Abusive Supervision And Other Health-Harming Behavior In The Workplace

Developed societies have been slow to acknowledge abuse, let alone educate the public and implement measures to prevent it. Domestic violence, for example, started to gain widespread public attention only in the 1970ies. It took another approximately 20 years for the passing of the  Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, 1994) which finally changed the way we view and deal with domestic violence. Similarly, mandatory reporting laws in case of suspected child abuse are phenomena of the 1960ies. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) was only passed in 1974.

The shortcomings in dealing with domestic abuse are not specific to the United States. Other developed countries, Germany and the United Kingdom, to name a few, have a relatively similar history. 

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to another area where abuse occurs regularly, however, has to-date escaped the public attention, as reflected in the shortage of literature and education: employee abuse.

One Of Five People Gets Abused By A Boss On Any Given Day

According to Harvey Hornstein, a Columbia University Professor,”90% of the U.S. workforce has at some point been subjected to abusive behavior” and “on any given day, one of five people gets abused by a boss.”

One of the most challenging aspects of employee abuse is that—at least in developed societies—it predominantly occurs in psychological form. Meaning, even though the behavior can have a severe impact, there are hardly any bruises or cuts that can help identify the damages done to an employee. Not only that, employee abuse, particularly in the white-collar workplace, often happens very subtly which makes it additionally difficult to identify the behavior and respond properly.

Domestic And Employee Abuse—Similarities

There are key similarities between domestic and employee abuse. Firstly, they both occur in connection to a place where affected individuals spend a significant amount of time. Therefore, the abuse can have a severe impact on an individual’s health and well-being. Secondly, affected individuals tend to be (or perceive themselves to be) economically dependent on the perpetrator(s). However, the dependency is generally not limited to economics. In the case of employees, they usually build their identities around their jobs. When they fear losing their jobs, they fear more than the loss of their economic well-being. Which brings us to the third similarity, abuse is about power and control operating in an environment of fear. The more fearful an individual, the more power a perpetrator is likely to have, and, subsequently, the more s/he can control the individual.

Current Legal Situation

There are no laws that protect employees from general abuse. Employees in the USA are protected from abuse under the law only if the abuse occurs in connection with protected traits such as race, national origin, gender, age, and other similar factors. Outside of this scope, employees may have protection under organizational policies.  

What Is Employee Abuse?

Employee abuse is the health-harming treatment of employees in the workplace which includes but is not limited to abusive supervision. Single incidents of misbehavior toward an employee generally do not constitute abuse.

The abuser can be anyone. However, due to the power imbalance created by the hierarchies in organizations, supervisors and managers are more likely to be the perpetrators. Health consequences can vary from depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal disorders, hair loss, self-doubt, forgetfulness to post-traumatic stress disorder. Abusive conduct can be overt or covert. Overt abuse includes behavior such as yelling, cursing, or throwing objects at an employee.

The rather covert forms of abuse include behavior such as talking down, belittling, lying, excessive criticism, gaslighting, bullying, excessive monitoring of work, lack of transparency and accountability, withholding of information or resources, devaluing employee’s credentials or work, interfering with work activities, delaying actions on matters of importance, preventing from expressing one’s self or a combination of these behaviors.

Employee abuse can also be a(n indirect) consequence of being expected to perform in a chaotic work environment; created, for example, by management inability to communicate properly or to establish logical processes, for which management does not take responsibility. Hierarchies in organizations provide certain individuals with notable power over others. The proper utilization of this power requires accountability. When individuals with power fail to hold themselves accountable, they can create havoc for subordinates.

We are now going to discuss more in detail two common abusive practices in the workplace.

Micromanagement

Micromanagement is the excessive monitoring of an employee’s work. It is not the same as a superior being detail-oriented. Micromanagement is also not an acceptable form of management; it is the result of an absence of proper management. Micromanagers lack the appropriate ability to delegate; a primary skillset required for the role of a supervisor or manager.

Micromanagement is a way to exert control. The perpetrator acts on his/her pathologies such as anxiety, deeply-rooted insecurities, or arrogance. It is one of the most dreaded and wide-spread challenges in the workplace. It can have serious health consequences. It destroys morale, confidence, and creativity. It not only hurts employees but also the organization. Depending on the severity of their behavior, micromanagers, in effect, prevent workers and themselves from doing their jobs because they require constant, superfluous interactions. However, micromanagers do not hold themselves accountable for the disruptions they cause. Lower productivity tends to be the outcome of micromanagement in the long-run.  

