I love the New York Times.  Really. I start most days reading it online. But an article on May 10 left me reeling. “Backlash:  Women Bullying Women at Work”.  Oh, yikes! 

According to a study done by Workplace Bullying Institute (yes; they really exist), not only do women account for 40% of the reported bullying behavior, but 70% of the time they target other women.  I don’t even know where to begin.  The article jumps from a study on women bullies in the workplace (more on that in a moment), to the challenges of learning to be a good leader (much more on that) and ends up with a program in a woman’s prison to stop bullying. I don’t know about “backlash”, but by the time I got to the end I certainly had a case of mental whiplash!

Okay.  So, do I believe people (women and men) behave badly at work? Of course I do. Coming to work doesn’t make a tyrant a reasonable, much less warm and fuzzy, person.  However, I do not (repeat: do not) think it’s okay for anyone to feel fearful in the workplace —there’s enough fear in this world right now without having to go to work to round up more from  hostile colleagues or out-of-control bosses.

But this grade-school label “bullying” is really insidious—-and one more weapon in the arsenal of scare tactics used to frighten women (bully women?) into believing we are not, and never will be, effective in the workplace.    

A recent study by Catalyst, Inc. (mentioned in the NY Times article) has already depressed the heck out of us, confirming what we already suspected: no matter how women behave in the workplace, we’re “never just right”. When we’re firm and decisive, we’re too aggressive.  When we’re, neutral and egalitarian, we’re either dispassionate or wishy-washy.  And, just in case we dodged any of this, now we’re bullies, too. 

So what is bullying? According to the article and to the research, bullying behavior is bottom line, aggressive, hostile, and repeated over time.  In anecdotal examples provided by women who felt they were being bullied, (neither the article nor the website mentions asking both parties for their perceptions or getting any kind of independent validation) the scenarios ranged from  being coldly ignored, mocked, left in tears, labeled negatively, verbally overpowered, to being criticized.    

As an honest person (who is also a female boss) I want to come clean.  Given that very broad description of “bully”,  over the 40 years I’ve been in the workplace, I confess:  been there, done that—or at least some of that, to some extent. Have I ever ignored colleagues and/or employees?  Yes. Coldly? Maybe.  Certainly “coolly” if I wanted to let things calm down before I re-engaged.  Has there ever been a situation where someone cried?  Duh.  Sometimes the tears were because they were angry or frustrated—and they told me so.  I’m guessing sometimes it was because they felt hurt.  And, just for the record, a couple of times the person in tears has been a guy.  I promise:  I’ve never screamed at anyone—except with joy.  But I have criticized and labeled people’s behaviors, positively and negatively, although I would have sworn an oath it was called giving them feedback, which is a part of my responsibility. 

Sort of buried in the middle of this monster hit-parade, the article (finally) moved away from extremes, to describing the situations we can all recognize: those places in our careers where we (women and men) simply didn’t have the political, interpersonal, social, psychological skills to make us good leaders. We talked when we should have listened.  We re-acted when we should have inter-acted. We dashed when we should have dotted.  Is that bullying?  Or is that human, correctible error?  I’m going to say correctible error.  If bullying or just plain stupid objectionable, destructive behavior can be fixed in a women’s prison (which is where this frantic—-indeed frenzied—-article ended) then I’m holding out hope for all of us in run-of-the mill organizations.  

Submitted by: Janelle Shubert, Director, The Center For Women’s Leadership