by Lynne Curry
your power?
3. Does your bully think you lack alliances and thus doesn’t
worry about others coming to your aid? If so, perhaps
you can fight back without fighting the bully directly, by
developing your relationships with others. Intriguingly,
we don’t always need to fight the villains in our lives; we
simply have to improve our lives. Thus, a bullying incident
can be a wake-up call letting us know we need to make
positive changes.
4. Does this person single you out, or is he an equal-opportu-
nity problem to everyone? If he bullies others, you may be
able to enlist them if you decide to take further action.
Step #5: Analyze the Pros and Cons of Taking on the Bully
Before you go on to the next part of the assessment, how are you feel-
ing? By putting a name to any negative emotions, you start to process
them. You may also find that writing out or speaking your answers
aloud ignites your determination to handle the bully.
Before Acting, Questions to Ask Yourself. Now, decide what you
want to do about the situation. Ask yourself a series of questions.
1. Is this how you want to be treated? This may be the sim-
plest part of your assessment. If your answer is “no,” say it
mentally or out loud in a strong, firm voice: “No.”
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It’s Your Choice: To Confront or Not to Confront ❚ 53
2. Is this bully or situation worth taking on? You don’t need
to tackle every bully or situation. Some people and situa-
tions won’t change even if you handle the situation effec-
tively. Understanding and accepting this reality and mov-
ing on, rather than letting yourself be mowed down, may
be the strongest move you could make.
Sometimes, it feels right to exit the situation. If you
decide you’re not ready for the fight, or if the eventual
gain isn’t worth the battle, you might decide the personal
cost or consequences make this an effort you’d rather not
launch.
3. What will happen if you do nothing? Can you live with
yourself if you don’t speak up? What do you intend to
achieve by confronting your bully? What are the risks you
take and the potential negative outcomes if you confront
your bully? Are you willing to suffer those consequences?
If you take on this fight, will you be able to impact the
situation favorably? What resources (time, money, emo-
tional toll, legal fees, brainpower, or energy) will you need
to win your battle?
If you choose not to tackle a bully or situation, take pride in your
choice. You didn’t simply give up, you chose to not act.
Step #6: Take Back Your Power
More often, however, you’ll decide it’s worthwhile to take on the bully.
Perhaps you love everything about your job except how the bully
interferes with your work life. Possibly you’ve come to a point in your
life where you feel you owe it to yourself to take a stand instead of
allowing bullying to erode your self-esteem or job satisfaction.
As you’ll learn in Chapters 7 and 9, bullies test to see which poten-
tial targets might be easy prey. If you initially allow bullying, you
encourage repeat, escalated bullying. Further, multiple bully attacks
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54 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
weaken your defenses and impact how others view you. For this rea-
son, if you’re wondering whether now or later is the time, now’s the
time. It makes sense.
An “it’s worth it” decision pays off in many ways. First, you feel
good about yourself when you take a stand, even if you aren’t vic-
torious. Second, you discourage escalated bullying. Third, you may
succeed, and the bully may move on or simply stop messing with you.
Fourth, each time you tackle a bully, you exercise skills and strategies
that strengthen your mental and emotional anti-bully muscles.
Everyone in any workplace has personal power, whether or not
they know it or use it. Targets give up their power to the bully.
Learn to take back your power by changing how you signal you’re
“prey.” Taking back your power begins inside you and radiates
externally in terms of your visible reaction. As a quick experiment,
think of a bully you’ve met or currently deal with. If you don’t have
one, imagine that you work for or around Wayne and he’s taunting
you. How do you react? Do you become tense, feel powerless or
perhaps angry? What happened to your breathing? If your breath-
ing became rapid and shallow, use the coastline breathing tech-
nique and notice the difference it makes. This experiment serves as
a brief reminder that everything starts with you and your decision
to change and take action.
You have the power to stay with or leave your job. You may feel
you have to stay in your current job; however, that’s your choice. If
you leave, others in your current workplace lose what you bring to
the table. It’s your choice; you have the power to take your talents
with you.
Step #7: Decide on Your Game Plan
In this final assessment step, “if so, how,” you decide on your game
plan. (You’ll learn a variety of strategies, and the skills you need
to carry them out, in Chapters 7 through 20.) Now, we’ll examine
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It’s Your Choice: To Confront or Not to Confront ❚ 55
ways to build your confidence, so that you can carry out any strat-
egy you choose.
