Workplace bullying is a pressing issue that many organizations face today. Are you aware of how it impacts your team and the broader company culture?
In this episode, we explore the critical nature of workplace bullying and its effects on employee well-being and organizational health. Our host and CEO, Porschia, along with our guest, Catherine Mattice, discuss various manifestations of bullying, from aggressive communications to subtle manipulations, and emphasize the importance of recognizing and addressing these behaviors promptly.
You will gain insights into effective strategies for fostering a respectful and inclusive workplace culture that actively discourages bullying. The episode also highlights practical steps organizations can take to support their employees and maintain a positive work environment.
Catherine Mattice, MA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is the CEO of Civility Partners, a firm dedicated to transforming toxic workplaces into respectful environments. With clients ranging from Fortune 500s to small businesses, Catherine is a recognized HR expert, TEDx speaker, and media figure featured in outlets like USA Today, Bloomberg, CNN, and NPR. She’s an award-winning author of BACK OFF! Your Kick-Ass Guide to Ending Bullying at Work, highly praised by leadership guru Ken Blanchard, and offers over 50 courses on LinkedIn Learning.
What you’ll learn:
- What workplace bullying is and how it manifests through various behaviors
- The impact of bullying on company culture, employee well-being, and mental health
- How to recognize early signs of bullying in the workplace
- Strategies for creating and maintaining a respectful and inclusive workplace that discourages bullying
- Steps organizations can take to enhance culture, support employees, and prevent bullying behaviors from becoming normalized
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today we are talking about workplace bullying with Catherine Mattis. Catherine Mattis is the founder and CEO of Civility Partners, a strategic organizational development firm focused on helping organizations create respectful workplace cultures and specializing in turning around toxic cultures.
Civility Partners clients range from fortune 500s to small businesses across many industries. Catherine is [00:01:00] a TEDx speaker and a HR thought leader who has appeared in USA Today, Bloomberg, CNN, NPR, and many other national news outlets. She’s an award winning speaker, author, and blogger with over 50 courses reaching global audiences on LinkedIn Learning.
Catherine’s award winning book, Back Off! Your Kick Ass Guide to Ending Bullying at Work, was hailed an international lead by international leadership guru, Ken Blanchard, as the most comprehensive and valuable handbook on the topic. Hi, Catherine. How are you today? Hi, thanks for having me. I’m doing great.
We are excited to have you with us to discuss workplace bullying. But first, we want to know a little more about you. So tell me about seven year old Catherine.
Catherine: Seven year old. Catherine was cute. No, I’m just kidding. [00:02:00]
Porschia: I’m sure she was,
Catherine: I often do think about and talk about, I was in dance from about age three to 16 and the dance teacher was pretty chill.
It wasn’t super competitive, like dance moms or whatever those shows are, but she did do everything in her power to have us in front of people as often as possible, so every other Friday we were. Practicing our dances at a convalescent home just to entertain. And, we did recitals all the time.
And I honestly really think that is a big part of the self confidence I have now. So I know at seven, I definitely would have been entrenched in all of that. And, just being in front of an audience and I can’t say I was the best dancer, but the, yeah it was, Those are the kinds of memories I have about seven.
So what did you want to be when you grew up? Gosh, I think for a while I wanted to be a vet, typical kid thing because loving animals, [00:03:00] but I’m not great at science either. So that was not gonna happen. I don’t know. I think that was it for quite a while.
Porschia: Yeah, that was mine too. I just didn’t like the blood, but love the animals.
So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started the business that you have today.
Catherine: Before I started the business I would say before I started civility partners, this question is related to how I ended up starting civility partners, which is that I worked as a director of HR for a company where somebody was, I would say a bully and they made life hard.
They definitely targeted me as well as several others. As H. R. I was getting complaints about it, talking to the president about it, trying to convince him to solve it. So I was seeing how it damaged the organization and people and also experiencing how it damaged people [00:04:00] myself and started getting my master’s degree while I was working there.
