- Bullying is about power,
trying to target and control another person.
Abusing someone because it's fun
and you know you can get away with it.
When you think about it,
what kind of person would laugh
at another person's suffering?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is, humans.
Hi everyone, welcome to this month's Patron's Choice video.
Every month the Cup Of Coffee patrons
get to choose a video topic for me to cover,
so this month's topic was chosen by Lois Jean,
who asked for a video on workplace bullying
and how Aspies could handle it.
So, in this video I'm going to share a story of my own
of being tortured in the workplace for six months.
Definitely not fun.
I am going to dispel a myth of
what bullying actually looks like,
talk a bit about why bullies actually do what they do,
highlight two very very common strategies
trying to deal with bullying that
actually don't work at all, so we can avoid that.
I'll show three reasons why people on the spectrum
are much more likely to be
victims in bullying in the workplace,
and finally give one really solid overarching strategy
that can be used to address all three of those reasons.
Sounds like a lot, let's get into it.
So, firstly I wanted to address this idea
that we commonly have of bullying,
of overt public humiliation, name calling,
physical violence, all of that kind of stuff,
and maybe you might find that in primary school,
but I found that, typically,
bullying is much much more subtle
than that in real life, most of the time.
Adults tend to have much more sophisticated strategies,
like social isolation, withholding information,
manipulation of your reputation,
passive aggressive criticism, eroding your self esteem.
All these things can be used to control a person
and get them to believe that they are powerless
to do anything in the situation.
Bullying is about power,
trying to target and control another person.
Abusing someone because it's fun,
and you know you can get away with it.
When you think about it,
what kind of person would laugh
at another person's suffering?
Unfortunately the answer to that question is, humans.
No one wants to think of themselves as a bully, right?
But, from time to time, we all either engage in,
or at the very least tolerate this kind of behavior.
The biggest difference I found as to whether
I'm happy to go along with bullying or not,
is of I actually like the person
and if I care how they feel.
Does that person suffering matter to you,
does it hurt you as well,
or do you kinda think they deserve it,
because they have been a jerk to you in the past?
When we don't like someone,
it's really really easy to think they deserve it,
"Oh, look at Johnny over there,
sitting all by himself, he never talks to us,
does twice as much work as everyone else.
He needs to lighten up a bit, don't you reckon?
What a stress head, always thinking about work,
let's play a joke on him or something.
Yeah, that will be fun, right?"
So, let me tell you about two experiences
from my professional career.
The first one is a really good example
of what bullying is not.
So, I remember I came in to work one day
and my colleagues, I'm not even sure who it was,
but they basically sabotaged all of my equipment
in ways that were not really obvious.
They put little, they put a bit of tape over my phone,
they unplugged batteries, they rewired things on my laptop,
and changed my desktop screensaver and things like that.
And it basically wasted half of my morning
trying to find out, like,
a dozen different things that they had done.
And I'd think I had found them all,
and then I'd keep going and then eventually
I'd hit another problem and I wouldn't realize
that it was linked to the same thing.
And that was incredibly frustrating,
but the reason that wasn't bullying
is because we actually had a good relationship,
we were actually friends, which meant that when I said,
"Don't do it again."
They didn't do it again,
because they respected me as a person,
and they respected my boundaries,
and what I was happy with and what I was not happy with.
So, when we like people, we're much much more likely
to respect when they ask us
to do something and when they say no.
So, my other example of, essentially,
being tortured in the workplace for six months,
and I'm actually really hesitant to share this,
because even when I say it out loud now,
it sounds so little.
It sounds like it should be nothing
and I should have gotten over it,
and I have nothing to complain about.
But in hindsight, that's the whole point of this power play,
it makes you feel like you deserve whatever you're getting.
So, basically, what happened was for about six months
my team leader ignored me, right?
I'm not saying he was rude,
I'm not saying he was overtly ignoring me.
Actually, quite the opposite,
he was always extremely polite,
it's just that every interaction with him
was brought to a close and I was dismissed
as quickly as possible with a really plausible reason.
I could walk up to his desk
and he'd ignore me until I physically
tapped him on the shoulder and said,
"Hi, can I talk to you for a second?"
I wasn't actually given any work for six months.
So, every time I asked, "Is there something I can do?"
I was basically told, "Oh yeah,
just do this for now and I'll come and see you in a minute."
And hours later, days later,
I haven't had that follow up,
and whenever I go again to ask about the follow up,
it's as if it never happened.
So, because of how this team leader treated me,
no one else talked to me either,
cementing my place as the awkward guy
who just sits there and doesn't do any work.
I was sitting in a team that was constantly chatting,
constantly bantering with each other,
and no one was talking to me.
I had no work, I was twiddling my thumbs
thinking I was useless, I was trying to get some guidance,
and a job to do from my manager.
Nothing was happening
and there was nothing I could do about it,
and every time I tried, I got shut down really quickly.