The act of stopping a bully starts with you.
CONFIDENCE-BUILDING TECHNIQUES
Imagine a friend asks you to walk the length of a two-by-four plank laid
on the ground. No doubt you could walk the full length. Now imagine
the same friend says she’ll pay you $10 if you’ll walk the plank’s length
again, only now she moves it three inches off the ground. Chances
are you’ll smile and do it. Now imagine she raises it ten feet off the
ground and offers you $100 to walk its full length. Would you walk
the plank you’ve walked twice before or hesitate, psyched out by the
fear of falling?
Mind Power
Now let’s try an experiment designed to show you the power of your
mind. Please stand, taking the book with you, and notice where your
feet are. You’ll leave your feet in the same position in both phases of
this exercise. Now turn your entire body, without moving your feet,
to either the right or left side and look at the furthest spot on the wall
you can see comfortably.
Without sitting down, turn back so that you’re again facing for-
ward. Leaving your feet in the same position as earlier, imagine that
a cloud of empowering, relaxing light descends around your head.
Allow yourself to feel this relaxing energy massaging the back and
sides of your head and neck. Let yourself feel your neck becoming
more supple, flexible, and malleable.
Imagine the empowering and relaxing energy continues to
descend. It now massa
ges your shoulders and the upper ribs of your
back. Allow yourself to feel your back and shoulders becoming looser,
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56 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
more at ease, and much more relaxed. Imagine the light massaging
your entire back. Allow your back to continue feeling more relaxed,
supple, limber, and at ease. Now, with your feet in the same place as
earlier, turn your entire body, except for your feet, and notice the fur-
thest spot on the wall you can see comfortably. How much farther do
you see? You’ve just experienced the power of your mind.
Mental Martial Arts
There’s more. You’re about to learn how to use mental martial arts
to strengthen your inner self. When we give mental ground to the
aggressor coming toward us, we weaken. Instead, you can use the
power of visualization to center yourself, so you don’t react. Here’s
why and how this works:
We process information in three ways: visually (by seeing), audito-
rily (by hearing), and kinesthetically (by feeling and through physical
sensation).
Auditory processing, which we use in verbal confrontation, moves
at the speed of sound, roughly 80 to 180 words a minute. When you
listen to another’s words and fully absorb them, you think or process
information at a rate of 80 to 180 words per minute. If you mentally
dialogue with yourself when another person talks, as in “Why am I
letting this guy do this?” you often miss part of what the speaker says
because your mental dialogue processes at the same 80 to 180 words
minute.
Kinesthetic or emotional and physical processing moves more
slowly than speech, slower than 80 words per minute. Thus, when we
get upset, we can’t always keep up with conversations.
In contrast, visual processing moves at the speed of light, the equiv-
alent of 900 to 1,400 words per minute. You can use this difference in
processing speed to steady yourself in a confrontation, or when you’re
nervous or upset. Because the slowest visual processing (900 words per
minute) moves more quickly than the fastest auditory processing (180
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It’s Your Choice: To Confront or Not to Confront ❚ 57
words per minute), if you flash on an image in your mind even as you
hear the other person talking, the image can calm you or “ground
you,” while still allowing you to hear the person’s words.
To see how it works, try this: Close your eyes and see one of your
children or your pet in an adorable moment. Or imagine the face of
someone you love or a scene in nature such as a waterfall, a beach, or
a sailboat floating calmly on the sea.
Now open your eyes and look at whatever surrounds you, and,
at the same time—without closing your eyes—mentally flash on the
image you’ve created. “Flash” means you don’t become fully absorbed
in what you mentally picture; instead, you momentarily see the image
even as you remain fully aware of what’s going on around you. You
can do this once or several times as you’re concurrently paying atten-
tion to what’s happening outside you.
Once you get the hang of mental multitasking, turn on the radio
or television and notice that you can hear the words a disk jockey or
television personality is speaking while simultaneously mentally flash-
ing on an image in your mind. Flashing on the visual image allows
you to feel centered without missing another person’s words. You can
even flash on an image while you’re talking. Try it.
You’ve now achieved alternate focus, a key step in mental martial
arts. By grounding yourself through alternative focus, you come from
a centered frame of reference when confronting the bully. No longer
do you give full mental control to what the bully says.
