This will always be in uneasy tension with modern “positive vibes only” office cultures.
One person’s “bullying and harassment” is another person’s “intimate honesty”. There are no easy answers.
No. You can be honest with someone about something without being an asshole. What exactly do you mean here by "intimate honesty"? You should give a concrete example
This isn't a perfect example, but -
I was at a personal development workshop a couple of weeks ago.
One of the participants was expressing a lot of fake positivity. I (and a lot of the other participants) got a bit annoyed by that - it felt to us like he was lying every time he opened his mouth. At dinner he asked for "honest feedback" on why other people didn't like him, and what he could do to be more appreciated by the group. He got what he asked for. Several people told him how they felt when he talked. He got really upset hearing that - saying he was being bullied by the whole group. Something he's experienced a lot of throughout his life.
How can you be honest with someone like this without him being able to turn it into an attack? I don't know if you can. The shadow part of him is too clever. Should we have refused to give him the feedback he asked for? The same pattern played out in small ways a few more times over the next few days. Someone would say something in the group which related to him in some way. The next morning he'd try on a versions of the previous day's events in which everyone else's stories were about him. And he was always the victim.
In a work setting where people don't have complete information, he'd be a menace. He could turn anything he didn't like into an instance of "bullying and harassment". I don't think he does it on purpose, but that doesn't make it any better.
Even weeks after the retreat I'm still thinking about him - I have no idea how I'd deal with someone like that if they were in my life. A soft "believe all victims of harassment" approach would encourage his narcissism. But his pain still seemed real. It felt like I kept having to choose between self abandonment (staying small, lying about my feelings) or risking hurting this guy. I hated it.
The solution is gray manning. Don't react to peoples emotional swings, controversial statements, and throw everything they say to the wind but the nuts and bolts. You don't know this person, you don't need to like them, you just need to exist with them for a bit.
Some people from the corporate world I like and become friends; everyone else gets a git clone --depth 1 when I'm around them.
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There are a lot of plausible explanations for his behavior. In some he's a bonafide victim, in others he could have a personality disorder. To you, as a transient existence in his reality and vice versa, none of those matter.
Don't make eye contact, don't smile or frown, don't show any emotional reaction, reply in the most minimal, factual, emotionless manner possible.
I've known people who have been interpreted exactly that way -- they seem "fake" in their positivity, when in fact they are just naive or clueless about how an endless barrage of overly-kind sentiments will be taken. I've watched it unfold over years, and see people continuously (and incorrectly) interpret this person as "just trying to get people to like [them]". Also, this is a not-uncommon criticism of autistic people - many get the feedback that they seem totally insincere and even sarcastic when they are being totally genuine. Another thing I've seen play out tons of times.
He honestly probably shouldn't have even asked for such personal feedback, because that wasn't really the environment to ask such a personal and potentially-risky question, but further, I wouldn't have even answered him (though I can't tell without having been there and seen the whole day unfold, etc.) ...
You can definitely be honest with someone without it being an attack, but it can be an art form. It can be really hard to share feedback with sensitive people who are extremely prone to taking things personally. IMO if you don't feel you have expert-level abilities here, don't even bother engaging with a person like that in that way, it's just going to end badly. There's a reason I'm super sincere and frank with some coworkers, and gloss over (or straight-up avoid) that stuff with others. I have a sense of who can approach it with maturity and who won't. With some people, it's basically a "trap", even if they don't consciously intend to be that way. Everyone has had their own journey up to the point you meet them, and sometimes that journey has been perilous and full of harm to their psyche.
I’m not sure I explained my point very clearly, but what I mean is essentially: how far must we be expected to go to anticipate and maneuver around such sensitive souls?
Edit: rereading your comment, I think I didn’t respond to a key area of confusion / disagreement. Being “fake” versus “being naive or clueless”. Giving feedback that someone comes across as fake could mean that they seem dishonest, but I don’t think that’s the obvious interpretation in a situation like this. Being overly positive might seem fake on account of naivety or cluelessness. Any of these - naïveté, cluelessness, or dishonesty in communication - are all things that a professional should be corrected on when appropriate (like asking for honest feedback).
Also in my original comment, I wasn't trying to make a universal claim about communication in general. If I was dealing with the above person, I'd likely just not respond and avoid them for the rest of the workshop (because bad vibes). But if I absolutely HAD to respond to that kind of person, I would sure as fuck lie to their face just to get them to fuck off
For example, instead of telling someone "this isn't good", tell them "use this technique instead" or "it's better to do it this way because X"
I get that there are some people who'll take offense to everything. Those types have to be managed differently and are a headache to deal with. But if you aren't a dick and have a paper trail, there's nothing to worry about
No one is entitled to an example, but it's a good suggestion to clear up possible miscommunications. Especially if we're talking about complex situations potentially involving cultural clashes.