Fear And Coercive Power

Employers have coercive power to fire or otherwise punish employees if they don’t comply with the directions of management. They can use this tool in legitimate ways to ensure that workers are doing what they are supposed to and to keep the organization moving in the direction they desire. However, they can also use this tool to exploit and otherwise harm workers.  

One of the common ways coercive power is misused today is by pressuring employees to work at a health-harming speed by setting unrealistic expectations. The tool is highly effective because it maximizes output by exploiting the existential fears of employees. In fact, employers don’t even have to explicitly threaten employees with sanctions to coerce employees. In the USA, employees have such an immense fear of losing their jobs, they are relatively compliant, even in the absence of any threats. The US workforce is, in fact, astonishingly well-conformed, for a society that values liberty as much as we do. Employers can capitalize on these fears relatively easily if they desire to do so.  

Lack Of Public Education And Authority

There is an overall understanding that domestic abuse is not acceptable in our society today. There are countless non-profit organizations and government agencies that offer expert advice, education, and other resources to assist affected individuals. However, the same does not apply to employees who experience abuse in the workplace. Workplace bullying may be considered an exception, as education and non-profit organizations that cover the topic are on the rise. However, even bullying is to-date generally not dealt with very effectively.

Given the status quo, there is an array of opinions and suggestions in the media. They range from questioning if what feels abusive to an employee, is, in fact, abusive from an “objective” perspective to suggesting to prevent “meltdowns by recognizing triggers and proactively taking care of those small problems that tend to set the person off” (Monster.com), confronting the problem to drawing a lesson from getting sworn at by a boss. Abusive behavior tends to be played down or ignored particularly when the abuser is a successful individual; in an article published in 2006, the author praises Harvey Weinstein for his accomplishments while nonchalantly acknowledging him as one of the “great intimidators.” Fortunately, today, we have a better understanding of Weinstein’s legacy.

What we learn about abusive leaders like Weinstein should not surprise us because misconduct is rarely an isolated, single behavior. When individuals abuse the people they work with, they generally don’t stop after one or two incidents or in one or two areas, especially then when those around them fail to speak up or push back.  

Speaking Up Or Remaining Silent In View Of Wrongdoing

Educating the public on how best to deal with abuse in the workplace is crucial to a society that values human dignity. However, no matter the amount of available resources, at the end of the day, every individual must take responsibility for their own lives; in this case, the affected individuals have a choice to make, between being silent, not drawing healthy boundaries, letting themselves down versus standing up for themselves, speaking up, and drawing healthy boundaries; they have to make that choice regardless if they decide to stay or leave a particular organization.

Remaining silent may seem like the safer choice. However, over time, there is a significant price for that, most of which is generally hidden from the plain view—unexplained illnesses, back, neck and shoulder pain, ulcers, depression, and the long list goes on; however, the most painful price is a loss of confidence, self-esteem, and self-respect. 

There is no doubt that speaking up can be risky.  However, there are many reasons to do it anyway. An individual who speaks up in the workplace will have heightened self-esteem, be more confident and, subsequently, attract healthier relationships, professionally, and beyond; such a person is less likely to become a target of abuse in the future.

Professionalism—Silence, Looking Away, Lying?

Silence, looking away, and (letting others get away with) lying has become such an epidemic in workplaces; they are often equated with professionalism. One’s emotional intelligence even seems to be measured by how unmoved an individual remains in view of wrongdoings. Behavior that one would not tolerate anywhere else has become acceptable in the workplace.  Much of the misconduct is often in plain sight, for everyone to see; because the perpetrators can rely on a majority, if not all, to look away.

Subsequently, when one can no longer take it, it has become customary to leave an organization, without saying anything or even lying about the reasons for leaving, to ensure one doesn’t “burn any bridges.” On the other hand, many individuals “speak up” after they leave an organization or retire—when it is relatively safe to speak—, after having participated in keeping up the status quo in their organizations for many years; they write books in which they “finally tell it all.” We celebrate such individuals and award them with fame and fortune, instead of asking tough questions about their legacies and motives.

