Attacks of workplace bullies mimic home bullies and can include demeaning work tasks, threats, snarling commands and verbal abuse. The bully is not working in a vacuum. Other people see what is happening and their acquiescing to his behavior further incites the bullies belief in his strength versus your weakness. If you are going on the premise that the bully will start to pick on someone else and get canned, don’t bet on it.
Workplace bullies have targets. They enlist the cooperation of other workers by talking about you behind your back. If you are counting on the fact that other workers will come to your defense, don’t. Bullies attract a group of fawning adorers who will work with the bully to prove his assertions about you as being real. The bully is like the powerful leader in a pack of animals. His priority over all the pack is his until someone challenges his power. At work, most people would rather follow the pack leader than challenge his role.
The obvious character traits of a bully are loud, noisy, aggressive and blatant overt attacks on others. If you try to fight his control over your will, he will attack. A bully can be compared to a pit bull. If he is left unchallenged for years at work, he will probably end up owning the company or working as a highly paid executive.
There are some bullies who don’t last. If you are experiencing bullying behavior by these bullies, you can confidently wait for them to get themselves fired. What are the traits of these bullies who don’t last? Bullies who are just too nasty and too obviously nasty that makes their behavior embarrassing even for the most cowardly worker to withstand. That type of nasty bully will get fired because in most workplace in the UK, a certain amount of civility to humans is demanded.
However, if you are being bullied by a clever bully, your situation is dire, indeed. A clever bully does not follow any typical bullying at work tactics. A clever bully masks his behaviors with almost benevolent intent towards the object of his attacks. His approach and his manners cause him to be, actually, trusted and even respected by others at work since he is openly saying that he is not treating people according to their position but according to how he perceives their performance to be. He becomes the judge and the executioner.
While he attracks the respect and trust of others, he uses their trust to further his own ambitions. And, in the clever bullies book, the end justifies the means. What is frightening about a clever bully is that most of his victims are not even aware who has destroyed them.