Good Performance v/s Bad Behaviour

"Congrats! Mr. A, you have been promoted to a Manager!"

Mr. A has 12 years of work experience and is known as a devoted and hard working individual. A performer at his work, Mr. A has many achievements to his credit and has progressed from an execution role to a managerial role.

Performing as an individual is very different than performing in a team. And especially when you are leading & managing a team, a person requires different set of skills and competencies. A person may be good at executing activities on his own, but getting work done from people might not come so easy.

Going back to Mr. A, he has been awarded as the "Best Performer of the Year", has been appreciated enough in his appraisals and is the apple of the eye of the top management. Mr. A follows certain rules of a manager that most at his level do. He believes in empowering his team, but at the same time follows a ‘school-teacher with a stick in hand’ approach. His leadership style can be categorized as directive and traditional.

So are his subordinates convinced with his style of management?

Mr. A is resolute on getting results from his team. Hence smallest of errors made by the subordinate become a big issue to be dealt with. He wants his team to be as perfect in work as he is. After all, his performance will not shine if the subordinates don't obtain the desired results. Being impulsive and very straight forward, like Mr. A appreciates good work of his subordinates promptly, he also sometimes loses his cool over his subordinates mistakes and yells at them without realizing that everybody else is also listening. Instead of taking the latter to a secluded place for counseling, he loses patience and unintentionaly creates an embarrassing situation for the subordinate. And this does not end in a minute or a two, but becomes a 10-15 minute ordeal for the subordinate.

Mr. A sometimes doesn’t even care to make sure whether the error is actually done, and passes a judgmental statement at the subordinate, who ends up justifying for an offence never committed. He also gets a bit personal, so much so, that Mr. A actually forgets the mistake in question and sounds like a spouse taunting the other for all the flaws he has figured out in his entire lifetime.

Well, the result of the same turns out to be expected -- subordinates body language in front of other colleagues changes for the rest of the day, he/she feels highly embarrassed and de-motivated, sometimes even sheds a tear or a two when the going gets tough. And often you see this subordinate smiling his way to glory, relaxed and all enthusiastic when Mr. A is not around. He seems to be more productive when the bullying boss is not in vicinity.

Now let’s see what is Mr. A's behaviour with the rest of the colleagues. Mr. A shares a good rapport with his colleagues being extrovert by nature, and is respected by all for his work, helpful and friendly nature. However, he is famous for being cynical and sarcastic and spreads this kind of culture amongst all. After all, you give back what you get, especially when it is comments that you do not enjoy listening to. Mr. A sounds tyrannical at times, is rude and tries to shield his sarcasm with humour, but obviously does not succeed at all times. The outcome of his nasty, teasing and hurtful jokes results in employees hitting on each other for every small thing. Many instances have ended up in conflicting situations when some employee on that day chooses to not ignore the hurtful remarks but take necessary action and revolt against such behavior. The workplace then becomes like a warfront where the ammunition most used are devastating words.

So, I keep wondering about this Good Performance v/s Bad Behaviour. Definitely, Mr. A is a bully at the workplace, but he also is a good performer. Active bullying is manifested through clear evidences, but passive bullying where the person does not actually seem like a tormenter but acts like a slow poison, is difficult to deal with. You cannot even ignore it and you can’t even complain about it.

So what is the plight of the subordinate???

• The verbal and emotional abuse results in loss of productivity

• Increase in level of absenteeism

• Emotional stress to deal with

• Lack of team-work

• Reduced efficiency and increased errors due to fear

What results in such bullying behavior by the boss?

• Aggression and passion to perform

• Personal nature and temperament

• Impulsiveness / lack of tolerance power

• Newly acquired managerial responsibilities and the resulting pressure to perform

• Lack of communication skills

• Lack of leadership and team handling skills

According to a study by the Employment Law Alliance in 2008, almost half of all employees have been targeted by a bully boss. The study also revealed the following:

• 81 percent of bullies are managers.

• 50 percent of bullies are women and 50 percent are men.

• 84 percent of targets are women.

• 82 percent of targets ultimately lost their job.

• 95 percent of bullying is witnessed.

MY QUESTION:

1. As an HR what should be done to curtail such behavior to protect the victim as well as improve the culture of the organization?

2. If the bullying boss is a performer and contributor, should such behavior (keeping in mind that the boss is not a crude or raging bully, but subtle bully) be ignored? If not, what strategy needs to be used to counsel the boss, such that he does not get demotivated but at the same time takes corrective action for his conduct?

- VAISHALI PARGAONKAR