Here’s the pivotal moment when the universe provides my first. semester of graduate school. My one class was the dark side of communication. So that class was about, the units were sibling rivalry and domestic violence and conflict and ugly stuff that humans communicate. And then the other class was called ethnography, which is study a type of research, that you do where you’re in it.
So I was trying to think what’s the topic for both of these classes. So I’m not doubling the research and I, I’m going to write about this person at work. So then it’s ethnography and then it’s dark side and ended up doing a discovered workplace bullying as a topic in the research and I went from there and that whole thing changed my life.
That would, I would say all of that were lots of pivotal moments along the way. And then I’ll say too, I started in 2008 when [00:05:00] the recession was happening. So I w I had since moved on to being an HR director at another organization and was laid off. And I went home and started civility partners that day, bought a website and made a business.
Porschia: Wow. I love that. So when you were starting this business, I’m sure that you could have taken a lot of different angles with it. Maybe just traditional HR consulting. Why did you decide to focus on workplace bullying as one of your areas of expertise?
Catherine: Yeah. And to be honest, at the beginning, it was the only area of expertise.
It was the thing I understood so well after reading, thousands of research articles on it. And I could see that. So one thing is that in the U. S. workplace bullying is very lawful certain, cities might have a law against it, but it’s lawful versus harassment, which obviously is not.
And so in America, we’re really far behind versus other [00:06:00] countries like Denmark and Sweden. They have laws prohibiting workplace bullying. So that’s important because it means I’d been reading research from the last 40 years. On this topic, even though in America, we weren’t really talking about it.
And so I just knew that this was a problem that could be solved and needed to be solved here in the United States. And yeah, everybody told me not to do it because they didn’t know what it was. So a lot of people were telling me you could be HR or a leadership coach or something. And I’m like, no, I’m going to go for this whole workplace bullying thing because there’s lots of leadership coaches out there.
This will be my niche.
Porschia: Wow. I love how you just talked about like the difference or distinction between workplace bullying and harassment and how in different countries, and I’m sure different cities that line is a bit blurred. I didn’t even know that there were [00:07:00] laws against workplace bullying in certain countries.
So that’s. Really interesting to know.
Catherine: Yeah, and you know what kudos to Puerto Rico, this in the States, they are the one and only state slash territory that actually prohibits workplace bullying. So they were the first and only state, territory to, to prohibit it. to pass a law against it.
Everywhere else in the United States, it’s essentially lawful.
Porschia: So before we get into deep, what is your definition of workplace bullying?
Catherine: I’m going to give you two answers. The easy answer is it’s the exact same thing as harassment. It just, Depends on who you aim it at. So if I bully you because of your race or nationality or disability, we call that harassment and that’s unlawful. If I bully everyone, I’m an equal opportunity harasser, then that’s legal, right?
That’s lawful behavior. So that’s the easy response is it just depends on [00:08:00] who you’re aiming your. bullying at or your harassment at. Beyond that, I do say bullying is repeated behavior. It’s pervasive. It’s leaves a real psychological power imbalance. That is often talked about in the research that is not really talked about in the world of harassment, but certainly harassment also causes a psychological power imbalance, but because it’s lawful to bully that balance, I think.
Probably gets worse because, people don’t necessarily if I say I’m being harassed or sexually harassed, my boss is asking me out on a date. People know what that means. If I say I’m being bullied, what does that mean? So that so then it can get fuzzy. I’ll round out my answer by saying bullying behaviors occur in three buckets.
And I found. All 3 buckets of these behaviors are present when we’re saying things like bullying or abusive conduct. So the 1st is [00:09:00] aggressive communication. Nasty emails, pointing out mistakes in public or embarrassing people with yelling at them aggressive body language. I coached an individual who would, people said he would get up out of his chair in this real slow motion and kind of Dr.
Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing happening and the eyes bulging. And so this real threatening physical verbal or nonverbal communication. So that’s one bucket. The second bucket is humiliation, shaming in public, sending an email and CCing a bunch of people that don’t need to be CCed, challenging people in ways that are meant to embarrass sarcasm at a person’s expense. And then the third bucket is manipulation. And that’s one also not necessarily talked about in harassment, but it’s present there too. But manipulation would be doing things like not inviting you to meetings that you should be in, not [00:10:00] giving you all of the information to do a task, giving you so much work and telling you what’s due by, Friday at five, and it’s.
