How Do Bullies Work? - The Muirhouse Experience
Bullying is all about power. Bullies want control of their victim and the environment. Their main instrument of control is criticism. A colleague may focus on alleged underperformance. A manager may criticise everything from professional conduct to personal appearance. To correct the alleged failing, the victim jumps through more and more hoops, but the harder victims work, and the more they achieve, the greater the bully’s insecurity.
This damaging cycle often ends in the victim facing disciplinary procedures or stress, breakdown, or both. The bully then selects someone else to pick on and starts all over again.
Isolating victims from their friends and colleagues is key to a bullys tactics and the effects of this should not be underestimated. It can be emotionally and psychologically damaging. In a bullying workplace such as Muirhouse Social Work Department, colleagues are often afraid to stand up for the victim in case they become targets themselves. Those who speak out for friends being bullied or who blow the whistle on a bullying environment [THE MUIRHOUSE TWO] have shown to have been bullied.
As serial bullies try to move up the professional ladder, they become more and more able to abuse their power using all the tricks available to the serial bully. What angers the bully is the inability to move up the greasy pole because he or she believes they are some how superior to others.Â