Commentary: What Jimmy Fallon Taught Us About Toxic Behavior in the Workplace

What does bullying look like in the workplace?

As organizational behavior researchers, we were recently told of two separate incidents of workplace bullying. In the first case, the bully publicly criticized a junior colleague for being “unconfident” and “vague”, leaving her in tears in the office. She did not report the incident for fear of repercussions from a more senior and better connected bully.

The second incident involved the bully sending a series of aggressive emails and making false accusations. The victim’s supervisor, copied in one of the emails, told the employee not to take things personally because that was the bully’s “working style.”

Both victims were women who had worked in the position for approximately three months and were in mid-level management positions. Studies of gender and bullying prevalence, often conducted in the West, sometimes find that more women than men report being bullied at work, although findings on gender differences tend to be inconsistent and inconclusive.

There are many types of workplace bullying, such as social undermining (such as interfering with someone’s functioning and success in the workplace), identity threat (questioning someone’s sense of competence and self-worth), overt harassment (openly inflicting emotional pain) and more subtle forms. for example, gaslighting, which can make victims think they are imagining things.

Other subtle manifestations of bullying in the workplace include giving an employee the silent treatment, deliberately withholding information he needs, limiting his ability to express his opinions, locating the workplace in an isolated area, spreading false rumors about his personal life and work performance, and deliberately excluding him from work. meetings, encouraging jokes at their expense and condescendingly flaunting his superiority over the victim.

Based on various definitions, have you been bullied or bullied at work?

The person involved in the second incident above was subjected to gaslighting and other subtle forms of bullying by her former boss, with whom she worked for several years. She told us that “(the bully) was my boss and she had HR on her side. There was nothing I could do. It is thanks to Covid-19 that I have been able to work from home… The physical separation has been good for my sanity.”

This illustrates two key points about workplace bullying. First, bullies are almost always members of a higher status organization. Status can be formal (for example, the bully has a higher rank or title) or informal (the bully has a better relationship with his superiors). A review of research on workplace bullying found no studies that examined bullying by lower-status organizational members in detail.

Second, COVID-19 and the shift to remote work served as a preventive factor against workplace bullying—that is, working from home gave victims some respite from their bullies.