Ep54 Why Good Managers Bully

Why do managers bully their people? What do they hope will happen? What does Psychology and Neuroscience say about bullying at work? In this episode Amanda and Caitlin look at the science, the psychology and the neuroscience to try to unpick this difficult topic. 
This episode title was recommended by Julie Grosvenor from Dudley MBC, at the NW Coaching & Mentoring Conference in November 2023 in Birmingham. Thank you Julie for recommending this episode.

Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
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Timestamps

Why Good Managers Bully

·       00:00 – Introduction to Why Good Managers Bully

·       01:04 – A subject we’re all talking about

·       02:09 – I didn’t want to start the day like this…

·       03:18 – I’m just trying to be nice!

·       04:12 – Hypercriticism

·       05:27 – Yeah; I’m gonna need you to come in on Saturday

·       06:36 – Being a total Gareth Keenan

·       08:31 – You’re your own worst enemy

“My only real motivation is not to be hassled” – Peter Gibbons, Office Space

·       10:03 – Stick and Stick situation

·       11:08 – Why do the managers do this?

·       12:36 – I’m just built differently

·       13:32 – I didn’t know I’m like that…

·       14:53 – The toxic workplace

·       16:35 – Occam’s Razor

·       18:20 – Personal potential to bully

·       19:19 – Neuroscience!

·       20:54 – Look at it from their point of view

Looking beyond objectivity

·       22:18 – It’s stressing me out!

·       22:58 – The hive is against the queen

·       24:47 – Scars don’t just go away

·       26:16 – Let’s talk about it…

·       27:53 – Is it possible to measure bullying?

·       28:24 – Utilize the 360.

·       29:01 – The Importance of Coaching

·       30:08 – The end.

Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/

To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zircon-consulting-ltd/

To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php

For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Why do managers bully their people? And what does psychology and neuroscience say about bullying at work? This episode title was recommended by Julie Grosvenor from Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council at the West Midlands Coaching and Mentoring Conference in Birmingham back in November last year. So I want to start by saying thank you to Julie for recommending a very interesting episode and to our listeners welcome to the Chief Psychology Officer podcast where if you haven't sussed it already in this episode Amanda and I will be discussing the psychology and the neuroscience that explains why managers bully. It's a great topic so a Amanda I'm welcoming you now hello hi

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

Caitlin thank you so much and thank you Julie because I was the one who selected out of the many different ideas that came to our stand at that conference for the podcast that was the one that I thought would be really interesting because until I started doing the research for this podcast I didn't know very much about the psychology and the science a good one to research why did you select it well harassment bullying they seem to be commonplace in our conversations in a coaching environment which is incredible and in workshops and events so those negative conversations that people have that result in them feeling like they might be harassed remains a significant issue at work and there is an increasing awareness of the problem the reality is harassment bullying type behaviors is quite commonplace because it can vary from very simply an unwanted remark or it could be unwarranted criticism or it could be a slight comment against somebody, or it could even be physical contact of some kind that's been not requested, you know, going beyond what is suitable in terms of physical contact, or it could be shouting. There's so many different things that actually could be described within a workplace that bullying becomes a catch-all term that we end up using to describe feeling quite uncomfortable in that work environment because of unsuitable or unfair behaviour.

SPEAKER_00: 2:09

When we talk about bullying in the definition around it so the UK government define it as the behaviors that make someone feel intimidated or offended so I think what you just listed there the range I think they definitely fall into that definition I

SPEAKER_01: 2:24

know and looking at it the reality is I do believe again with many of the aspects of psychology that we talk about is that people don't go into work with the intention to be unkind to harass people but what happens is they have a pattern of behavior Or they may even be just a one-off incident that's inappropriate, that isn't thought through, that they haven't considered the implications or the impact of their behavior or what they've said on their colleagues. And it could be deemed by the other person to be inappropriate or to be bullying. But very often it comes from a sense of frustration, from a low resilience position, or from a desire to do a good job and therefore wanting to push somebody a bit harder. So I don't think people go out to be unkind. It might be because it's a defensive behavior or a frustrated behavior but it comes from a negative position if you like and it's almost trying to make things right