Really politely and really quickly.
I was left feeling needy, helpless, completely incompetent
and you can imagine what my performance review
looked like for those six months.
I didn't do any work, I didn't learn anything.
So, thankfully I finally got transferred to another team,
and in this new team, it wasn't amazing,
but I would get into the office in the morning
and they would say, "Hello."
And I would be given work to do,
and when I had a question, it would get answered,
rather than being dismissed for months and months at a time.
So, anyway, that was a quick example
showing how bullying doesn't need to be
really overt things and sometimes
it's the really subtle things that are the worst,
because it's so hard to prove
and so easy to doubt yourself wondering,
"Is this actually happening or is it all in my imagination?"
So, now I wanted to quickly go over
two really common strategies to deal
with bullying that don't work at all.
The first one is,
"Just ignore them and hope that they go away."
This really only works if what the bully
is trying to get is a reaction out of you,
and even then, it often backfires,
because if you don't give a reaction
it's just more of a challenge
and they'll break you eventually.
So, in reality, ignoring, basically equates to,
being compliant and not actually
doing anything about the situation.
The second strategy which you would think should work,
but unfortunately doesn't usually,
is making a formal complaint.
Going up the chain of command
and trying to get help that way.
And I equate this strategy to telling the teacher.
Now, I don't know about you,
but when I was having difficulties in primary school,
telling the teacher was not a very effective strategy.
Bullies aren't stupid,
they know what they can get away with,
and they know what they're not allowed to do.
So, they will push the boundary,
right up into that limit,
so that if they get told off, it's nothing serious.
In fact, in serious cases,
I found that making a formal complaint
sometimes makes it worse,
because what it ends up doing is proving to yourself
and proving to the bully that you have actually
no power in this situation.
In a company where certain behavior isn't tolerated,
bullies don't use those certain behaviors,
because they're not tolerated.
Bullies will use behaviors that fly under the radar,
and are very very difficult to prove
and very very difficult to enforce with a higher authority.
So, with that in mind there are three reasons
why people in the spectrum are more
easily targeted by bullying.
And, so the first one is that we already stand out.
If you're on a spectrum,
you probably, already seem a little bit odd
or you probably already do something
that makes you stand out from the crowd.
So, if you're looking for someone to pick on,
it's an easy target.
The second one is that, if you're alone,
the less socially connected you are,
the more easy it is to pick on someone
because they don't have friends standing up for them,
and it's much easier to get a crowd of people
on my side thinking it's funny
to frustrate this person rather than thinking,
"Maybe we shouldn't be doing this."
The third reason, which is actually really sad,
is that people on the spectrum
often have very low self-esteem.
And part of the reason for that is,
I know in my case, having a lifetime of people
telling me that my social failings were my fault
'cause I wasn't doing the right thing.
So, in my example that I shared previously,
I thought I was doing something wrong.
I was so quick to blame myself,
"He's ignoring me because I'm not doing the right thing.
Maybe I'm not asking in the right way.
Maybe I am being too annoying.
Maybe I am being too needy.
How do other people deal with this?"
I was so used to having problems
that I don't talk to people about,
because no one else has these problems
and everyone else can deal with them,
that I didn't realize what was going on in the situation.
Okay, so they were three reasons why
we often make easy targets.
Now, probably for the bit that you've all been waiting for,
what can we actually do about it?
I shared two strategies that don't work,
and the only only strategy that I've seen
consistently work and, unfortunately, it's no magic bullet,
but build your social network.
Find a friend, find someone you can confide in,
find someone you can vent to,
find someone who can counter all of those three reasons
that make you an easy victim.
So, if I have a friend, I'm a lot less likely
to believe the negative self-talk that it's all my fault,
'cause I can talk to my friend
and my friend can encourage me and say,
"No, you're not crazy.
This is actually unacceptable,
you are actually being victimized in this situation."
The more socially connected I am,
the more friends I have,
the less people are going to be willing
to go along with this kind of behavior
that's actually hurting me.
What I found is that,
the most powerful way to stop a bully,
is when someone stands up for me on my behalf, in public,
showing what's actually going on
and how much it's not acceptable.
If I'm the odd one out, then it's easy to pick on me
and think that I'm different and that I deserve it.
If I am part of the group,
then I deserve the same treatment
as everyone else in the group,
and it's really hard to single me out
if I've got friends who will support me.
So, to summarize that advice
of what to do if you're being bullied,
find one person who you can confide in
and who is on your side,
and who can remind you that
you do deserve to be treated better.
Okay, so that's it for today.
I know that was a lot, but we got there.
Thanks again to Lois Jean for requesting this topic.
And if you'd like to have your say in the topic
of next month's Patron's Choice video,
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for you as well, even if you're not a patron.
So, this has been the last
employment themed video for this month.
The topic for next month is diagnosis.
So, that's really exciting.
So, stay tuned and I'll see you again soon.
Bye.
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