Mobbing
It
has been called a form of psychological terror. Mobbing is a word first used by Dr. Heinz Leymann, a German
industrial psychologist, to describe the phenomena whereby a group of people
target one individual to try to make him or her leave the workplace. Mobbing can also be used in a community
or neighborhood as described in the book, High Conflict People In Legal
Disputes, by William A. Eddy, where “cognitive distortions cause internal
distress’ in a ringleader, an “external target is blamed for the distress, a
mob or “advocates are sought to help blame” the target, “emotional facts are
created against” a target, “emotional persuasion wins advocates”, then
“advocates persuade new advocates,” and “peripheral persuasion” is used by the
mobbers to “persuade dispute resolvers to blame” the target. Whether in the workplace or the
community, the group is always guided by a ringleader, authorities on the
subject say. The ringleader gets
supporters and friends and even bystanders to use passive and active aggressive
tactics against a target to force him or her out.
The
phenomena of mobbing in the workplace was introduced to American audiences by
Noa Zanolli Davenport Ph.D., Ruth Distler Schwartz, and Gail Pursell Elliott
with their book, Mobbing – U.S.A. Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace.
Each of the books three authors had
once been the target of mobbing.
Based on the research of Dr. Leymann, the book mobbing was designed to
be a self-help tool and a resource for those who have been targeted. What the authors want those to endure
this type of trauma to know is – “You are not alone if this happens to
you. There are ways to protect
yourself.”
What
happens in mobbing is that over a period of weeks co-workers, colleagues, superiors,
subordinates orchestrate a reign of psychological terror in order to get a
target out while portraying the target as being at fault. The purpose of the active and passive
aggressive tactics of the mobbers is “to dominate, subjugate, and eliminate”
the target from the workplace. The
means to achieve those ends are a continuous series of “harassing, abusive and
often terrorizing behaviors” used in many and different variations.
The
authors of the book Mobbing tell us, there is usually a precipitating incident,
a conflict. It could be an
irrelevant event, but it’s the excuse that sets things in motion. “Because the conflict over procedures
or tasks, personalities or values, and unethical behaviors, remains unresolved,
it escalates,” the authors said.
Management often misjudges the situation isolating the target even
further. The target is the one who
is labeled mentally ill or difficult, the authors of mobbing contend. The mobbers, the authors tell us, are
often driven by jealousy and envy stemming from insecurity or fear. Their personalities are characterized
as “excessively controlling, cowardly, neurotic, and power hungry.” Mobbing exists, the authors said, “in
all types of organizations and industries. It can occur in large or small companies, in government, in
nonprofits, in the healthcare industry, in education. Anywhere.” Once
the dynamics begin, there is little or nothing the target can do to stop it,
the authors said.
Gail
Pursell Elliott, one of the authors of Mobbing, is a co-moderator to Guy
Croyle, the founding moderator of the Nineveh Project, an online support group
for those who have been targets of mobbing, bullying, and scapegoating. Guy, as he is known to the online
support group has experience with bullying that dates back to 1996 when he
first began reading the research.
The Nineveh Project was undertaken, Guy explained, “with the realization
that the typical workplace is not a place where targeted individuals can find
help and affirmation. Likewise
close family members and friends are also normally unable to be objective or
advise the typical emotionally traumatized target.” Member volunteers from the online support group, The Nineveh
Project, and another online support group, Bully Online provided personal
accounts from their experiences.
The emails detailed the trauma the targets of mobbing endure –
continuous criticism, workplace intrigues filled with fabrications and
distortions, attempts to undermine the target’s status, being singled out by
the mob and having actions taken against them for trumped up reasons, being
isolated, overruled, demeaned, belittled, shouted at, threatened, overloaded
with work, or having much of their work taken away from them, having sick leave
denied, given responsibilities for which they were unqualified to engineer
their failure, having challenging goals set which are changed as they are
approached, having deadlines set and then changed without informing them so
that they appear unprepared, being misrepresented, seeing all they do and say
twisted and distorted, put through disciplinary procedures for trivial offenses
with little investigation of facts, being dismissed or coerced to leave or
leaving the workplace on their own after their spirits have been broken and
their health has been damaged.
“I
tried to write about my bullying experience,” one person wrote, “but it was
extremely emotional like I was going through the experience again and it makes
me feel ill. It is like being
mugged or raped. Trying to rehash
it brings back the memory of all the injustices, all the abuse.” Another wrote, “how can you explain the
verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse, day after day, week after week,
year after year, being professionally attacked and personally shamed,
humiliated, blamed for everything.”
One man said that he can’t forget that the night his daughter went out
to walk a neighbor’s dog and was killed, he might have gone with her had he not
been suffering from depression caused by the mobbing. “I wonder if those bullies realized what they’ve done,” he
wrote. A professor in a college
who was the target of mobbing wrote about the comment of a colleague which he
thought was telling – “If one person is the target,” the colleague had said,
“it takes the pressure off everyone else.” Bystanders sometimes join in the mobbing for fear if they
don’t, the ringleader might target them next.
“At
a spiritual level,” Guy Croyle, the moderator of the online support group
called The Nineveh Project said, “we must wonder if we as a society have not somehow
lost our moral compass (or worse yet, never had one to begin with). If envy is a factor, as Bristish
researcher, the late Tim Field and others believe, then this points to a
disturbing situation in which people who do behave ethically (i.e., who can
hold their own sense of envy in check, for example) are totally shocked to find
themselves on the wrong end of others who do not share these same
sensitivities. It’s quite easy to
understand why targets can typically go into bouts of self-doubt and self-blame. The world cannot possibly be this way,
they think; it must be something I have done wrong. And that creates a downward emotional spiral that only feeds
the problem and keeps the drama rolling right along.”
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