I think I mostly agree with you, and your comment about bullying sounds like a great example of your point.
Mitchell Rosenburg (author of Non-violent Communication) talks about this a lot. He would point out that calling someone a bully is a negative judgemental statement. Who are you to say they're being a bully? Maybe their intent really is to show tough love and honesty. People almost always get defensive when we feel attacked and judged. The decision of whether to feel attacked and judged is made on the receiving end of a statement.
The NVC approach would recommend that instead of "you're being a bully", you could say "When you said XX, I feel rejected and small". Its a much more vulnerable statement, but its much more powerful to hear. Hearing "you're a bully" makes me want to put my walls up. Hearing "ouch, hearing that makes me want to cry" will open my heart right up.
> Who are you to say they're being a bully? Maybe their intent really is to show tough love and honesty.
I think there are two places where we differ.
1. When you are being bullied, you know you are being bullied, and you are the expert who can say it's happening. It's possible to misinterpret this, and the tactics you propose are correct, but I don't like the implication that there's simply no way to know. In my view, a relationship is an epistemology; you know someone is bullying you by the process you know that someone loves you, it may not be possible to describe, it may not be infallible, but it is real. (Perhaps part of the difference in thinking here is that I'm saying you can know someone is being a bully in this way, not whether they are, in their heart of hearts, a bully.)
2. Their intent to show you "tough love and honesty" is not at all inconsistent with being a bully. Consider the character of Tony Soprano, if you're familiar. One of his central struggles is that he deeply cares about people, but the only way he can relate to the world is through violence and intimidation.
When I say that the bullies I've encountered in my have justified themselves through "tough love", I don't mean to say that they were lying. Only that, as GGGP pointed out, it's not an acceptable way to communicate.
> when you’re being bullied, you know you’re being bullied
When I was much younger I had a hard time being teased. I genuinely didn’t realize that this was normal among my friend group, and I was totally misreading the situation because I was too caught up in my own head. I don’t think I was correct about my interpretation of the situation.
I’m essentially disagreeing with any statement of the form: two people have different interpretations of a subjective situation / interpretation, and one of them is always right because they have they think X.
Well, I wouldn't agree with that either, but that's not what I'm saying. As I mentioned it is possible to misinterpret. What I am saying is this is knowable. I can understand how you took this from what I said, and I'll try to express myself more clearly in the future, but allow me to highlight part of my comment:
> [I]t may not be possible to describe, it may not be infallible, but it is real.
Something to consider is that your criticism works both ways. If Fred feels that Bob is bullying him, and Bob feels he is offering tough love and not bullying Fred, by your logic we can't dismiss Fred's assertion.
Telling how you feel instead is self-sacrificial as it intuitively feels promoting further bullying and trauma, since these feelings must be what the bully wants. To the bullied saying something like that may feel as digging own grave.
But yes, assuming bullying is assuming what goes on in another's head. I can more than identify that mild tease can be an indication of familiarity and rapport.
So the best way to stop bullying is from the outside. If you suspect bullying intervene, if it's not obvious right away you don't need to flat out presume bullying takes place but you can engage the participants and get a better picture based on their responses.
I think it can be much more constructive to focus the conversation on (1) what is the behaviour, (2) why it is a problem, (3) what could they do instead. That's a useful strategy, whether some problematic behaviour counts as "bullying" or not.
> If you suspect bullying intervene,
If you see a problem, see to it the problem is being handled appropriately. Depending on the situation and your own position, that might be either directly intervening in the problem yourself, or maybe just making sure the appropriate people are aware of it. That's true whether the problem counts as "bullying" or not.
This is not what I meant. I meant that bullying is a special case, it is insidious because it both traumatizes and the only way to handle it properly is often from the outside so it is different from many other problems that can (and often should) be resolved between parties involved.
I don't know about anyone else, but I can't recall anyone ever sticking up for me or intervening when I was being bullied. Frequently this happens outside anyone else's view. In the context of school bullying, the teachers never seemed to believe me, or would "both sides" the issue and punish everyone involved. In the context of bullying online, many times this happened to me directly in front of mods who didn't really give a shit.