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

so what you're saying is actually someone could potentially be demonstrating those kind of bullying behaviors but not even realize it

SPEAKER_01: 3:26

exactly so I might be a bully at work and not realize it until you gave me the feedback yeah and if I was to get that feedback then of course I would be horrified because I would if it did ever happen I would have no intention of bullying or harassing, but I might say something cutting or inappropriate just due to frustration or a lack of resilience. It starts at the very simplistic level around inappropriate language or inappropriate behavior in a one-off situation to that much more routine and consistent pattern of behavior. Then all of us are prone, if we are low resilience, to be at risk of being a bit of a bully. But how awful that sentence was that I just shared.

SPEAKER_00: 4:11

It's amazing how already we started talking about it and resilience is coming into play but when you were talking earlier the first thing you're making me think about is that concept of blind spots and where others can experience and observe the bullying behavior of the person themselves who's demonstrating those behaviors that perhaps don't even realize they're doing it and how they're impacting. So as a starting point for discussion could you share examples of the types of bullying behaviors that you believe are perhaps less obvious?

SPEAKER_01: 4:39

So examples of behaviors could being really hypercritical and criticizing somebody's work and always going to the negatives, never pointing out the good things. And that might be because someone is much more critically evaluative. If you think in strengths terms, some people are more critically evaluative and other people are more positive. So if you had a tendency to look at the flaws and the faults first, that could be deemed bullying. That's just down to preference and trait, which is I'm going to help you find the errors. But if it feels like you're criticizing that person without any positive balance, then it could be deemed to be a bully

SPEAKER_00: 5:12

I guess the tone as well yeah the tone and I guess in that instance the tone and how you deliver the message because like you said I'm sure a lot of people are probably sat there thinking oh well yeah I take a critical view on things because that's just how my brain works but yeah maybe it's about how I'm delivering that message

SPEAKER_01: 5:28

absolutely the next one could be around putting people down so being actively brutal about that person in a meeting so I could put you down Caitlin in front of our colleagues to make sure everybody understood that you'd done something something wrong or whatever it would be. So putting someone down openly in front of other people. And the other one is around deliberately giving people either horrible tasks or over delegating to certain people. So I would, for example, if there was something awful that came in through the door and nobody wants it. And I think, oh, I'll just give that to

SPEAKER_00: 6:00

Caitlin. Lucky

SPEAKER_01: 6:04

me. I wouldn't do that, by the way. I probably would do it myself. But no, heavier workload, all the horrible, crappy tasks. And the other one is excluding. So excluding people on email. So not CCing them so they don't have sight of what's happening in the team. So they're outside of the chat or actively excluding them from meetings or social events too. So inviting everybody but that person. That's horrible, isn't it? I do remember not being invited to parties when I was little. So, you know, really all of those things, please don't do them.

SPEAKER_00: 6:33

It's a no from us.

SPEAKER_01: 6:34

It's a no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 6:36

I know you said that some of those might not typically be identified as bullying. But I guess we can both empathize with the receiving end of any of those because they definitely are those types of behaviors that can be incredibly taxing and can chip away at people's self-esteem. But what are some of the more extreme behaviors you'd come across or you can think of?

