James Williamson interviews Diane Caney, Dewayne Everettsmith, Graham Gourlay and Alison Smith about their second book, More Shocking Truths About Workplace Bullying.
James: So, you’re an unlikely mix – Dewayne you’re a new addition to the team – you’re a musician with an interest in event production and a background in Aboriginal health. What prompted you to join the team?
Dewayne: Alison is my aunty and I have the greatest respect for her. I could see that along with Diane and Graham, the team was wanting to author a broad cultural change,to make workplace bullying a thing of the past. I think that by working together, through words, actions, music, art and the way we live … we can start a movement. I’d like to be part of that. Who wouldn’t?
Graham: If I might add, for us, the powerful forces behind what we’re doing aren’t those of us who have our names on a book – rather it’s the anguished souls we’ve known and have worked with who’ve been bullied and who’ve suffered dreadfully. I think that just by being present – by being in the space of confronting this workplace evil – we’re contributing to the momentum for purging it.
James: Graham – you’re doing a PhD on how to prevent bullying. What are you finding so far?
Graham: In a nutshell, looking at the literature and research so far, pretty much nothing we’ve done over the past thirty years has worked. Now, that may sound shocking, and it is, but I think we have to shift the paradigm – to stop pretending that anti-bullying policies, compliance processes and stress management are going to work. I think we need a new model which is more concerned with having a different kind of conversation in the workplace. I think we need to create a climate of safety and trust in our workplaces – and to promote collaboration and support. There’s a lot of research to support the fact that where collaboration flourishes, bullying can’t take hold.
James: Diane,you have such a passion for writing. What is it about this new book which excites you most?
Diane: Through our first book we wanted to alert everyone to a single shocking truth – that bullying in the workplace is dangerous. It is so harmful to people’s physical, emotional and mental health. We used the word ‘shocking’ because we wanted to make people aware of the fact that just as an electrical shock can harm and/or kill, so too can workplace bullying.
But, workplace bullying is a complex thing. That’s why we’re writing a series of books. The second book covers quite a few ‘truths’. One that stands out to me is that after being bullied in the workplace, so many people feel as if they’ve been thrown on the scrap heap. Often the person who’s been bullied is abandoned by their workmates. Whether we like to admit it or not, we don’t want to hang around with people who aren’t part of the ‘in crowd’, especially when a serial bully is calling the shots. We often fear that the bully will turn on us.
Alison: After the bullied person becomes unwell and goes off work, there aren’t many people who understand how desperately harmed that person feels. It’s not the same as someone breaking their leg at work. Not many people send flowers, or good wishes for their recovery, and sometimes no one even knows where the person has gone. This lack of support shown for the bullied person can be very distressing for them.
James: Alison and Dewayne, you’re both palawa people, and Dewayne you’re also part of the kurnia/gunyai (or koori) nation. Is that part of your message as well?
Alison: We want to promote respect. In the book we point out that tolerating disrespect can lead to bullying. We talk about ‘nipping disrespect in the bud’ by having the courage to speak up when work colleagues are disrespectful. And, I think this is the same for Aboriginal people in the broader context. People can be so disrespectful about our culture, our history, our heritage. We want to promote the idea of being respectful to everyone – not just in the workplace, but in society, and especially in our local communities.
Dewayne: I’m new to this but what’s really struck me is this need to intervene early when someone is being disrespectful – and doing that in a way that Graham calls ‘relationship-warming’ – so not meeting aggression with aggression.
Diane: We have to learn to speak up early – otherwise, people who lack empathy can claim that they had no idea that their behaviours caused offence or harm.
Dewayne: When I first saw what Alison and her mates were doing, I thought … people know – they know when they’ve been disrespectful, but now I’m starting to realise that often they don’t. And, that can be the same with people who don’t understand Aboriginal culture – they don’t respect it, and we need to tell those people that their disrespect is hurtful to us.
James: So, you’re promoting respect in the workplace and in broader society?
