How to Eliminate Workplace Bullying and Incivility | Forence Bigsby | TEDxGreensboro

foreign [Music] [Applause] I don't mind getting dirty and I think I'm a unicorn which makes me strive to be the very best at everything that I do But ultimately I am a fighter I never give up and I'm rarely afraid but this is me a year ago and this is me on a good day when I think I'm cute so what happened well picture it it's 3am I haven't slept I really haven't slept more than a couple hours in weeks and I'm in tears I finally reach out to my chief HR officer and I tell her well I beg her please help me find a safe place to hide so I can find another job now she lives in another time zone and she reaches out immediately and she tells me that she's willing to listen which she does intently and she promises me there'll be an investigation and gives me some resources of these resources One lets me know that I can take some time off and at this point I have no choice but to and I think to myself during this time how did this happen I just come to this organization six months prior and I'd come because of its renowned culture of diversity and inclusion but as I continued my research I discovered I was the product of incivility and bullying in the workplace and I think to myself again how did this happen I had been developing psychologically safe environments for over 20 years in the classroom and in HR and for over a decade I've lived overseas bringing together vastly different cultures understanding that behaviors and intent don't always equate so what did I miss well this person wasn't yelling and screaming at me they weren't physically assaulting me which would have been difficult in a virtual world but I was afraid I didn't know what to do I didn't know where to turn and even their name caused me to panic it took the support of my manager my HR team family and a psychologist but I am a fighter I never give up and I'm rarely afraid and I'm not alone 30 of our U.S Workforce will experience bullying at one point in their career and 19 will be witness to it meaning a full 49 will be affected by bullying and 98 percent 98 will be affected by incivility and the difference between bullying and instability is that bullying is repeated targeted Behavior towards a specific individual causing distress while instability is an overall behavior that one just exudes that causes distress to those that they interact with 12 percent of our Workforce have already left their organizations due to instability and bullying has cost 223 billion dollars in turnover alone over a five-year period of time that's not the only cost and a poll of 800 managers over 17 Industries on instability there was a distinct impact to productivity quality of work and a ripple effect to customers productivity was affected because 80 percent spent time worrying about an instant after it had happened 3 percent wasted time worrying about a perpetrator and trying to avoid them and 47 percent just spent less time at work compared to their counterparts and quality was affected because 78 percent lower their commitment to their organization 38 percent intentionally lowered their quality of work which led to a decline in performance by 66 percent and this did Ripple down because 25 percent directly took out their frustrations on customers now you'd think in a virtual world that the impact would be far less but it's actually far worse because this social media Haze comes upon us where we feel more removed from each other allowing us to say and do things we normally wouldn't in a face-to-face environment and even though there's a distinct push towards cultures of diversity and inclusion there's a rise in incivility and bullying and that is due to the lack of leadership in developing education and setting cultural norms in a diverse environment because we'll always have the classic bully but the real effect is those that are unintended imagine if we took a professional football player an Olympic swimmer swimmer both wonderful in their environments put them in the same Arena and said nothing more than be respectful meet others where they're at and assume good intent we hire the very best talent and as such they're going to do what they've done historically to be successful even if that means tackling someone which often leads to people getting hurt and everyone loses but what if we thought of maybe a more similar environment where we all Hound the exact same skills over 10 20 30 years maybe even taught others what if we took drivers from every country in the world and brought them onto the same roadway neglected to put up signs and gave them the green light we all know the speed limit is 65 miles per hour right or wait maybe that's 80 clicks and that means I got to convert 0.6 miles to kilometers is that kilometers to miles well maybe we just don't have any speed limit at all well at least we know what side of the road to drive on right see even if there are no accidents the sheer amount of energy it would take to engage each individual driver just to understand what side of the road they were driving on would be enormous there'd be slow downs and bottlenecks but again we hire the very best talent and as such they are driven to results so think about those individuals in their semis determined to get from point A to point B no matter who's in their way think about the Wake that they leave behind worse yet think about those looking at this environment thinking the only way I'm going to succeed is to adopt that behavior our cultures are in Jeopardy from the spread of incivility and bullying but there are three ways that we can Safeguard our cultural organizations and that is in setting clear Rules of Engagement early in ongoing education and Swift action if an incident occurs and as Leaders we cannot leave our people without clear Rules of Engagement and every organization