It’s a three week long type of work assignment, so manipulating someone’s work. So aggressive communication, humiliation, and manipulation.
Porschia: Thank you for breaking that down for us and giving us some practical examples. I’m seeing and reflecting on past examples of workplace bullying that I didn’t.
even a tribute to bullying. And now I can see that they definitely were. We’ve discussed culture and employee wellbeing on the podcast before. Can you tell us more about how you think workplace bullying affects an organization’s culture?
Catherine: For sure. There’s a lot of ways. So one is certainly being at the receiving end of that behavior or witnessing it has everybody on eggshells.
So now you have a [00:11:00] culture of fear just because this person’s doing that you need psychological safety if you’re going to, for example, be an organization that claims diversity and inclusion is important to you, but you are ignoring Behaviors that, don’t are not inclusive and create a lack of psychological safety.
So there’s that you have, being bullied causes a whole lot of damage. You’re stressed out. You’re depressed. You’re Anxious all the time, you’re not eating, you feel isolated, and then all of that translates into physical problems, like not sleeping, not eating very well heart disease has been associated with bullying.
That obviously affects culture if you’re not focused on well being at all. I think I could go on forever around this, but one other thing I’d like to mention is that. If, and this is what I see all the time, organizations recognize that let’s say an executive VP’s behavior is not [00:12:00] okay.
It’s causing some trauma, drama but that person’s a high producer. And so often the narrative is that HR has been trying to get the CEO, just like my own scenario to solve this problem. But it’s just leave them alone let them produce. And so that creates a culture of results. over people and a culture that does not care about well being.
So there’s a lot of messaging that comes when you’re ignoring bad behavior. So I do feel like organizations do things in silos. We have a well being program and we have a DEI committee and. Employee engagement survey. Those are not siloed, isolated culture initiatives. They all go together and they are all intertwined by psychological safety and respect.
Porschia: You said a lot of great things there, Catherine. You made me think about someone I worked with in the past who used to just say, I get results when people [00:13:00] would question their behavior, and a lot of it was workplace bullying. Yeah, it’s important to consider the people along with those results as well.
And you touched on psychological safety quite a few times. Can you just tell me a bit about how you think workplace bullying can affect it? psychological safety within an organization.
Catherine: Yeah. So psychological safety is, feeling that you can be your whole self feeling that you can share ideas without being shot down.
But if you’re in an organization where there’s bullying or your own boss is bullying you certainly you’re not going to speak up if the fear is Public shame. Here’s an example. Another individual I coached. The humiliation was a big one for him. People describe that in staff and meetings with his team.
Everyone said a conference table and someone would share an idea and he would lean back in his chair. Put his arms up behind [00:14:00] his head and put his feet on the table. Just real power pose right there. And then he would explain to you, school you as to why your idea was idiotic. And you do that once or twice, people aren’t going to speak up.
And then he’s frustrated because people don’t ask him questions or come to him with ideas. And so then, that’s what the coaching is about. Let’s talk about why they’re not doing that. What could you do differently to encourage people? But yeah, so there’s no psychological safety if you’re, bullying.
is abuse at work. And just like we would all know that somebody in a domestic violence situation is not psychologically safe. It’s abuse at work. And I always hate to get depressing, but it can be so bad that people commit suicide drug use, that it’s a behavior that I’m, as deep in it as I am, I’m still appalled that organizations don’t take it as seriously as they should.
Porschia: Yeah. And I think [00:15:00] that is a segue to where I was going next. Many executives and professionals tell me that they don’t know what to do about bullying in the workplace. And often they think it’s someone else’s problem. What are some tips you can share to help people start addressing workplace bullying?
Catherine: One is, be aware that they can [00:16:00] change. It, I know it feels like they can’t, especially if you’re at the receiving end, and I know it feels intentional. What I can tell you from all of the research and all of the people I’ve coached over the years is that the intention is to get the job done, get results.