There is a notion that it is acceptable to become “someone else” in the workplace, professionals who do what they have to do to put food on the table. However, the workplace is not only where people spend their most productive hours, but also, all important decisions that affect the lives of others are usually made in places where people work; the Congress, The White House, the automobile industry, pharma, news outlets, detention centers, grocery stores, meat industry, animal shelters, fast food restaurants, and the long list goes on. Employees cannot simply detach themselves from the consequences of their actions or inactions in the workplace.

Plain Language and Diversity

It has been over twenty years now since I immigrated to the United States. However, a part of me was always an American, long before I ever set foot on this soil.

I thought that my excitement about this country would vanish at some point after I had gotten used to living here. However, 20-plus years later, it has not. The biggest reason for my continuing excitement is the one profound difference between the country where I was born and raised and the United States: exclusion versus inclusion.    

When I was growing up in Germany, the exclusion of “people like me”—individuals with immigrant parents—was the norm. (Unfortunately, not much has changed in that regard since.) The “natives” of the country generally referred to us bluntly as the “Ausländer” (foreigners) or (the children of) “Gastarbeiter” (guest workers). They hoped—and openly communicated to us—that one day we would “go back where we came from.” Most of us, however, never did because, among other reasons, we didn’t know where to “go back” to. We were born in Germany and had grown up there. Over time, the labels that were used for us changed. However, one thing remained the same—the certainty that we would never be a part of the German society, no matter what we accomplished, how much education we had, how we identified ourselves, or what contributions we made.

Until I immigrated to the USA, I could not properly articulate how my experiences in Germany affected me and why. This is because, despite Germany’s own awareness of its troubling history, and the country’s highly educated society, diversity knowledge is (to-date) very limited there. The country doesn’t even have a basic language to communicate many concepts related to the marginalization and exclusion of arbitrary groups. A term or concept such as “inclusion,” for example, only became known there after Germany passed its anti-discrimination laws in 2006. Until recently, the term was used in reference to individuals with disabilities only, because inclusion efforts based on ethnicity, race, or religion have been highly controversial and sensitive topics in Germany.  

It was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, while attending Western Michigan University, where I was first introduced to the language of marginalization and exclusion of arbitrary groups. What was most surprising to me was the amount of research data, knowledge, and scholarly work that is available in this arena in the USA. Credit for building this foundation and knowledge, naturally, goes to the countless African American scholars, civil rights leaders, and their allies. Thanks to them, I could better understand the dynamics of my experiences in Germany. I soon started to study the subject in-depth, conduct research, and write papers about the topic. The Kalamazoo community was integral to my growth and learning in this regard. It offered me a lot of opportunities to learn, get involved, volunteer and become a contributing member of my community. Kalamazoo was the first place where I truly felt at home.

After finishing my studies in Michigan, I moved to Washington, DC. In Washington D.C. I worked on a biological defense program at Georgetown University. My work involved reviewing hundreds of articles in several languages and compiling critical information into succinct reports that consisted of a few short paragraphs. Since our work involved extensive writing, we received a lot of training in this arena. Our primary instructor was a colleague who was very passionate about the English language and clear and concise writing. She taught us how to write reports using short sentences but did not sacrifice crucial information that our clients needed. We learned the value of plain language and the ability to communicate exactly what we wanted, concisely and transparently. One of the most challenging—and rewarding—aspects of this writing style was deleting redundant words and phrases from our reports. I became extremely fond of this style and only realized years later the deeper reasons behind it.

In Germany, we learned to strive for exclusivity in our society and culture—I also saw this idea reflected in our writing. You may have read or seen German-language pieces where a sentence can go over many lines— complex sentences that are extremely difficult to follow. Being exclusive in our writing was something that particularly the well-educated individuals among us strived for. –We didn’t know any better…

Around the same time when I was working at Georgetown University, President Obama passed the Plain Language Act (2010). When I researched the Act, it quickly dawned on me that The Plain Language Act is much more than “just another act.” It is a deeply meaningful representation of what I know and love about the United States.

Plain language, first of all, is a good business practice. It is a win-win situation for the writer as well as the reader. Leaving out redundant words and constructing easy-to-understand sentences saves time and money. However, there is much more to the Plain Language Act than that. Plain language is also about access and inclusion. Plain language is accessible to more people because it is easier to understand and it lessens the chance for misunderstandings and the need for clarifications.

Access and inclusion—both are critical to our government agencies because our government must represent American values and be accessible to the people it serves. Plain language is one way to support diversity and a government that values access and inclusion. 