will be different I mean picture a broker on the stock exchange floor yelling screaming hands in the air trying to get attention which is what we expect this is what we envision in our minds but think about the exact same person with those behaviors in most corporate meeting rooms that's a sure-fire way to lower collaboration and Destroy psychological safety now that's a very clear example what about a murky ones such as do we hold meetings outside of normal business hours if we're a Global organization that may be absolutely essential in driving business effectively but for a local organization that just may pull people away from families cost psychological stress and disrupt work-life balance so it's not important exactly what rules you set for your organization key here is that they are clearly communicated understood and adhered to by everyone which leads me to our second key which is early in ongoing education because incivility and bullying is not just yelling and screaming at someone or being physically assaulted there are three tactics that bullies use and those categories are passive active in ways in which they recruit others passive actions could be things like not answering Communications now we all get emails that get lost in our inbox and items that come in when we're in meetings that we neglect to answer but it's when it becomes repeated to the point that it affects another person's ability to do their job effectively that it becomes a problem it may be also not offering pertinent information that you know is important for someone to do their job effectively and active actions could be gaslighting where a perpetrator keeps a Target constantly guessing questioning their ability to recall the past and their sanity and unable to predict the future it could also be refusing access to resources such as people tools or meetings and the ways in which others can be as simple as making a joke in a meeting where everyone's laughing at your expense and you feel humiliated it might also be pulling someone aside questioning your competence so that they adopt the perpetrators sentiments and start pushing you away as well now we all can exhibit some of these behaviors some of the time but the real measure is the effect that it has on an individual because there are signs when someone is being affected by incivility and bullying they may start voicing distress do you ever hear someone saying things like I could never predict what this person is going to say or do or I'm unsure how to behave with this person in this situation maybe it's more overarching such as I'm stressed burnt out I can't sleep anymore and I can't put work away you may also notice avoidance behaviors are they coming to work less calling in sick more or even if they come into work are they just avoiding a specific person in the hallway or in meetings and even if they come to meetings are they taking a step back from leadership positions are they being less collaborative not offering their opinions or maybe in this virtual world you just notice there are always cameras off when that specific person's in the room you may also notice a change in performance are they taking a step back from the organization as a whole not being as collaborative or offering their services like they're used to or you may start getting complaints from customers and co-workers about their behavior now we do look to our managers to be the first line of defense and looking for these signs but often our managers are our perpetrators so we need to educate all of our employees so that they are aware of these signs and encourage them to take action and action can take the form of reaching out to an individual asking them are you okay raising concerns to management and Leadership or maybe falling apart with a report with HR and the key here is that it's early and ongoing education because often when we come to a organization the first things we get are training on privacy Security even harassment but rare is the organization that we have any training on instability and bullying and that is mistake because often we say our people are our greatest assets so it doesn't make any sense not to protect them because the health implications are enormous they can be physical such as hypertension chronic fatigue and as visible as skin disorders it's a psychological causing anxiety depression and most frightening to me is a stress brain which is a neurological structural change in the brain itself where the prefrontal cortex shrinks affecting learning and memory and the amygdala enlarges making us more reactive to stressors to behavioral whether we become more avoidant of collaboration and risk-taking or we become we start overthinking where we exhibit Behavior such as spending hours crafting the perfect email to elicit a better response if not a more predictable one to adoption where our targets become our perpetrators and once these Health implications begin they are very difficult and time consuming to overcome which leads me to our third key which is Swift action if an incident occurs and every incident will be very unique requiring your delicate hands but the key here is that it's dealt with immediately because instability and bullying are a disease and we're at pandemic levels As Leaders we are responsible for the bottom line financially but more importantly for our people these are our sons and daughters our brothers and sisters our mothers and fathers I am a fighter I never give up and my organization had an amazing response I was blessed and lucky that's not always the case and as Leaders we must be proactive not reactive the cost is too great thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 9,897

Keywords: Activism, Behavior, Bullying, English, Life, TEDxTalks, Workplace, [TEDxEID:49311]

Id: hDfviFLa1BA

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023