SPEAKER_01: 6:56

I

SPEAKER_00: 6:56

think

SPEAKER_01: 6:57

all the ones that we've just talked about, you could see at work. And I don't think people would necessarily describe themselves as a bully for being critical, for maybe putting someone down. It's not great behavior, but you do see it. And it might begin because of low resilience. The delegation thing you can definitely see at times. And excluding. I mean, you don't actively exclude people, but you might unintentionally exclude people. So all of those things you might see. But these ones, to your point, I think feel a bit more malicious. So it would be spreading rumors about somebody, talking behind their back, sharing stories that were in confidence without their permission, or talking about them in a humiliating, offensive, or threatening We've recently talked to a client about grudges and an individual was in a conversation with someone else and they had told a story, told a joke using inappropriate language and inappropriate words at work, which were offensive to women. And this person brought it up with me in my data gathering phase. And then I brought it up because all the data was open, but it was confidential. So I talked about it with the CEO to say there's been inappropriate use of language. and I didn't say what it was or who it came from. And this person said, I know exactly what you're talking about. That situation was over 18 months ago. And that person still hasn't forgiven the other person for saying those things. It was just a joke from that person's perspective. But from this other person's perspective, they're holding on to that emotion, to that feeling.

SPEAKER_00: 8:31

It goes to show that some of the things people say can have a very long lasting impact on people. But then to your point and the research that we're doing into grudges, there's an argument also to say that you're your own worst enemy when you kind of ruminate over things so again it comes back to feedback and psychological safety and feeling like you can be open with each other about how you're making each other feel but that's much easier said than done isn't it

SPEAKER_01: 8:53

it really really is and i just wanted to point out something that i have failed to say already which is often in situations when you're coaching or working with somebody because we run the qualitative 360s as you know caitlin as part of our data gathering process for our executive coach cheese. And I've had one particular situation that I'm thinking about where I'd gathered data and this person had been described pretty emphatically by a number of the ratees as a bully. So I gathered the data and the whole point of a qualitative report is that you quote anonymously the people who are contributing to that report. And the news was such a shock to this person. I was so surprised. Didn't see it at all because horrified that that person's ratees had described them as a bully that person really would benefit from being more empathic being more considered during difficult times they're really dog quite bullheaded described as intimidating competitive bullheaded dogmatic aggressive i mean pretty strong language but there was absolutely no self-awareness at all

SPEAKER_00: 10:04

what's interesting is i've actually come across some 360s in the past where it's been very similar wording and actually i'm not sure how the person that was described that way maybe was more aware of it but actually sometimes those labels so the competitive and the bullheaded actually sometimes I think maybe use them in a way that they think is productive because they think that being that way is going to get certain outcomes in reality and that's why it makes it harder for them to change their ways because they actually think that what they're doing is productive because being competitive and bullheaded gets things done

SPEAKER_01: 10:35

and this person was sales as well so being bullheaded being competitive being driven they need to do all those things in order to succeed

SPEAKER_00: 10:43

well in reality all bullying is bad and no matter whether it's the more subtle criticism or unfair delegation you mentioned or the more extreme but what was the intention from julie who requested the episode

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

so her request was around managerial bullying because she was particularly interested in why they do it and why do they even think it's okay how do they even get into these bad habits of bullying

SPEAKER_00: 11:09

so how would you define managerial bullying then?

SPEAKER_01: 11:12

Managerial bullying is when a supervisor or a leader or someone who's responsible for a population of people uses their authority to intimidate, to undermine or to mistreat people. And of course, we've talked about some of the things that they could do, some of the actions they could do in a leadership way could be to be unrealistic with expectations, ask for ridiculous deadlines, expect them to work outside of hours, micromanage, breathe down their necks, publicly criticise what which we've already talked about, or it could be actively sabotaging their career and stopping them from progressing. So talking about them negatively so that they don't progress in the organization.

SPEAKER_00: 11:51

I mean, it's really such a shame to think that all those things do happen, but they do. There's that famous quote, isn't there, around people leave managers, not companies. You've heard that one. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 12:03

I have indeed.

