trauma-informed
workplace management Practices
Are you an employer?
Become part of the solution to prevent cruelty to children… and increase your bottom line.
It really can start with you!
keep the best workers in your business…
Understand how workplace bullying can lead to sibling abuse victimization and cause turnover…
Lessen the long-term effects of childhood trauma on your employees.
get a proper perspective on preventable workplace stress...
Sibling abuse’s ramifications reach far beyond the home. Learn how you can help cut it off!
From The Desk of OUR Executive Director:
A workplace trauma survivor story
My father was a brilliant, hard-working man dedicated to excellence who lived by his ethical and moral convictions. But my father carried residual effects of PTSD from his time in Vietnam as a fighter pilot.
Twice he ejected from his F-4 Phantom jet: once from a mid-air collision during a training exercise, and once during a combat mission.
Adding this war trauma to his zealous nature for excellence at work, he often was targeted for workplace bullying and mistreatment by his less-devout managers.
I remember the problems he would have with one boss after another boss after another… It seemed like they took pleasure in harassing him and pushing his buttons.
Those managers thought they were just having fun with a seemingly “over-sensitive” man, to see if they could get him to lose his cool…
But those managers didn’t consider that kids were waiting for their employee—whose PTSD they triggered—to explode when he came home from work.
(Of course, the two older kids then reproduced their dad’s aggression toward their youngest sibling—me).
When a manager has “fun” with his employees and harasses them at work, that spirit of abuse will very likely reproduce itself through the employee. The spirit uses and abuses at work, then goes home with the victim, and the victim becomes the “aggressor”.
Children easily become the new target of the aggression and victimization when a bullied employee transitions to his role as dad at home.
Eventually my dad got a dream job as a NASA-affiliate logistics engineer in Cape Canaveral and his career really took off. But the toll had long ago been taken on our family dynamic.
Work is highly beautiful unto the Lord. One’s job represents the opportunity for financial stability, longevity, prosperity.
When a manager takes advantage of and misuses their authority, their actions can affect all areas of their employees’ home life.
Research shows the #1 reason a boss becomes a bully is their own insecurity or fear of failure. While low-performing workers can be targets of bullying, it’s more likely that top-performers (aka “stars”) will be targeted. The Harvard Business Review article below sheds light on this high-cost dynamic.
Bullies try to look like stars, but in reality they bolster their mediocre performance by getting good at taking credit for other people’s work. When an employee stands up to them, the bully manager will get abusive with the employee and use fear tactics (intimidation, gaslighting, calling unnecessary meetings) to protect themselves and keep looking good to the other employees, managers or higher-ups.
Decide today to think about the consequences of your fears. Decide today to regard others as better than yourself. Live your life and accept the privilege of your position as a boss to help children be protected from abuse at home.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Rosinski
What motivates a bully boss?
Star performers at work are often targets of bullying by their managers or coworkers.
This Harvard Business Review article by Sherry Moss explains why.
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Social Dominance Theory postulates that some people have more of a tendency toward “social dominance orientation” (SDO) than others. People with high SDO are more likely to have “a view of the world as a competitive, dog-eat-dog environment of winners and losers.” They’re attracted to institutions and professions that enhance and reinforce social hierarchies and will tend to discriminate against individuals from lower-status groups. As such, individuals high in SDO seek to reinforce inequality between groups in order to sustain their access to resources such as power, status, and wealth. Conversely, individuals with low SDO attach more importance to cooperation, egalitarianism, and humanitarianism.
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Current research shows that high performers may experience bullying when they’re supervised by bosses high in social dominance orientation.
This is because high performers represent a threat to supervisors who place a high value on their dominant position in the hierarchy.
To such a boss, an up-and-coming subordinate who performs beyond expectations might replace them, supersede them, or garner some of the resources normally reserved for them, such as status, attention from higher-ups, or advancement opportunities.
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High performers would benefit by appealing to such a supervisor’s superior hierarchical status to signal their respect for rank.
This might be done by “sharing the spotlight” with the boss, acknowledging both publicly and privately the instrumental role their boss played in their accomplishments.
They might also share with their supervisor any additional resources they enjoy as a result of their performance. These acts may help reduce the level of threat experienced by the high SDO supervisor and thereby reduce the chances that the high performer will be bullied.
Employers be aware
Bully bosses cause especially higher rates of turnover in “star” performing employees.
Company leadership should be particularly disturbed by this. No employee deserves to be bullied. But driving out top talent is a threat to the well-being of your company.
To combat this, senior leaders have several options:
Create a work culture where social dominance is discouraged by rewarding supervisors for protecting, supporting, developing, and promoting (rather than undermining) high-performing subordinates.
Consider screening supervisors for high SDO as part of pre-employment personality profiling. Adding in an additional screen for social dominance orientation is low-cost and low-risk.
High subordinate performance should benefit both subordinates and supervisors. Even though this seems obvious, many supervisor evaluation processes do not acknowledge the value of developing/elevating top talent.
Top management should be vocal about how they want high performers treated. High SDO supervisors see hierarchy and status as highly important. Since they’re motivated to maintain their own status, they also respect those of higher status. High SDO supervisors respond especially well to directives from top managers. Clear messaging about the treatment of “star” subordinates can lessen the temptation for them to bully their best employees.
~ adapted from Sherry Moss's article at hbr.org
You really need to ask this:
What’s workplace trauma caused by bullying costing you?
trauma-inducing workplace concepts
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the practice of psychologically manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity, memory, or powers of reasoning; it often occurs over an extended period of time and (especially in high performing employees) can lead to confusion, loss of confidence, uncertainty of mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator
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Increased alertness where the bullied individual is constantly assessing potential threats around; a state of increased alertness where a victim becomes extremely sensitive to surroundings, feel like you’re alert to any hidden (often falsely identified) dangers from other people or the environment
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a word bully-abusers commonly use to label their targets after harassing them, especially when their target speaks up or calls out the abusive behavior