You can use this same technique, with other images, to strengthen
yourself. Imagine Katharine Hepburn with her head held high, or a
majestic mountain such as Mount Everest. Do your neck and back
straighten as you think of Katharine? Does focusing, in the back of
your mind, on Mount Everest give you a sense of strength?
Now contrast what happens when you visualize an image that
centers you with what happens to you when you are confronted and
don’t use this strategy. When you’re confronted or feel threatened,
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58 ❚ BEATING THE WORKPLACE BULLY
intimidated, anxious, or powerless, you process kinesthetically, at less
than 80 words a minute. Confrontation and intimidation can literally
dumb you down.
As I’ve demonstrated, it doesn’t have to. You can control your
reaction with these easy-to-learn strategies. To review:
1. Breathe: So you can simultaneously access both the
left and right hemispheres of your brain and add analy-
sis and problem solving to your emotional and intuitive
processing.
2. Assess: Consider what’s going on; is this how you want to
be treated? Is this situation or bully worth taking on? If so,
how?
3. Visualize: Develop an internal alternate focus by seeing
an image that calms you even as you listen to the other
person speak.
Your Turn: Where Are You Now?
1. Make coastline breathing a habit. Starting now, commit to
practicing coastline breathing at least three times a day.
Once you find you can easily slow your breathing, com-
mit to using coastline breathing whenever a situation or
person takes you by surprise or upsets you. Once coastline
breathing becomes a habit, you’ll have more control over
many situations.
2. What are the benefits for you of coastline breathing? How
does it make you feel (more relaxed, floating . . .)?
3. Create two powerful images that help you center your-
self, and practice visualizing them while listening to others
and while you yourself are talking. How does it feel? You
might want to create several images: one that relaxes you,
another that empowers you, and perhaps another that
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It’s Your Choice: To Confront or Not to Confront ❚ 59
reminds you how supported you are by God or those who
love you.
4. If you haven’t yet done so, ask yourself the assessment
questions. If this proves stressful, you might want to engage
a coach to partner with you as you do the assessment. You
may also find coastline breathing and visualization helpful.
Do any of your answers surprise you? If so, what is surprising?
How do your answers help you break the situation down into
manageable pieces?
5. Has your assessment helped you arrive at a decision, or
does it better enable you to seek another person’s support
or help?
6. Thinking through situations, even ones you didn’t success-
ful y handle, helps you plan how you will deal with future sit-
uations. Commit to regular assessment as you move through
Beating the Workplace Bul y, adjusting for the new strategies
you learn and the successes you achieve.
7. When you learn to control yourself, you learn to control sit-
uations and are no longer a victim. You have to be in con-
trol to create control. It starts with you. For the next week,
breathe when anything challenging, frustrating, or intimi-
dating happens.
Notice what happens to you when you breathe, and
ask yourself, “What are my options?” Whatever option you
choose, you’ve now become the one who chooses.
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6
PUT ON YOUR GAME FACE:
DON’T PLAY BY THE
BULLY’S RULES
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear,
but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who
does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
—NELSON MANDELA
ONLY ONE THING STOOD in the way of Todd getting the promo-
tion he wanted: Floyd.
The two men couldn’t have been more different. Todd, a self-righ-
teously arrogant man, barked orders at his employees, and they per-
formed for him. Floyd, a quiet, unassuming individual, earned his employ-
ees’ respect by doing his job and giving them credit. When Floyd’s
company made the decision to purchase Todd’s, everyone knew that
after the merger became complete, one of the two men would receive
the title of department director and the other would be demoted from
department manager to a line supervisor position.
In the five months prior to the merger becoming complete, the men
frequently sat in the same meetings. Todd seized every opportunity to
rattle Floyd. When he learned that Floyd felt self-conscious about his
turkey wattle, he stared at Floyd’s neck. When the chief executive offi-
cer asked Todd and Floyd, along with other managers, to meet with
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Put on Your Game Face: Don’t Play by the Bully’s Rules ❚ 61
their counterparts and plan how to create efficiencies as they merged
departments, Todd scoffed, “That’s what you think works?” when Floyd
offered his ideas.
Todd’s bul ying worked. Floyd began to stammer, both in Todd’s pres-
ence and when asked to put forth ideas at managers’ meetings. Increas-
ingly, he sat mute. When the senior managers met to choose which of