SPEAKER_00: 12:03

And I guess from a personal perspective, someone who came into the world of work after doing my master's, you know, five, six years of go now I've been line managed and I've also been a line manager to a number of people now and you can really see how that manager relationship can have an impact on people's well-being and you know those negative behaviors there on reflection I've been very lucky to have not necessarily experienced them and I've been managed by a number of people over that time including Helen and Reese and Sarah Linton's my current manager but that leads me to think why do people do it I

SPEAKER_01: 12:35

think it is an abuse of power, isn't it? But it could be down to some of the hierarchical pressures. It could be down to climate and culture. It could be a feeling of entitlement or a desire to exert control. Or it could be due to low resilience and progressing towards burnout. And the point is that everybody is different. Some people are more difficult to work with than others. And some people are difficult to work with and they're different. And so we have to work out how to work with one another it's not okay if we're frustrated with one another just to turn to inappropriate language and behaviors and delegating techniques because those two people are difficult to work alongside one another and they're different from one another you think about cognitive diversity it's good it's challenging but our brains look for simplicity and it looks for what we know it looks for patterns and when we don't get those things we can get frustrated and uncomfortable but i wanted to bring out another example because i brought out one example but I had another example of someone who was also very surprised also quality of 360 and in this one in a manufacturing company 100% of that person's raters described that person as a bully I mean that was the previous one wasn't 100% but this one was and they had no idea at all that they were seen in that light and that wasn't their intention and the reason was this person had a zero tolerance on health and safety because there had been a death in the family due to a health and safety incident. And so the strength of passion from this person meant that the interactions, the emails, the communications were very loaded, very emotional. And this person, as a result, was quite indiscreet and would share examples of when somebody did something wrong in order to make an example of them. There was a really positive intention behind it, which was to protect people's lives. But the behavior was overwhelming, unimaginable. undermining and it created a low level of psychological safety in that team and that organisation because of the negative impact the positively intended behaviour had on the environment.

SPEAKER_00: 14:47

It's amazing how you can see the positive intention there, but almost feels like an overplayed strength. I guess going back to when you're talking about the abuse of power and hierarchical structures, when you talk about the abuse of power, I think power and money do crazy things to people, don't they? But in terms of the hierarchical hierarchical structure. I guess that means culture would be a big factor here.

SPEAKER_01: 15:09

It really is. I mean, cultures that tolerate or encourage aggressive behavior, very direct language, tolerate swearing, can contribute to managerial bullying. And there's certain industries that are very typical of that. I'm not going to mention which ones they are because I don't want to stereotype. But there are certain industries, certain environments that are much more accepting of poor language, aggressive behavior, and almost finger-pointing behavior. So it needs to be addressed at the highest level of the organization. And there was another situation around bullying because I did quite a lot of kind of talking to people about bullying before this podcast to try and understand it from a experience perspective. One of the things I've realized is one of the typical things people might do is to label someone else as the bully. I have seen a few times in a coaching situation, for example, I'm going to make up two names, Rianne and simon so rianne will be saying about simon simon's a bully and will constantly tell everybody and will talk about how many problems they're having with simon and how terrible he is where in fact that person rianne who isn't real by the way she in this example is being the bully because she's the one who is sharing stories undermining publicly criticizing actively sabotaging and doing some of those things that we talked about criticizing put them down

SPEAKER_00: 16:34

would you still say say though that in that example the intentions are good from hearing that you'd assume that actually how can someone's intentions be positive when they are yeah what's your opinion on that basically

SPEAKER_01: 16:47

if you think about the brain and the way we're wired a lot of the things that we do are not necessarily good sitting down eating cake and watching telly isn't good for me and my brain lies to me and tells me to do that if i'm tired and depleted going outside for a walk etc all the things we've talked about before are good and so my brain is telling me to do those things because it's the easiest simplest way of getting a dopamine hit and very often i think you're right it's not good but in that situation it's about trying to remove that person and remove yourself from that person in that situation defense mechanism it's a defense mechanism very poor judgment actually and it feels quite malicious but the intention will be to remove themselves from something that they probably feel uncomfortable in

