Why is there still so much bullying?

Bullying happens when people aren’t getting what they want and try to get it in a way that ignores the needs of others.
There are two key issues:

• The behaviour of the person doing the bullying
• The way the recipient responds

If you change either you can stop the bullying.

To change the first, people have to:

• Know how their behaviour is coming across
• Be able to negotiate with others effectively

To change the second, anyone on the receiving end needs to:

• Recognise bullying behaviour
• Know how to respond in a way that stops the bullying and enables the other party to negotiate

What’s really good to know is that, as the recipient you can stop the bullying. What’s more worrying to know is that we have all bullied others at times and that we are often completely unaware of the fact that we are doing it.

Many years ago, I fell and cut my head open. I went to the Queen’s Medical Centre – a hospital that is a quarter of a mile square, so quite big.

I waited in casualty for hours. There was no queue. There had been no multiple pile up, there was no ‘flu epidemic. I was almost the only person there. But, for some reason it took something like five hours before I saw a member of the medical staff.

The gash on my forehead was still wide open and I had broken two teeth. I had not eaten for hours.

When I finally did see a nurse I asked her politely when I might get to see a doctor.

As soon as she had gone, my husband said he thought I had been ‘a bit short’ with the nurse. I thought I had been very polite. I remember being very polite. However, with the benefit of what I know now, I suspect I might have come over as a little aggressive. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. It rarely does.

I think there is still so much bullying because so many people are not taught how to deal with it, or to recognise when they are bullying others.

Only yesterday I worked with a client who asked me how she could deal with her “difficult” manager. After a minute or two it was clear to me that he was bullying her. Yet he is a director of quite a large company.

To stop bullying we all need to be able to deal with it effectively and to take action whenever we encounter it so that no one thinks it’s OK to bully others. Everyone needs to know how to negotiate properly. And we have to stop promoting people who bully others, especially not into senior positions.

As a result of working with some clients recently who had been on the receiving end of some particularly nasty bullying, I have updated my downloadable book “How to Deal With Bullies”. It now includes over 10 pages on how to deal with malicious bullying. I’ve put it on special offer just for this week.

To find out what's in it, use this link.