Is Brown a bully in the workplace?

Andrew Rawnsley claims that Gordon Brown is a bully in the workplace, leadership expert Susan Salomone from CHPD, deciphers the potentially thin line between bullying and tough management.

A Harvard Business Review article titled, ‘Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?’ says that inspirational leaders ‘…selectively show their weaknesses,’ and individuals who bully may use this rationale as justification for bullying behaviour. However, the article goes on to say that inspirational leaders actually show their approachability and humanity by allowing others to see these weaknesses. One would be hard-pressed argue that Mr. Brown’s alleged behaviour reveals his approachability.

When determining if someone’s behaviour is tough management or bullying, there are a couple questions to consider:

* First, how pervasive is the behaviour? A one-off verbal outburst could potentially be understood and forgiven; ongoing behaviour and physical aggression cannot. Tough managers will apply their standards, however high they are, to all staff members while bullies often target one individual at a time.

* Second, what environment is the behaviour creating? Bullying creates an environment of fear, where the victim and other individuals walk on eggshells for fear of triggering an outburst. It can also create a climate of indifference or denial, where individuals who are not targeted by the bully convince themselves that the victim deserves the treatment, pretend that it is not happening, or convince themselves that it is not that big a deal.

Tough managers create an environment where individuals know what the standards are and work hard to achieve those standards set. Anyone who fails to meet those standards knows what to expect from the manager.

Tough managers are also open to feedback about their behaviour and can modify it when it is unproductive. Individuals who are being bullied find it difficult, if not impossible, to give the bully feedback about their behaviour, not least because bullying undermines the individual’s confidence. Bullies also tend to be very savvy about controlling their image, particularly with individuals above them in the organisational hierarchy, which makes it even more difficult for victims to come forward and convince others of the severity of the problem.

The best way to improve performance in an organisation is to create a performance management system that assesses individuals against the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of performance:

* The ‘what’ of performance includes objectives, key performance indicators and targets

* The ‘how’ is the behaviour the organisation expects of its leaders.

Behavioural frameworks used for performance management should include both the positive expression of behaviours as well as the negative expression of those behaviours.

For example, CHPD’s High Performance Behaviour framework includes positive Influence - selling your ideas to others and looking for win-win solutions as well as negative Influence – belittling others’ ideas in an effort to make your own ideas look better.

Organisations that look only at the ‘what’ of performance almost inevitably drive a focus on short-term results, achieved through what often looks like bullying, while organisations that look at both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of performance drive sustainable results because their employees remain engaged even when times are tough.