SPEAKER_00: 17:30

and when there's emotions involved it's all heightened isn't it as well and people lose sight and lose vision of you know what's productive and unproductive it's nice that when you delve deeper into it it's nice to think that okay yeah actually there isn't bad intentions it's just not great control

SPEAKER_01: 17:44

yes and there may be some people who have got bad intentions absolutely but I'm hoping that many people have got good intentions we just don't always think them through

SPEAKER_00: 17:53

you mentioned psychological safety a moment ago can you talk us through the relationship there there

SPEAKER_01: 17:59

is definitely a link with low psych safety as well bullying may stem from personal insecurities which is what we're starting to really talk about here, that fear of competition, the desire to maintain control, feelings of inadequacy, progressing towards burnout, experiencing those negative affect emotions could result in behaviours that are inappropriate.

SPEAKER_00: 18:20

So how does personality come into play then? Are there certain personalities that are conducive of demonstrating bullying behaviour? I don't know

SPEAKER_01: 18:28

as much about personality as I do around emotions, but doing the research, and thank you Kashaya for supporting us with the research, The obvious thing is that people who are more narcissistic or authoritarian or have low EQ are more likely to exhibit bullying tendencies. It makes sense, doesn't it? Of course. But I think about it more in terms of the EQ and the affect actually than personality, because I don't necessarily believe that if you've got a certain personality trait or characteristic, you're going to be a bully. I don't think that's right. I do get the dark triad and the narcissistic point, but I think it's much Yeah, I'd say the

SPEAKER_00: 19:09

three things you just mentioned, none of them really surprised me. But I guess narcissism is probably one that you'd expect to come up in itself a very interesting topic in the workplace. But I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your favorite part of psychology, the neuroscience. So can you please share your knowledge with us on what's happening

SPEAKER_01: 19:28

there? stress is a stressor and it releases stress hormones like cortisol and elevated cortisol levels over an extended period could disrupt the functioning of the hippocampus. It could lead to cognitive impairments. It could stop you concentrating brain fog, memory issues because you are in that fight or flight response mode. So it really points to the amygdala, which we've talked about before, because the amygdala is our emotion center. It helps with the signaling for the production of adrenaline or epinephrine if we were in the US and cortisol, which helps us with their fight or flight response. But that release of those neurotransmitters and chemicals means that we feel anxious, feel frustrated. We experience a feeling that we interpret as emotion. And as a result, when we feel stressed, what will happen is that we will not release enough of the positive neurotransmitters. It will disrupt the release of the positive neurotransmitters that we need for mood regulation, for happiness, for contentment, for the feeling of belief, a feeling of security. And so it's likely to really mean that people feel like an imposter, that they feel questioning, that they start to lack belief, that they have low self-confidence, low self-esteem, and so on.

SPEAKER_00: 20:54

I imagine there are a lot of significant impacts on how someone feels like you've just said. Before we dive into that, and in the spirit of psychological safety, I just wanted to reflect on something you you said amanda for the actual person that's doing the bullying what i'm trying to imagine from that perspective on what's happening in their brain which is causing them to do the bullying could it be explained like we talked about earlier around the defensive mechanism so they're not feeling resilient not able to control maybe their stress and their cortisol and also their amygdala might be on high alert because they're feeling a threat in a situation and then that's causing them to behave irrationally is that probably a way that you could describe what's happening from the bully's perspective

SPEAKER_01: 21:34

Absolutely, because you think it's all down to stress and pressure from their side as well, because actually those aggressive and dominating behaviors, when people demonstrate them, it activates the reward center, which helps to release dopamine and motivates them and rewards them for those behaviors. So it's the mesolimbic dopamine pathway. So that pathway, because it's the brain's reward system, helps them to release the stress and helps them to reward the behavior. And so they feel good as a result of doing it. The brain is lying to them and telling them that they're doing a good thing, but they're not doing a good thing. So you're absolutely right. It's to relieve the stress and to create a more positive feeling.

