Taking "Middle School Behavior" Out of the Workplace

At dinner the other night, I heard about how some of the girls at my daughter’s middle school were talking about another girl behind her back. The collective group didn’t like this girl and so instead of telling her to her face the behaviors they were upset with, they just talked about her. They don’t have a Facebook page, or I think they might end up with some of this naughtiness on their pages.
Seizing a teachable moment, I felt compelled to ask them to think about how the “other girl” must feel – being the subject of personal attacks by the group. They were unwilling to look at it too closely, but they did begin to see the importance of what we have talked about in Girl Scouting as being a “sister to every Girl Scout.”
When it gets to the workplace this same type of interpersonal “bullying” has been called by some management gurus as “middle school behavior.” Even though men do more of the overt bullying in the workplace, women target each other 70% of the time for the covert, behind the back kind of talking about someone which can be just as stressful and damaging in the workplace. The under the radar behavior by women to other women includes sabotage and the abuse of authority.
The secret weapon of all bullies is an enabling environment. This use of a relationship to hurt someone else is something women do without thought sometimes. If we are talking about someone with another co-worker, you can bet that the other co-worker will eventually talk about you. Thus we keep the enabling environment fertile.
To stop personal attacks, gossiping and name calling behind or (in the case of Facebook) in front of our co-workers and friends, we need to remember to practice three simple behaviors. 1) When someone talks about another in front of you – Disrupt It. Sometimes people are not being malicious and are drawn into conversations before they realize they are perpetuating a hostile environment; 2) Co-create new rules of engagement – by disrupting or challenging others to address specific issues and not personal attacks, we create new ways for all of us to interact with one another. It models a new way of behaving that is more in integrity. 3) Maintain consistent standards of behavior with everyone. Managers, directors, CEO’s, and other volunteers all are made from the same things. No one has a thicker skin or is made of unbreakable stuff. Everyone who is a target of personal attacks feels the pain of those attacks, no matter whether you feel you have power in the organization or not.
Creating a collaborative community, a place where everyone feels safe, is something I know that we all aspire to do. The world at large can sometimes be a somewhat hostile place; it would be nice to know that the places in which we volunteer, work and live would be safe places. Only you can make that so.