Just about every office has one. An employee who is loud, intimidating and often obnoxious. They're often hard to get along with and generally make life miserable for timid employees.
The simple solution is to fire them. But some bullies can be channeled to productive use. As a supervisor or manager, that challenge rests with you. A few tips:
First off, you need to understand that bullies avoid their feelings of incompetence or insignificance by criticizing others, inundating them with information to make their point, or simply personalizing an issue. They often hold a grudges, become hostile, and overanalyze everything.
To control their aggressive behaviors, you need to be firm in demanding they respect others in the group. This is where you must assert your leadership as a manager. Like a teenager, a bully is constantly testing boundaries to see what he or she can get away with. So the sooner you establish solid ground rules of behavior, the better. You should also encourage others to speak up if the bully goes too far.
Bullies are often high achievers, and harnessing that power without demoralizing them can be a challenge. One way to do this is to motivate the bully to change. This can take the form of a reward to cease and desist bullying or a negative consequence if the behavior continues. For example, no pay increase or bonus for failure to change, and just the opposite for established benchmarks of improvement.
For an additional perspective, check out the video, Workplace Bullying:
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Alex A. Kecskes has written hundreds of published articles on health/fitness, "green" issues, TV/film entertainment, restaurant reviews and many other topics. As a former Andy/Belding/One Show ad agency copywriter, he also writes web content, ads, brochures, sales letters, mailers and scripts for national B2B and B2C clients.
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