SPEAKER_00: 22:18

Then going back to the impact it has on the individual, the receiving end of it, I can imagine that presumably persistent psychological distress can contribute to the development of mental health conditions. It can.

SPEAKER_01: 22:29

So in other words, it just impacts every part of someone's life. It's not just their work experience. it can impact relationships, home life, their health. So we really need to help people recognise what does it mean to bully and what's the impact of it and how can they stop it before it happens. We need that resilience to stop it from happening.

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

And also having the psychological safety as someone who's an observer that's seeing it happening and finding strategies to somehow put a stop to it. Definitely. Does the research suggest that bullying is predominantly top-down within businesses?

SPEAKER_01: 23:03

Yes, but there are instances also that there's reverse bullying so when say a team of people at a lower level of the organization they collectively engage in aggressive or hostile behavior towards their managers or their supervisors so it's less common than the traditional top-down approach but it can still have quite significant consequences so any type of bullying whether it's fueled by resentment or perceived unfairness or injustice or favoritism often it's fueled by something even when it comes from a position of unfairness it's still not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00: 23:38

Yeah I was actually going to ask that question as to why might they do it and I was thinking because we were talking about grudges earlier that was the first thing that came to my head is someone feeling if they're on the receiving end and they build up a resentment and then they could end up doing the bullying back so fairness is key so upwards bullying can then hinder a manager's ability to lead effectively themselves and obviously have impacts on productivity and team cohesion and collaboration.

SPEAKER_01: 24:05

How awful, I was just thinking about it, how it would feel as a leader of an organisation when you invest so much time, so much energy, so much care in building and growing an organisation, keeping people employed, trying to do the very best you can. If you believe that your employees were clubbing together, it just feels horrid. It's toxic. Yeah, really toxic. So yeah, great topic, by the way, Julie, thank you. Quite uncomfortable talking about it, but really useful because I don't think we talk about bullying enough openly about it as a phenomenon or grudges, which is now coming up in some of our conversations. So really interesting topics and conversations. And the fact that the point we're trying to make is that good people can bully.

SPEAKER_00: 24:47

We talked obviously a little bit earlier about the neuroscientific perspective from both sides of the story, if you want to say. But what happens to the person being bullied from a psychological perspective?

SPEAKER_01: 24:59

Those people who are, if you use the word victim, it can result in almost an emotional scar. And prolonged or severe bullying could even result in PTSD. And this can cause a real fear of rejection or fear of judgment and can result in social withdrawal or isolation. And that can massively impact job performance, career advancement, academic experiences, and really impact somebody's ability to pursue and achieve their professional or their educational goals. And funnily enough, in a meeting I had had this morning we were talking about how the people you surround yourself with have such a phenomenal impact on how you see yourself and the goals you progress towards and i think that's true if you surround yourself with very not negative toxic people it's going to have such an impact on you so unfortunately people may result in having quite maladaptive coping mechanisms as a result of that stress and it could result in quite unhealthy behaviors for some people it's eating some people's avoidance it could be aggression in worst case they could end up being a bully themselves.

SPEAKER_00: 26:05

So I guess for people observing it you can maybe spot the changes in behaviour of the person being bullied because if they start doing these things themselves then you could look back and think why is this person acting in a different way. My burning question then is how can we overcome workplace bullying? What can managers, leaders and organisations do to limit this from happening?

SPEAKER_01: 26:28

Well firstly we need to start talking about it because I think it's a bit of a taboo subject. Sarah and I have been brave in our previous coaching conversations to actually address it and to talk about it when it's been mentioned rather than to sweep it under the carpet and to hide it or reframe it in some other way the second one is to have really clear policies so people understand what is and what is not acceptable again because some tactics could come from a good place and it might be very simple things like that over delegation or tough deadlines or sorts of things that so we're really clear about what is acceptable around policies and behaviour within organisations. And then the others are much more around creating an environment of respect and communication and collaboration and making sure that people recognise and understand the emotions that they experience at work and how that impacts their behaviour. So there could be some training around resilience, around emotional intelligence and the impact of emotions and affect on behaviour within communication within groups.