Graham: Absolutely. We recently went to the North West Coast of Tasmania for WorkSafe Month and after we presented on ‘ToleratingDisrespect Can Lead to Bullying’ we were approached by a fellow in the audience who asked, ‘What hope do we have when we see our leaders tearing strips off one another in our Houses of Parliament across the nation, across the world?’
Diane: We actually write about that in both books. Houses of Parliament are very public workplaces. We are going to be sending some letters to our leaders, and maybe we’ll start some change.org petitions,to call on our parliamentarians to start to model respectful behaviours. They are our leaders, and seeing them behave disrespectfully to their colleagues sends a powerful message to our children, our young people and our workplace leaders. We don’t want to accept that this kind of disrespect, and sometimes, this sort of out and out bullying, is okay. It’s not.
James: I noticed that you have a chapter on psychopaths and narcissists being the most dangerous sorts of bullies. Can you explain that a bit more?
Graham: There’s an Australian forensic psychologist, John Clarke, who’s written a great book called Working with Monsters. He talks about the dangers of workplace psychopaths because they not only lack empathy – they actually gain pleasure from harming people. He explains that people with this sort of antisocial personality disorder are quite prevalent in society. Clarke says it’s estimated that between one and three adult males in every 100 are psychopathic, and around one in every 200 adult females. So, for a city the size of Sydney, that equates to as many as 90 000 male and 30 000 female psychopaths. This means we must be on the alert for this type of person in our workplaces, and we believe that our industry watchdogs could usefully assist workers by providing checklists of what to look for in problematic workmates (to help prevent harm).
Diane: In the book, we refer to the office psychopath as meaning a person who lacks empathy to the point that they either will not or cannot comprehend that their behaviours are harmful to those around them. Clarke says it’s best to move away from workplaces where they are. But we believe that we also need to start eradicating them from our workplaces. It’s not fair to expect victims to uproot their lives and leave their jobs. Workplaces must become more aware of the dangers these people pose. Until then, we suggest some strategies that can help people to cope in the workplace.
Alison: The idea of ‘reframing the situation’ is powerful. Recognising that it’s ‘not just you’ can really help people. If they can remember that the person with the bullying behaviours may well be ill, that can be a real turning point. It doesn’t make the behaviour okay, but it does move the person who’s suffering away from feeling as if it’s all their fault.
James: And narcissists?
Dewayne: We don’t recommend that we all go off and start diagnosing our workmates, but the truth is that antisocial personality disorders exist. That’s a given. People who suffer from narcissismcan be very controlling and when they’re in positions of power, they often deny their employees autonomy, even for the most basic of decisions. The lack of feeling trusted can result in high levels of stress and anxiety for people. Also, when working with narcissists, their demands can change on a whim, and personal humiliation is often the punishment they dish out when people don’t achieve an outcome within timeframes (which are often set in an arbitrary way). With narcissists, it’s ‘all about them’, so they often discredit others, and take credit for work they didn’t do. They often use fear and guilt to control and dominate co-workers. This is all designed to prevent their co-workers from calling them out on their abusive behaviour.
James: So, they’re very hard to work with?
Alison: They are. We have free worksheets on our website about what to do. The main thing is to ‘reframe the situation’ so that you remember what’s going on, and don’t get so caught up in the dynamic. But, also we’re going to be lobbying Safe Work Australia about the need for checklists so that people begin to realise the dangers of these antisocial personality disorders.
Graham: We believe that our workplaces need to recruit so that these sorts of personality traits are not favoured. We want managers and executives who have empathy. This will lead to more collaborative, harmonious teams which are more productive as well.
James: Last time I interviewed you, we spoke about speaking up rather than reporting bullying. Is this still your theory?
Alison: Look, we’ve all had a bad day at work. We might have beenoff-hand with a colleague (perhaps someone we were managing). Think about this scenario: what if, rather than letting you know that he or she found your behaviour disrespectful, that person started keeping a diary about you, and noted down example after example of your allegedpoor behaviour. You have no idea that they are upset and have felt bullied by you. And then, one day, HR visits you to say, ‘Sorry, there’s been a formal complaint of bullying made against you.’
