How to Recognize Bullying, Part 3: Mobbing

From Jim: This is tenth in a series of seventeen blog posts on workplace bullying and related topics running Monday, July 2, 2012 to Sunday, August 12, 2012.  

One pastor writes:

“Mobbing” fits to a T what happened to me in the last church I served. I still need to come to terms with what happened because I couldn’t imagine it even existing, let alone happening to me.  All I knew is that it was abusive and it didn't make any sense. It started small, then spread. I resigned feeling like a complete failure. Ultimately, I just wanted out.  It's been six months, and I still struggle with the sense of failure and the dejection that goes along with it.

Heinz Leymann, the Swedish psychologist whose pioneering research laid the foundation for current thinking on bullying, defines mobbing as "hostile and unethical communication which is directed in a systematic way by one or a number of persons mainly toward one individual… These actions take place often (almost every day) and over a long period (at least for six months) and, because of this frequency and duration, result in considerable psychic, psychosomatic and social misery. "

Kenneth Westhues: “[associates] in a given [organization] identify in their midst a fundamentally flawed character, an intolerable workmate whom they appropriately marginalize, punish, and seek to eliminate.”  

MOBBING IS...

• Emotional abuse in the workplace.
• "Ganging up" by co-workers, subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation.
• Malicious, nonsexual, non-racial, general harassment.
• Mobbing is also a wolfpack mentality

All the observed actions have the common denominator of being based on the desire to "get at a person" or punish him/her, and so include:

1. The victim's reputation (rumor mongering, slandering, holding up to ridicule).
2. Communication toward the victim (the victim is not allowed to express him/herself, no one is speaking to him or her, continual loud-voiced criticism and meaningful glances).
3. The social circumstances (the victim is isolated).
4. The nature of or the possibility of performing in his/her work (no work given, humiliating or meaningless work tasks).
5. Violence and threats of violence.

Here is Kenneth Westhues’ Checklist of Mobbing Indicators, from Workplace Mobbing in Academe:

• By standard criteria of job performance, the target is at least average, probably above average.
• Rumours and gossip circulate about the target’s supposed misdeeds: “Did you hear what she did last week?”
• The target is not invited to meetings or voted onto committees, is excluded or excludes self.
• Collective focus on a critical, "defining" incident that “shows what kind of man he really is.”
• Shared conviction that the target needs some kind of formal punishment, “to be taught a lesson.”
• Unusual timing of the decision to punish, e. g., apart from the annual performance review.
• Emotion-laden, defamatory rhetoric about the target in oral and written communications.
• Formal expressions of collective negative sentiment toward the target, e. g. a vote of censure, signatures on a petition, meeting to discuss what to do about the target.
• High value on secrecy, confidentiality, and collegial solidarity among the mobbers.
• Loss of diversity of argument, so that it becomes dangerous to “speak up for” or defend the target.
• The adding up of the target’s real or imagined venial sins to make a mortal sin that cries for action.
• The target is seen as personally abhorrent, with no redeeming qualities; stigmatizing, exclusionary labels are applied.
• Disregard of established procedures, as mobbers take matters into their own hands.
• Resistance to independent, outside review of sanctions imposed on the target.
• Outraged response to any appeals for outside help the target may make.
• Mobbers’ fear of violence from target, target’s fear of violence from mobbers, or both.

Links:

Where it all began: Heinz Leymann’s Mobbing Encyclopedia.  Leymann’s pioneering research has laid the foundation for the understanding of bullying and mobbing today.    

The Mobbing Portal

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