullies is kept, so these tyrants cannot bounce from dental practice to dental practice without having to change their behaviour. In the same way we need to be on time to work, follow GDC Standards and have a clean DBS, employees also need to be free of any ‘bully allegations’. The list could work like driving penalties, with allegations staying on their record for a fixed time, which future employers can see. This would force bullies to cease and desist any maleficent behaviour to avoid a complete ‘ban’.

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