Organizational Hierarchies, Conformity, and Leadership Narratives

US employers are spending billions of dollars annually to train and develop employees. Much of that money is allocated to “leadership development.” However, leadership development programs are based on sanitized narratives that have little to do with reality because they disregard basic human psychology. The narratives were created to sell concepts to organizations that are willing to pay major dollars to do what everyone else is doing—"developing leaders.”  Even though there are many issues with the narratives that deserve an elaborate discussion, due to the limitations of this platform, we are going to examine only a few of the most critical ones.  

A Concept Difficult to Define

Leadership is a concept that is difficult to define. Rightly so, because there is no one leadership, as insinuated by the simplistic tales that we are told.

Leadership can mean different things to different people, based on their values, aspirations, culture, and what have you. Additionally, different situations may require different types of leaders. Leaders sometimes may do horrific things to accomplish a goal while their goals can be ethical, non-ethical, against the law, or a combination of all. Their mission may not always be as black and white as insinuated by the tales we are told. Leadership opportunities can also be time-limited. The emergence of a leader can be as critical as the step down of that leader when his/her work is done.

Leadership by Appointment?

Exceptional leaders often emerge from certain circumstances. The most profiled leaders in history emerged in connection with a cause, a vision, some kind of a passion. The driving force for exceptional leaders isn’t usually a paycheck or merely getting appointed to lead others.

The circumstances from which exceptional leaders emerge generally don’t apply to organizations, except for when they were initially created. Organizations are often created with (genuine) intentions, e.g., to accomplish a vision, to serve, or to fulfill someone's purpose in life. However, over time, their “purpose” tends to shift. Over time, individuals running the organizations, their self-interest, greed, immaturity, and other human shortcomings start to define the direction. Subsequently, the mere existence of organizations and the self-interest of the persons running them becomes more important than the purpose for which they were initially created. There are countless examples of this. Political parties and other idealistic organizations are some of the most illustrative ones.  

Put on a Pedestal or Villainized

Some of the most exceptional leaders in history are people ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to Adolf Hitler. The fact that Gandhi and Hitler can belong to any same (artificial) category should make us wary. At the very least, it should make us question sanitized leadership narratives because even though these examples seem to be two extreme cases, it doesn’t even take two separate individuals for the extremes to occur. The extremes can occur even within one “leader;” for example, in the form of a champion of human rights in one arena who has no problem violating human rights in another arena.  

Through sanitized leadership narratives, however, leaders are often either put on a pedestal or villainized. The black and white stories are easier to tell and digest than having to admit to complex aspects of human psychology and examine social conditioning. The latter is crucial in all truth-finding. That is why most of the narratives we are told have little to do with the truth. The truth requires going within, examining one's own life. However, who wants to examine one’s own life when one can “get out there and ‘develop leaders’”?

Being a Leader Versus Occupying a Leadership Position

According to leadership narratives, anyone in an organization can allegedly be a leader even though individuals at the higher levels of organizational hierarchies are generally referred to as leaders, regardless of whether they are “leading” or not.  

It is correct to assume that anyone can be a leader. However, just not for the reasons the leadership narratives give us. Being a leader generally requires independent thinking and the courage to be a change agent. Within organizations, unless one is in a leadership position, opportunities to lead tend to be limited. The limitation is closely tied to the hierarchies. Individuals in superior positions can feel threatened by the leadership of a subordinate. The level of threat the superiors perceive by a subordinate and her/his capabilities will determine how much room the subordinate will be given to lead. This, in turn, can encourage or discourage the subordinate, depending on what his/her capabilities or potentials are.

Organizational Hierarchies Encourage Conformity, Discourage Leadership

Organizations, where work is performed, are hierarchical entities—no matter how non-hierarchical they claim to be—that encourage conformity and discourage leadership.

Hierarchies nurture the ego and trigger the need to control others. In hierarchical organizations, there is a tendency to keep up the status-quo and pressure to conform. Even within organizations that are identified by change, innovation, research, and development, change is usually closely controlled and tied to a particular status-quo, to one or more individual’s self-interests. The more hierarchical an organization, the truer this generally is. However, the leaders that organizations are allegedly desiring to develop are change agents. Desiring (independent) change agents and wanting to exert control are, in essence, contradictory concepts. Meaning, the two realities clash.