And they’ve lost sight of the people part of that. And then the organization rewards them, gives them bonuses and promotions because they get results. And they begin to lose sight of what’s right. And so just know that this is not a problem that cannot be solved. They can change. And in fact, when I coach, I interview people who work with them to get perceptions.
I’m not investigating. I just want to know perceptions. And often the person I’m coaching is just mortified at. What I come back with because they’ve been hearing it from HR, but not, it’s all hearsay. And so that’s step number one. Secondly, I would say the sooner you can nip it in the bud, the better.
So [00:17:00] the moment anybody ever in the future. Embarrasses you in a meeting or steps on you in some way to push back immediately. And the research has really found that that nips it in the bud. They will leave you alone because they’re looking for the path of least resistance as we all are. And they also respect you because you’ve.
Spoken in their language, right? So if someone in a meeting makes a joke at your expense in the meeting, say, I don’t joke like that. And just Nope, we’re not doing that. And then to that end, being an ally to others is important too. So even if you feel like that’s not my problem, I can’t solve this.
This is in another department. I don’t have any cloud over there. Being an ally when you can. So when you see that shaming in a meeting directed at someone else, same thing, step in or pull them aside. So those are my main three things in terms of the interpersonal skills that you need. I have a lot of [00:18:00] ideas around the organization as well.
Yeah,
Porschia: I’m definitely going to get to the organizational side of it as well but I think now’s a good time to do that. So tell us what you think, from an organizational perspective, what they can do to make sure that workplace bullying doesn’t become, pervasive.
Catherine: Oh, how much time do we have?
No, I’m just kidding. Here’s my general answer. That so many organizations have these core values, and they don’t lean into them. And or, The extent that they lean into them as they have some sort of peer nomination program where Catherine nominates Portia for being customer service oriented, but what organizations fail to do is really operationalize the core values for themselves.
So if all of my processes and procedures are living the core values, [00:19:00] then. That’s going to make a world of difference. So just to give a very easy, simple example, if your core value is inclusivity. And somebody gets on boarded and they spend the first four days of on boarding at a computer doing training and filling out their I nines and they never really meet anybody.
That means you’re on boarding process is violating that core value of inclusivity, right? So every organization needs to really audit all of their processes. To see where we not living the core values ourselves as an organization. Because no core value makes room for bullying or harassment.
So that’s a big answer. Simple to say big in practice. It takes a lot of time. But that’s one. The second one is really making it clear that you don’t tolerate, negative behavior. So it’s so much easier to address the lower level stuff or the super clearly not unlawful stuff like gossip is a great example.
We all do it. Except for me, of course, because I’m [00:20:00] really partners. But that’s a simple one. Are your managers trained on stepping in when there’s gossip? Are your managers trained on coaching somebody who engages in microaggressions or makes jokes at people’s expense? So there’s all of this behavior that would fall under the category of incivility that I, to my knowledge, we’re one of the very few organizations doing some training on addressing that stuff.
So that’s another big one, making it clear that we don’t tolerate anything that’s exclusive. And that’s lower levels, not the right word, but that other stuff that’s hurtful.
Porschia: So what are some of your favorite tools or resources for leaders to help them with workplace bullying?
Catherine: I’m a great resource.
Um, gosh, tools and resources. My website’s full of them not to be self serving, but I’ve always been I think something [00:21:00] that makes stability partners unique is I’ve always been very focused on very tangible, actionable advice when it comes to culture. Because I know culture can feel so abstract, but that’s where that I think that word operationalizing your culture is an important tool.
So that’s the type of content we’re just constantly putting out there. There’s, lots of training programs out there around psychological safety. And we 15 exercises for managers so that they, if they have 15 minutes a month. to gather their team and facilitate an exercise around.
Psychological safety or respect or what have you. I think that’s going back to your other question. That’s the other key piece is that organizations do harassment prevention training or then something bad happens, and they do an investigation. But we have to constantly daily talk about what we do want, what kind of culture we do want.
