Bullies don’t just exist in school halls and schoolyards. Just when we think we’re done and over with with that phase, we find ourselves dealing with the same thing in our adult lives. This webinar aims to shed light on the bullying that transpires in the workplace and what can be done on an individual and organizational level to mitigate bullying and bully-proof these spaces.
This session’s speaker is Tracy C. Ertl, the owner and lead instructor for HeroLight Training. She has served in the public safety communications field for almost 3 decades and is now sharing her expertise with public safety students and professionals nationally and internationally.
Specifics Tracy discussed in this session include:
- What is bullying based on its intention, motivation, and source.
- How bullying not only victimizes the person being bullied, but also the person committing the act, and the bystanders.
- How bullying brings toxicity and stress in an already demanding and pressure-driven workplace.
- The four types of bullying that we may observe or experience in the workplace, behaviors that fall under each, and examples of what it may look like.
- Statistics that illustrate the prevalence of bullying behaviors in the workplace and its impact on industries and the economy.
- The effects of bullying in the workplace in terms of:
- Productivity, efficiency, absenteeism and staff levels, recruitment, training, and retention
- Use of organizational time and resources to manage bullying situations.
- Employee morale and organizational image and reputation.
- Costs for incompliance of occupational health and safety laws and potential lawsuits.
- Increased premiums for insurance and workers comp.
- The eight research-recognized bully types, their characteristics, behavior, and other tendencies and how these impact the work process.
- The different areas we can work on to break the bullying cycle.
- Understanding the risk factors brought about by the nature of the public safety profession.
- Acknowledging the seriousness of the situation and how anyone is vulnerable to bullying.
- Not choosing “neutrality” and instead standing up and reporting incidents of bullying.
- Establishing a positive organizational culture where bullying is not tolerated by training new team members on healthy interpersonal relationships.
- Interacting with the bully to compromise and try to understand the root of their behavior.
- Documenting the incidents to serve as supporting evidence for incident reports.
- Practicing self-care, having a support system, and seeking professional help to process bullying incidents.
- Doing research and being educated on policies surrounding bullying, mistreatment, and verbal abuse to serve as a guide on your next steps.
- Talking to your supervisor or someone who has authority to seek advice and assess the situation.
- Finding a trusted colleague to share your experiences with and verify if they’ve observed or experienced the same thing.
- Points to self-reflect on as to whether you are possibly being bullied or are perceived as a workplace bully.
- Strategies to bully-proof new colleagues by teaching them the types of people, communication tactics when dealing with a bully, and the root cause of bullying behavior.
- Moving away from a report-admonish-punish approach to one where both the bully and the bullied do inner work to address the bullying behavior that is a symptom of a much deeper problem.
- The four points that individuals and organizations can do to address bullying holistically through self-awareness, social awareness, self-care and wellness, and implementing an anti-bullying policy.
Points touched upon during the Q&A are about:
- Differentiating bullying from hazing and harassment.
- Whether silent treatment, deliberately not learning how to pronounce someone’s name, or gaslighting are considered bullying.
- The dangers of gaslighting in organizational culture.
- The probability that a person can fall into more than one type of bully category.
- Management’s apathy about ongoing bullying because the bullies are the good performers.
Other Webinars with this Speaker
- Feb 8: Stress Relief and Communications
- March 29: Protecting 911 Center Interpersonal Relationships (this webinar)
Resources and Handouts
- Handout: Self Assessment
Audience Comments
- “Tracy Erl is fabulous!” — S
- “I feel I have learned some areas of bullying that I need to work on as a person. I also feel I have a clarification on my ways of coping with bullying are sometimes targeted within my agency.” — Shannon
- “It was all really great information I think a series on this topic to get into even more detail and have more opportunity for question and answer would be amazing — Michelle
- “This webinar highlighted many aspects of bullying and bullying behaviors I have observed in the past. I feel that knowledge is power & if we know better, we can do better. The speaker was highly knowledgeable about the subject and I enjoyed learning more. Thank you.” — Janeen
- “The 8 Research Recognized Bully Types was incredibly helpful. This was a great webinar. Thank you!” — Jennifer
- “The different types of bullies really brought home how some the described behaviors are a form of bullying. Also as a manager, I need to be proactive and have an action plan on how to prevent bullying in the workplace.” — Carrie
- “Different styles of bullying; never thought about that before!” — Mary Jean
- “I love how both verbal/non-verbal, physical, examples were given. I think it also had us take a closer look at ourselves.” — Megan
- “The different kinds of bullies, I didn’t know there was types. I also didn’t realize there was specific behaviors that fell into categories. Thank you so much for talking about this topic and for continuing to advocate. I really appreciate all the work that you are doing.” — Brittany
- “Totally enjoyed the topic and the speaker!” — Christine
