How to react to a bullying boss? Some responses could make matters worse
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Responding to a bad boss with bad behavior could create a vicious cycle, according to a new study.
Responding to abusive bosses by retaliating or avoiding them is associated with increased levels of mistreatment. The finding comes from a survey of nearly 250 employees in a variety of organizations over a six-month period, the Washington Post (sub. req.) and Phys.org report.
One of the researchers, Charlice Hurst of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, spoke with Phys.org about the study, set for publication in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
“We wanted to see how employees’ behaviors might influence their likelihood of being mistreated in the future,” Hurst said. “When someone mistreats us, we can have natural urges to either want to fight back, or to avoid the individual. For example, a supervisor might berate an employee, and the employee may become angry and seek revenge, for instance, by being rude to his/her supervisor, in an attempt to send a signal to ‘not mess with me.’ Or, out of fear, an employee may also do whatever he or she can to stay out of harm’s way and avoid their supervisor.”
“Interestingly, our findings show that both retaliation and withdrawal, as responses to abusive supervision, are actually associated with increases in subsequent levels of mistreatment,” Hurst said.
So what’s an employee to do? Researchers had predicted that employees who take the opposite tack—helping abusive bosses by taking on extra work, for example—would result in better boss behavior. The theory proved untrue, Hurst told the Post.
“Abusive supervisors didn’t respond to followers being positive and compassionate, and doing things to be supportive and helpful,” Hurst said. The paper suggests the reason may be that bosses see extra work as part of the job.
Hurst says the paper doesn’t offer a solution for employees, but says companies should have systems to deal with abusive bosses.