And so your managers [00:22:00] need tools for doing that. How are we. actually proactively building a respectful and inclusive culture. And it’s not a training every now and again, right?
Porschia: Yeah, I agree. We’re definitely going to share your website in the show notes so people can get all of the resources on your site.
I just, everything that you’re saying is just making me go back to other situations and things that not only I’ve experienced, but heard that clients have experienced in the past. Yeah. And look at things, from a different angle from your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve seen executives and professionals have with eliminating workplace bullying?
Catherine: The biggest challenge is, the CEO who is focused on the bottom line. And obviously I am a CEO. I understand that. But this real disconnect between doing the right thing and. Making [00:23:00] sure your environment is one where people thrive versus the bottom line. So that’s, I kind of joke.
I don’t know why I’m still making a business case sometimes in my sales calls. You have to do this because it does hurt your bottom line, but there’s no P and L for turnover cost. There’s no line item for that. That’s a challenge. And of course, especially in America, our society is results oriented, and shifting the mindset that, yes, results are important, but how you get there is also important.
And then I think too, just another societal norm is the vulnerability that we are not allowed to show at work. And if you want people to tell you or feel comfortable to say, Hey, Portia, yesterday you said this thing and it hurt my feelings. And can we talk about it?
That requires a whole lot of vulnerability on my part to share that with you and be willing to trust that you’re open to that conversation. So I think The lack of acceptability around things like being vulnerable [00:24:00] is a challenge. And I’ll also say it’s fascinating that emotions aren’t allowed at work, right?
No crying. That’s what we mean by that. But yelling, aggressive, being aggressive, that’s all, those are all emotions and somehow they’re fine. We need to shift that mindset. And that’s what’s interesting about coaching too, is these, a lot of times they’re not interested in emotions, right? They’re not emotionally intelligent, they just want results.
And To see the look on their face when I point out, here’s this whole theme in your interviews about how you yell and have emotional outbursts. You understand for somebody who’s not okay with emotions, you sure are really showing some.
Porschia: As you were talking, Catherine I have a thought and I’d love your insight on it.
When people think about workplace bullying, . just the term bullying. A lot of people think back to school. And from my perspective, I’ve seen a lot of people think about bullying in terms of you should just be able to handle it because, [00:25:00] they’ve got that school kind of mindset of bullying where you just go tell the bully to knock it off.
And sometimes I think people miss how something could be systemic, how the whole culture could, to your point Really promote, this behavior and these actions where when we call it workplace bullying, a lot of people just think, oh, bully on the schoolyard. You should be able to handle this yourself.
And so that snowball into the not being vulnerable and all of that.
Catherine: Yep, that’s true. It’s very true. Yeah, and it’s like I said, it’s abuse. We would never tell a victim of domestic violence to just tell them to stop. So there is, I think a big part of it is the lack of awareness, which is changing over time.
When I first started, everyone was like, what is bullying? You can’t have a business around that. It took me about five years. Years to get sherm to let me speak at their conference and then funny story about that when I finally did They put me in the last slot on the last day and i’m thinking i’m gonna have 20 [00:26:00] people Nobody’s being there in the last slot in the last day of this six day conference I had standing room only they had to do an overflow room and the evals were all like thank goodness You’re finally bringing this in Topic.
Hallelujah. So I’ve worked my way up to being a mega session at SHRM. So that just shows, and back in the days I would at networking events, I’m a workplace bullying coach, and I deal with that and people would laugh. Oh, you take them outside and beat them up. Now, when I say it, everyone’s got a story.
So it’s been interesting to watch the evolution of society’s caring and knowledge around this.
Porschia: That is great. That is great. And yeah, it’s just interesting how things shift and in not a lot of time. If we go back to what we were talking about earlier, like culture kind of being a buzzword, I think really in the last five years or so, I think workplace bullying has come more to the forefront now.
And there are some, really national [00:27:00] examples. That come up at least in the U S
Catherine: really what examples, I’m just getting I, I think to our generation, we didn’t have bullying conversations. If you were being bullied, maybe you talk to your parents about it, but now, There’s all this school curriculum around bullying.
