Dealing with Bullying: Ten Ways of Being: The First Five

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


Phyllis Beck Kritek writes from the perspective of a female nurse in a male doctor’s world.  With these two strikes against her, she knows what it is to negotiate at an uneven table.  When I faced my own challenges, her book is about all I had to work with.  I found two sections in particular, Masks of Manipulation and Ways of Being to be especially helpful.  I cover her Masks of Manipulation in my two-part Ways People Play Dirty.  What follows is adapted from Kritek’s book, Negotiating at an Uneven Table. 

Find and inhabit the deepest and surest place that your capabilities permit (informs the other nine)

This first “way of being” is the key to being able to engage the other nine ways of being.  It’s essential.  It involves identifying what makes you worthy at your core: what defines you as valuable, worthy, significant, and vital, and then living out of that knowledge throughout the conflict, afterwards, and into your healing journey.  Kritek writes: 

It is difficult to come to a table where many people define you as inferior, stupid, defective, or powerless and stay courageously grounded in your own sense of authentic worth.  It becomes harder when they bring your vulnerabilities to the table to discredit your efforts.  One of the nice things about being perceived as powerless at an uneven table, however, is that you have so little to lose. 

For the Christian, that deepest surest place is that he or she is a child of God, a son or daughter of God, deeply, deeply loved, whose savior has known betrayal and abuse himself.  Because of faith in Christ, we are adopted as God’s children, and loved as deeply as His only Son. We are forgiven for every wrong we have ever committed through his sinless life, his death on the cross for our sins, and his resurrection from the dead.  We stand before God completely accepted and deeply loved.  If God is for us, who can be against us? 

For the non-Christian who happens to believe in God, that deepest, surest place might be the Imago Dei – the Image of God.  Each of us, regardless of religion or irreligion, is created in the image of God.  We share divine qualities.  We derive from God significance and worth.  We matter because God matters, and he created us.  As we walk into adversity, remembering that we are a unique reflection of almighty God with a role and purpose in life, it can give us a rock by which to steady ourselves, a benchmark from which to regain our bearings, a lens through which to reclaim perspective. 

Whatever your world view, wherever you turn for deepest value and worth, it will be your compass to guide you through the storm.  Make it good. 

Be a truth teller

This goes beyond “telling the truth.”  It includes being open to our self-deceptions.  Kritek: 

If your truth is an obsession, it is not the truth.  If your truth harms or belittles another, it is not truth.  If your truth aims to diminish others, it is not truth.  These are all attacking behaviors posing as the truth.  They are pseudotruths and should not be mistaken for an effort at “truth” telling. 

She continues: 

It has become so commonplace to use truth destructively, even as a way of exercising dominant power, that even if your truth passes all these tests, it may be perceived as an obsession that harms, belittles, and diminishes others.  We have made it acceptable in our culture to use truth to do injury. 

Especially among the righteous. 

The motive of the truth teller is a critical factor.  Being unaware of my motives merely makes me dangerous, not innocent. 

Many negotiating tables are uneven precisely because certain truths are not invited to the table, leading to deliberate blind spots and necessarily unjust resolutions.  They may have to do with gender, race, deeply cherished but extra-biblical traditions (among Christians), but the effect is to exclude information – truth. 

Being a truth teller works two ways, as the next point illustrates. 

Honour your integrity, even at great cost

This not only includes telling the truth even when it hurts you, but that, in turn, is grounded in being true to who you are.  One pastor was honest in the face of withering criticism by his bullies, admitting the truth of their words where appropriate.  The mediators recognized his integrity and saw through his attackers disingenuous duplicity, which ultimately played a role in their being discredited and losing face in the community. 

But Kritek suggests that it weighs most heavily when it comes to trusting others to make our decisions for us.  Phyllis Kritek is a nurse and a woman, and so writes from a context of a male dominated (as if that were not enough) medical setting (do you challenge your doctor/boss often?).  She found that she was expected to concede her freedom of choice and her very will concerning decisions bearing directly on her to other, “superior” minds.  That she should question this on any level often left her more marginalized than ever.  Honouring your integrity may mean questioning authority and paying a price for doing so.  Honouring your integrity demands courage.  Attackers may try to use your weaknesses against you in an effort to silence you.  It may require honesty about your shortcomings while keeping your eye on the bigger issues. 

Find a place for compassion at the table

Most targets of bullying have a balanced sense of conscience and readily pull their punches or look to extend forgiveness at any sign of remorse or regret.  Bullies by definition have lost sight of the consequences of their bullying actions on their target, and will exploit the target’s good graces to their own advantage.  Find a place for compassion anyway. 

To be compassionate and forgive does not alter my commitment to finding a surer and deeper place, or being a truth teller, or honoring my personal integrity, but it takes the edge of harshness out of their manifestation and reminds me that all of us at the table are vulnerable and limited humans. 

Like truth telling, compassion works both ways: extend compassion to yourself too:

If I am harmed, I need to have enough compassion with myself to leave if this is wise, to give myself time to heal, and to stay away from tables that might further harm me until I am healed. 

Kritek continues that if we are unwilling to extend compassion, it is cause for us to look within ourselves, for the problem lies within.  And if we will listen with compassion to others, it will change the way we hear.  “If you come to a negotiation committed to compassion, you actually hear differently.” 

Draw a line in the sand without cruelty

This is where we set boundaries, and know when to walk away. 

1. Identify your line. This will require some reflection on your part, beforehand. 
2. Clearly communicate it, and early. 

Kritek describes people who come to a negotiation in two terms: claimers and creators.  Claimers come into the negotiation to claim what they believe is right for them.  Creators expect to synergize a third alternative.  When two claimers sit across from each other, the results are limited.  When two creators negotiate, the result is usually a wonderful third alternative neither had thought of before.  When a claimer and creator negotiate, the claimer usually “wins,” and the creator usually loses.  Unless the creator draws a line in the sand without cruelty.  They decide ahead of time what their line is, and they communicate it early, and clearly. 

When done right, rather than to be a form of manipulation, it becomes straightforward communication.  When a claimer seems to lay claim on their preconceived outcome, the creator can with integrity challenge him or her back: “I came to this negotiation to create a mutually acceptable resolution to our problem.  I am getting the sense that you are here to lay claim to the outcome you want.  Am I right about that?”  And the communication begins. 

Be aware that some facts may not be welcome at the table, that is, certain assumptions that are unspoken givens that create inequity, as is often the case in denominations that do not ordain women, or that speak of non-hierarchical government but that gives special deference to certain kinds of men (only).  Self-examination is also essential: drawing a line in the sand can be a form of self-righteousness.  It can be done with an edge, to hurt, to indulge in paybacks, in cruelty. 

But when done well, it can provide clarity and direction for truly constructive and empowering solution-building. 

Next time: The Other Five. Have a story?  Email me.