Workplace bullies frequently attack, seldom get caught

                   Diane E. Lewis / Boston Globe

                   Just about every company has one:

                     The manager who disparages the "girls."

                     The rainmaker whose profit-making genius endears him or her to the president even
                   though the rainmaker is a boor.

                     The politically astute charmer who picks a powerless target to abuse.

                     The solidly entrenched employee who maligns or belittles co-workers, spreads
                   rumors, or takes credit for colleagues' ideas.

                   "These are the people who churn rumors and spread gossip, people who tell tales
                   [almost always untrue] about workers and peers they dislike or mistrust," said John
                   Challenger, president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm.
                   "They are often super confident and attractive people who engage in subtle and
                   not-so-subtle character assassination."

                   People churners are workplace bullies who wreak havoc on morale, but are rarely
                   fired because they are valuable to a company's bottom line, experts say. Instead, the
                   bullying boss or co-worker tends to drive talented staff away.

                   In an era of job insecurity, wage stagnation and layoffs, bullying has become a serious
                   workplace problem -- one that has prompted new research on the psychological and
                   physical toll of emotional brow-beating and has spawned Web sites specifically aimed
                   at helping victims of such abuse.

                   One example: San Francisco writer Daniel Levine. His Web site
                   (www.disgruntled.com) includes a chat room, a collection of monthly articles, and
                   first-person stories by targets of workplace bullying. Levine's new book, "Disgruntled:
                   The Darker Side of the World of Work," (1998, Penguin-Putnam, $12), is a compilation
                   of stories gleaned from the Web site.

                   Workplace aggression

                   In a 1998 study, the International Labour Organization noted that psychological
                   aggression and bullying were the most frequently reported complaints among U.S.
                   employees. Meanwhile, social psychologist Loraleigh Keashly, director of dispute
                   resolution at Wayne State University, reports in a new study of 147 health care
                   workers that 82 percent have experienced some form of aggression from co-workers
                   or supervisors.

                   Yet many workers never report it and tend to internalize their anger. As a result, a
                   once loyal employee no longer gives 100 percent of his time. In more extreme cases,
                   a worker may steal information, vandalize company property, sabotage projects or
                   explode.

                   "Some of it is very subtle," said Gary Namie, co-author of the book, "Bullyproof
                   Yourself at Work: Personal Strategies to Recognize & Stop the Hurt from
                   Harassment," ($13.95, DoubleDoc Press, Benicia, Calif.). "These people can be
                   extremely cruel. There are bosses, for example, who punish by giving lousy work
                   assignments. We know of a supervisor at a southwestern university who assigned the
                   staffers she did not like to un-air-conditioned areas, where the temperatures were
                   more than 100 degrees in the middle of the day."

                   Most bullies thrive on divide and conquer, in which the aggressor quietly and carefully
                   aligns a team of people against one person he or she has singled out. "He or she
                   actually says, 'You don't want to be on that person's side because he's going down
                   the tubes,' " Namie said.

                   Not all bullies are bosses. Consider, for example, the cliquish co-workers who
                   deliberately ignore a member of their unit; the employee who whispers or giggles at
                   the approach of a colleague; and the "friend" who collects highly personal information
                   and then launches a smear campaign.

                  Legal protections

                   David Yamada, an associate professor of law at Suffolk University who is researching
                   the legal protections available to targets of workplace bullies, said the most obvious
                   involve discrimination laws that protect people from bias or harassment on the basis of
                   sex and race. While more and more employees are filing hostile-work-environment
                   lawsuits, the jury is still out on their effectiveness.

                   With such discrimination and sexual harassment suits rising, many employers are
                   relying on coaches to rehabilitate executive bullies. Psychologist David Francis,
                   founder of EAP Systems Inc. in Woburn, Mass., uses videotapes, role playing and
                   counseling to turn problem executives into sociable human beings. The cost? $12,000
                   for a six-month session.

                   Nevertheless, Francis noted that success often is tied to company support. "For
                   coaching to work, someone in the company, someone at a very high level, must
                   perceive that the individual has a problem," he said. "And usually, with bullies, that
                   problem is turnover."

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