SPEAKER_00: 27:34

I think that's a very good starting point for people to kind of start thinking about you know in their organizations what is being done what's not being done but it made me think as well when you're talking about it being a relatively taboo subject is i think people might be talking about the experiences in private it's the talking about it more openly and productively

SPEAKER_01: 27:53

and i wonder if organizations report and measure bullying you know we have so many measures so many metrics now within organizations and do they report any incidences of bullying in their organization because that would be fascinating to see whether that organization has got an issue of a toxic culture and what is and what is not acceptable in the organization so capturing data when that word is used when they're talking to hr for example every time that word's used just literally tracking it

SPEAKER_00: 28:24

and actually just thinking about our conversation at the start of the podcast quite a lot of your examples of people coming to the realization that they might be exhibiting bullying behavior is through a 360 and so that makes me think you know there is potentially a need for organizations or managers to start really thinking about themselves and how they impact and getting that feedback and obviously through a 360 is quite a useful method in a more comfortable way of getting the feedback it's

SPEAKER_01: 28:49

more objective than subjective isn't it we are moving towards objectivity and trying to drive out subjectivity but you're right it's that unconscious incompetent box isn't it of the jihari window not realizing yeah the blind

SPEAKER_00: 29:01

spots and i think one last thing is of course the importance of coaching and mentoring and how that comes into play with people becoming more aware of how they operate and helping others operate. But that's exactly how you met Julie, wasn't it, at the West Midlands Coaching and Mentoring Conference last year?

SPEAKER_01: 29:16

Exactly. And helping people as a coach, as a mentor, to see how they're behaving and even those small microaggressions of behaviours, how they could potentially lead to bullying behaviour or how the culture that they're in, the tolerance level, levels for direct harassing, aggressive type language or behavior. So the coach really has a lovely job of holding up the mirror and setting that standard for change. So there's a really big opportunity for qualitative 360s, which people are much more honest in, particularly when there's a risk of bullying, sometimes quantitative. I think qualitative is better in this instance, and definitely coaching and building a really strong relationship and trying to gather that evidence, particularly when you do your law Well,

SPEAKER_00: 30:08

I'm sure people listening sadly have an example of where they've seen this happen, or maybe have been at the receiving end, hopefully not being the bully, but you never know. And so I'm sure there's a lot to reflect on. And now people can go away and start thinking about this more. But sadly, that draws our conversation and this podcast to an end. But it's been super interesting exploring it in a bit more depth. So thank you, Amanda, for sharing your knowledge in this space. and thank you to Julie for recommending this as a topic and of course thank you to Kishaya too for all your help in the research.

SPEAKER_01: 30:41

It was a really interesting one because I would never have thought of this topic to have researched and recorded if it hadn't been for Julie genuinely it would never have been front of mind but so interesting then gathering both the research and also the instances there's so many other stories that I heard that we haven't had a chance to talk about and I'm sure like you said the listeners will all have their own examples of when they may have felt like like they were being bullied or even have thought actually maybe I've said something inappropriate or I've done something that isn't quite fair myself it's a good acknowledgement and a note to be aware of those behaviors in future but thank you Caitlin for being the host and thank you everyone for listening if you enjoyed this episode and you enjoy our podcast please would you share it with one friend or colleague that you think might be interested in listening to the podcast we'd be very grateful

SPEAKER_00: 31:29

yes and just one final thing if any of the listeners have any specific specific topics that they're interested in hearing more about and us producing a podcast on then please do email us at thecpoatzerkon-mc.co.uk we would love to hear your ideas and thank you everyone for listening

SPEAKER_01: 31:49

hope you have a wonderful and successful day