How would you feel?
Wouldn’t you prefer that the person had simply had the courage to say, ‘Look, I’m sorry but I found what you just said really disrespectful – could you please consider how it made me feel?’
Graham: Alison’s right. A bully – no matter how awful they’re being – cannot know that their behaviour is causing offence if they’re never told. And, many an abrupt senior executive has used this fact as an excuse for their ongoingpoor treatment of a colleague.
James: So, you don’t believe in reporting bullying?
Graham: Not at all – sometimes bullying must be reported. Especially in the case of the workplace sociopath or psychopath. Their ‘empathy levels’ are SO low that they are almost incapable of experiencing empathy at all, and studies have shown that they actually gain pleasure (or experience no conscience pangs at all) over harming workmates.
Dewayne: Like Diane said earlier, people need to be made aware about how people with antisocial personality disorders behave. People like this can cause serious injury in the workplace, especially if they are left unchecked.We want recruitment strategies to ensure that people with antisocial personality disorders are less likely to make it through into the workplace, especially into positions of power, which are the positions to which they most aspire, of course.
Diane: Obviously people with these disorders have industrial rights. And if they’re in the workplace, we can’t simply sack them, but we can deal humanely with them around the damage they’re causing and not just cover it up.
James: You talk about the difficulty of recovering from bullying. How hard is it really?
Diane: It’s seriously hard work. Many report that recovering from bullying can take years. Our third book is going to be dedicated to that subject because we’ve met so many people who are train wrecks as a result of workplace bullying.
Alison: That’s what makes bullying so evil – it starts off in a way that’s barely detectable, but by the time it’s taken hold, it’s like an octopus – the victim feels trapped and, sometimes almost unable to explain what it is that the bully does to make them feel so damaged.
Graham: Some of the people I’ve spoken to over the years have had all their confidence robbed. We want to return their confidence to them – to empower people through insight and information.
James: And you have a website with some information on it?
Dewayne: We have one websitebut two URLs: www.empathyandcourage.com or www.courageandempathy.com. We thought people might forget which way around it was, so the key words are courage and empathy – the order they’re in doesn’t matter. We think empathy is important for all of us to have, but especially our leaders, and we think we all need the courage to speak up when people lack empathy to the point that they show us disrespect.
James: Sounds good. When’s the Launch?
Diane: The launch of our second book is at 11am on the first day of the eleventh month at the Baha’i Centre.We like ones – 1.11 at 11am.
James: And Dewayne, you’ll be playing some music?
Dewayne: I’m not sure what yet, but I’m sure that some music will be on the agenda.
Alison: We’re hoping he’ll write some songs to promote the message over time.
James: If you could condense your message to one sentence what would it be?
Alison: Yeah, tolerating disrespect will lead to bullying. I’ve found that to be true.
Graham: Collaborating, working in relationship drowns out bullying.
Diane: I’m really focussing on the need to be ‘relationship-warming’ when we nip disrespect in the bud. It’s so easy to nip at the disrespect, but to show disrespect when you do it.
Alison: It’s so easy to meet aggression with aggression, or disrespect with disrespect. It’s harder to want to ‘warm the relationship’ when the other person is being aggressive.
James: And, you, Dewayne?
Dewayne: By stopping disrespect, we’ll stop bullying. I think we’re going to look back and think, why did we ever tolerate disrespect?
James: Why, indeed?
James Williamson was responsible for developing the Theatre Royal’s Backspace in the early 80s, and has a strong background in theatre production and stage work in New York and Melbourne, including La Mama and The Australian Performing Group. He has also lived and worked in Japan where he studied the history and use of indigo dyes. His art and collected artefacts can be found on his website, Klektik on ETSY: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/klektik. He is currently involved in developing the forthcoming Kep International Children’s Writers’ Festival, Cambodia.
The launch of Graham, Diane, Dewayne and Alison’s second book is on 1.11 at 11am at the Baha’i Centre in Hobart.https://www.facebook.com/events/961030310579760/?fref=ts
More info – www.empathyandcourage.com