And so I do see the newer generations. They’re not tolerating that. They’re already leaving work if they’re not happy. It’s see, I’ll just get another job. So I do, it’ll be interesting to see in another 15 years. Where we’re at with the new, newer generations in, and, I know baby boomers and us too.
It’s just work hard, put your head down, you’ll get there. It’s fine. Ignore it. But yeah, but it’s not going to be like that for much longer.
Porschia: Yeah. I want to ask you a question about timeline here. So let’s say an organization makes a concerted effort to focus on workplace bullying.
Maybe they hire [00:28:00] you or internally they decide they’re going to work on it. We know that kind of culture to your point is abstract and it can take quite a bit of time to, to change. Culture and that’s what we learned in my master’s program. So I don’t know if I shared this with you, Catherine, but I have a master’s in industrial and organizational psychology.
So we did a lot of culture work, but How long do you think it could take to actually change the culture? If a leader were to say, Hey, we’re going to make this concerted effort to focus on workplace bullying.
Catherine: I’ve seen it done in 12 months in my own work. However, that’s to say that we’ve 12 months, but for it to last and sustain, there’s a lot more work that needs to be done.
And they say, whoever they is, culture can take 5 to 8 years to adjust. And so what we do is a workforce survey. And then we hit hard on a lot [00:29:00] of important things right then for the next year or 18 months. And then we resurvey to see where we’re at. And we always find on that 2nd survey, we’ve made a world of difference.
But I know that I’m not blind to the fact that the minute we walk away, it could easily go back. So there’s. tons more work to do. My advice to organizations around that is, the minute you decide we’re going to focus on culture, it has to be a hair on fire type of a situation where it’s even if your culture is not that bad, right?
I’m going into toxic work environments. That’s our, Market, but even if it’s we’re okay, but we’d like to be better. It still has to be urgent where it’s wow, we’re missing some key elements and we’ve got to fix this now. This is important. And so creating that urgency and everyone’s looking up what are we doing?
What’s happening? What does this mean for me? And so you can shift it pretty quickly, but then there’s a lot more work to do to maintain that.
Porschia: Tell us more [00:30:00] about civility partners.
Catherine: Sure. Civility Partners is focused on turning around toxic work environments and toxic behavior. Not all of our clients come to us because they’re toxic.
We love working with the good companies who just want to be better too, but we do four things. One is the workforce survey. That is a tailored workforce survey. Custom survey based on your problems. And then we make a ton of recommendations, obviously, and we work with the organization to develop a plan to make that change.
We’re often asked to help implement parts of that plan. So that, that’s our consulting services. We do tons of training programs around psychological safety, being an ally, manager training on managing behavior and culture within their team leadership cohorts, and then I also specialize, as you may have surmised, in coaching executives who have been accused of bullying, often on the heels of a [00:31:00] hostile work environment investigation, where it’s like, there we are again with that.
It’s not technically a hostile work environment, but. People are saying hostile. That’s a word that is important and we need to adjust it. So that’s what we do. We’ve been doing it for 15 years.
Porschia: That is great. We’ll be providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes so people can find you online.
What is the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
Catherine: Honestly, my website, if you contact us there, that’ll go to my team, they’ll forward it to me or LinkedIn is another great place. I’m all over LinkedIn.
Porschia: Perfect. So now Catherine, I want to ask you our final question that we ask all of our guests.
How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Catherine: Ooh, that’s a good question. From my perspective, I would [00:32:00] say stick to your guns, which maybe isn’t the right word to use in a bullying podcast. I know what you mean. Stay true to yourself, that, whatever you decide you want to accomplish, you can, and people will probably tell you no, and there’ll be a lot of challenges, but and I like that positive edge because That’s how I function.
I have my moments, but no matter the challenge, I’m weirdly optimistic that it’ll be fine. And it always is. Yeah, just deciding what you want to do and go for it.
Porschia: Catherine, you’ve shared a lot of insights with us today, and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers and when tackling workplace bullying.
We appreciate you being with us. Thank you for having me. [00:33:00]