There is a time, however, when true leadership in structured organizations are a realistic option—when things are falling apart. The reason for this is human psychology. When things get very bad, human beings become more willing to give up control. They are willing to open up and do things that they would usually not (be willing to) do. The worse the situation, the more they are willing to give up control and allow change to happen.

Two Basic Types of Leadership

There are two basic types of leadership: idea leadership and leading others. The two types can overlap, coexist, or be in opposition to each other. One of the most critical bases for idea leadership—coming up with new ideas and having the courage to implement them—is critical thinking and questioning the status quo. Based on that, we know that we are not "developing" too many leaders because otherwise, at the very least, the leadership narratives that have little to do with reality would have no way of spreading as much as they do.

On the other hand, the lack of critical thinking should not come as a surprise because while critical thinking skills are the basis for idea leadership, the opposite is generally true when it comes to leading others.

For leaders to lead, they must have followers. Effective following often requires a lack of critical thinking or questioning, or at least, scaling down and not acting on them. It must be noted that there are legitimate times when toning down of “critical thinking” and questioning can benefit the overall good. However, lack of questioning and critical thinking is a problem when it becomes a permanent state, as often observed within organizations when they are scaled down due to fear of losing one’s job, trying to fit in, receiving validation, moving up the ladder, or other similar factors.

True Leadership Is Based on Voluntary Following

True leadership is based on voluntary following where followers gravitate to, and in essence, define the leader. True leaders have followers who have a desire to be led by the individual due to his/her merit, not because followers are instructed to follow an appointed “leader.” Career leadership where followers have no say in who gets to lead them has little to do with leadership. That is why hierarchies become essential. Hierarchies create the necessary power imbalances which ensure that career leaders have followers, regardless of their skills and the quality of their actions. It goes without saying that appointed leaders can also be true leaders whom the followers follow willingly due to the quality of their actions. However, such leaders are too few and in between. This is understandable, because organizational hierarchies encourage allegiance to one’s superiors, instead of allegiance to the mission. After all, the mission doesn’t hire or fire a “leader,” but the superiors do.

Insecurities, Fear, and Other Factors in Workplace Interactions

Within the arbitrarily created hierarchies in organizations, individuals with different levels of (childhood) trauma, insecurities, fear, aspirations, motivation, values, courage (and the long list goes on), coexist. In many ways, workplaces are not too different from a children’s playground. Both in the playground, as well as in the workplace, individuals are looking for similar things—recognition, validation, and above it all, love, and connection with others no matter how unlikely this may sound. However, the conditioned society that fiercely discourages authenticity leads to the creation of a reality where individuals, among others, pretend to be someone they are not, or give up on the truth altogether. Subsequently, highly destructive behavior patterns start to develop.

For example, in the workplace, statements that even defy the principles of science can easily be made. Highly educated and established subordinates may be listening to the statements and may pretend to not notice the lack of coherency in the statements made, or choose not to say anything. After a while, accepting such lies and delusions becomes normalized. Employees start to consider the lying, looking away, and not speaking up as an integral part of the professional workplace. Euphemisms such as “professionalism” or “diplomacy” are used to cover up the lies because rarely does anyone have the courage to speak up out of fear of losing their jobs or retaliation.

One of the most taxing and challenging tasks in workplaces is generally not the duties of a given job but rather navigating through the children’s playground aspect of workplaces, a concept referred to as “workplace politics.” Workplace politics is not more and not less than working with the childhood trauma of adults in an environment based on the unequal distribution of individual power.

Most Important Aspect of Leadership Is Courage

The most challenging aspect of (idea-)leadership is not coming up with new ideas to lead, but rather, having the courage to put the ideas into action.

Exceptional leadership takes courage because true leadership often comes at a high price. Let us go back in history and look at what happened to some of the most exceptional leaders—Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, JFK, Julius Caesar: they were killed.   

Besides the most extreme form of punishment—death—being a leader can mean being isolated, looked down upon, ridiculed, excluded, and even persecuted. Let us think about some exceptional authors or painters in history who developed new ways of doing things, introduced new ideas, new forms, and what happened to them. Many of them died before their work was ever appreciated, while during their lifetime, they were ridiculed, looked down upon, and excluded. At the very least, they experienced long periods of isolation.

True leadership can be an extremely lonely and painful place. It takes substantial courage to be a true leader. Hierarchical organizations are hardly a place that nurtures such exceptional courage…