So I'd encourage people to intervene sure, but is that really the most effective strategy...? I think being able to call this out is a life skill, and being able to recognize you're on a path to bully someone and managing those emotions is also a life skill.
Not foolproof but I think it's a solid rule of thumb. I dunno if I just have a different set of social gifts and deficits from other people in this thread, but I don't feel like I have much trouble determining when someone gleefully manipulates my emotions to wind me up. People who are genuinely just teasing don't get excited if they upset you.
So I'm thinking of applying the emotional sophistication of an adult to the situation, and it seems clear to me that this is something you can figure out, because I do it once or twice a year. I'm guessing other people do too, but they probably think of those people in different terms, like "asshole."
Maybe. Its a vulnerable move because what happens next is up to the bully.
Almost everyone in life needs to find a way to tell a hero story of themselves. If the bully is telling themselves a story that "its just some lighthearted fun", then that story will struggle to survive the uncomfortable reality of whats going on for you. Almost everyone I've ever met is like this. Decent people instinctively respond to vulnerability with vulnerability.
But yeah - sometimes people are actually sociopathic and want suffering for its own sake. Giving sociopaths more power is rarely a winning move. I can count on one hand the number of people who've responded to me expressing vulnerability by doubling down on their awful behaviour, or weaponising that against me. I don't think I've ever regretted burning people like that out of my life.
If that’s unclear, most companies introduce etiquette and guidelines on what constitutes acceptable forms of behaviour and communication at the office/during work hours. It’s also a topic one can bring up with their therapist for additional tips and guidelines.
I think communication involves mutual responsibility, for both sender and receiver. When it goes wrong, sometimes the sender has failed to meet their responsibility, sometimes the receiver, sometimes both, and sometimes it is just one of those regrettable misunderstandings which is neither's fault.
> etiquette and guidelines on what constitutes acceptable forms of behaviour and communication
It is impossible to craft guidelines which explicitly cover every possible circumstance. Guidelines may reduce the incidence of cross-cultural misunderstandings (although one may be sceptical about how effective they really are in doing that), but they can’t possibly eliminate them.
> It’s also a topic one can bring up with their therapist for additional tips and guidelines.
I remember my father telling me about how, in the early 1990s, he got a job with a US-based company, and he started going on regular business trips to the US. He was rather struck by how some of his American colleagues would talk at work about having therapists - the way they’d talk about it, it sounded like they just assumed everyone had one (which is how you’ve talked about it here). Judged by the standards of Australian culture, it was rather odd - if someone felt they needed to see a mental health professional, they’d be unlikely to tell random people at work about it, and talking to work colleagues in a way which assumed they did have that need could cause offence. My father didn’t take offence, he was just amused by the strange ways of Americans-but someone else could have.
My biggest gripe is that (1) not everyone has easy access to a therapist and (2) it’s not a magic bullet. Additionally, (3) it’s inconsistent with the norm of avoiding personal health topics in professional environments.
I guess what I’m saying is that many, many Americans agree with you, even if that doesn’t come across in the corporate or pop culture zeitgeist.
Walking boldly in the world will necessarily elicit reactions in other people. We don't get to control the reactions other people have to us. If the only thing you're allowed to do when someone hates you is shrink into yourself, then you cannot ever be noteworthy or famous in any way. (Because you'll get haters if you're noteworthy, no matter how lofty your goals are.)
You can also swing this argument the other way around. Nobody knows the exact shape of our childhood traumas. Growing up requires that we revisit those places that still hurt in us to be able to heal our wounds. I don't want anyone trying to protect me from that process, because I need to go through that pain in order to grow into the healthiest version of myself.
Shying away from telling me something because you're afraid I'll get hurt also blocks any possibility of deeper intimacy.
Kim Scott's Radical Candor is another take on this for the workplace. 6 minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLBDkz0TwLM
> I don’t think you’re entitled to an example after being so reductive about the topic.
Am I the one who's being reductive here, or are you the one who's taking an ambiguous comment, interpreting it in a black and white way, and then posting this hypocritically reductive response here?
How long before Apple and an employee start disputing about whether an employee’s public comments relate to “workplace harassment” (now allowed) or other matters (still prohibited)?
I’ve heard a number of stories about situations in which an employee says they are being harassed/bullied/etc and the employer insists “no, this is just performance management” or “no, the employee just lost some internal argument over business strategy/technical decisions/policies/etc”. Maybe sometimes the employee is right, maybe sometimes the employer is right, maybe some cases are more grey and it is harder to say.