Here is the full text of Ben Smithwell’s talk titled ‘Removing Bullies’ at TEDxOmagh conference.
TRANSCRIPT:
OK, cool. So we’ve got this little girl at home. She’s about four years old. She’s super funny. We love her to bits. She’s crazy. She’s got this crazy mop of blond hair, and she’s so funny.
She’s kind as well and she’s a bright little spark, and she’s mischievous as hell, which we love about her. And she’s got her daddy wrapped around her little finger.
One day, she came home from nursery, and she said, “Daddy, someone was really nasty to me today.”
And you know what? I didn’t read too much into it because I thought: Ah, you know kids. They’re just trying to bumble their way through life like everyone else, trying to figure out these complex rules of how to live and not be nasty to people. It’s complex for small people like these young little toddlers.
But then, it happened again, and she came back and said, “Daddy, someone’s been really, really nasty.”
And then it happened again, and again, and again, and, all of a sudden, it had been two, three weeks. And we couldn’t believe it. We realized that she was being bullied.
At this age, I didn’t realize that this was a thing. Maybe I’m naive. And we spoke to the nursery and, you know, they were great, they were brilliant. But the problem with this kind of bullying is that it often happens backstage, doesn’t it, when no one’s looking.
And it got worse and worse, and the poor little girl, she’d be coming from nursery sometimes in tears, and we were seeing this sparky, happy little character just slowly withdrawing into herself. She’d talk about it at her bedtime, and it’d be there with her when she got up in the mornings.
I’d take her into nursery and, as soon as she’d see this other kid that was doing the bullying, she would physically recoil and hide behind my leg. We didn’t know what to do. Our advice wasn’t helping her.
Kids in the UK now are pretty miserable. The Good Childhood Report by The Children’s Society came out early on this year, and, when the researchers were looking through all of the interviews and the surveys with kids, aged 8 to 17, what do you think the big, common themes were, that were coming through?
What were the words that children were most using, more often than any others, to describe their lives, their environments and experiences?
‘Friends’, ‘family’ and ‘bullying’!
38% of these children said that they’d been hit by a classmate in the last month. 50% of them said that they’d been left out by their peers in the last month. And the rest of the report’s pretty grim reading as well.
But here’s the headline for you: out of 15 countries across Europe, Asia and Africa — 28,000 children, I think, they spoke to — the kids in the UK are unhappier at school than their counterparts and peers in pretty much any other country in the world.
And it got me thinking: if this is a case for our children, what hope is there for the adults they become? What hope is there for the society that we’re building?
And you know what? It is too late, because we’ve already built it. Because bullying is not just a school yard problem. It is rife within our organizations, it is an epidemic of the workplace, and we’re not talking about it.
The CIPD said a while back they think that every year the UK economy loses 18 million working days to workplace bullying, sickness absence.
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Acas [The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service] a couple of weeks ago said that the sum cost and impact to the UK economy each year is 18 billion pounds, and that’s not even to think about the human cost, the destroyed careers, the wrecked home lives, the broken down relationships, the mental health, the suicides.
And yes, sure, we’re good at legislating. We legislate against discriminating, quite rightly, on the grounds of age, sex, gender, disability, sexuality. It doesn’t mean we’re good at doing anything about it, but we legislate.
BUT WHAT ABOUT BULLYING?
Another problem. All the bullies in the workplace, you could call them ‘equal opportunities’ bullies. They don’t care about the color of your skin, they don’t care who you fall in love with or which god you pray to, and they’re not breaking any particular law.
You see, this kind of bullying, it falls between the cracks. It happens between the lines on the page. Very rarely does it become physical. Often it’s very subtle but sustained.
And, over a period of days and months, sometimes years, people are slowly ground down by this behavior.
WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT IT?
Again, Acas found from their research that people are simply too fearful to come forward. They fear the repercussions — which makes me think that being bullied at work is a lonely place to be.
And what I want to know is: who’s got their back? Is it our leaders and managers? I’m not sure, because, depending on which study you choose to believe, anything between 65% and 95% of the instances of bullying in the workplace are committed in a downwards direction.
Yeah, that’s right, it’s our leaders and managers who are doing most of the bullying. They’re also the people responsible for protecting us from bullying. They’re marking their own homework.
Robert Sutton said:
“How we treat those less powerful than ourselves is as good a measure of human character as I know.”
I agree with that. But yet, you’ve shown me those organizations, bold enough, brave enough, of sufficient moral fiber to fire a star performer if they’re caught bullying. This kind of bullying, it’s got to be rooted out aggressively.
It’s not enough to sit back and wait for it to come to us and try and treat the symptoms reactively.
When it comes to bullying, inaction grants permission. Inaction grants permission.
WHY AREN’T WE STANDING UP TO THESE BULLIES?
Part of the problem might be because we think we are. ‘We’ve got a HR for that!’
Here’s a secret for you: HR is not your friend. HR serves leadership, the same leadership that, statistically, is doing all of the bullying, right? And neither is it fair that we push bullying in HR’s direction and expect them to come up with some kind of magical solution.
They don’t have the right tools for the job. It’s not their fault. They’ve been set up to fail. It’s not their fault.
Let me rewind a bit. I think there’s another perspective on this as well.
Gruenter and Whitaker said:
“The culture of any organization will be shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to let go.”
And I think we like this. I think we like it because it gives us an easy way out, doesn’t it? It enables us to be passive. It enables us to pass it off as someone else’s problem. It enables us to blame our leaders exclusively and walk away.
And what is leadership anyway when it comes to bullying? Is leadership a role you have, or is leadership a thing we can all do? Inaction grants permission. Sure, it applies to our leaders, but our inaction grants permission as well.
And don’t tell me, don’t tell me the organization is fine, your business is fine, because you’ve got a policy, a procedure, a process in place for dealing with bullying.
Well, how’s that working out sat in everyone’s bottom drawer? We don’t solve a human problem like this with more paperwork. We solve a behavioral problem with behavior, we solve a cultural problem with culture, because it’s hard to be a bully when the culture in calls it out.
So, it was getting worse and — poor little girl, she wasn’t herself. We could see her slowly becoming more introverted every day. She’d lost all that zest, all that mischief that we loved so much. We didn’t know what to do. Our advice wasn’t helping her.
So, we thought maybe we could take a different approach. We thought maybe if we could give some really simple principles, something simple enough that a four-year-old could understand, then maybe she could empower herself with this to take action.
“Sweetheart…OK, I’ve got three rules for you. Number one: play with people who make you happy.”
I like that one.
“Number two: those people who make you sad all the time are not your friends, darling. Number three: if someone else is making your friends sad, you’d better do something about it. Got it? High five.”
And off she went. And we crossed our fingers. And you know what? In two or three days, something had happened.
Maybe she was smiling a little bit more, or maybe laughing a little bit more. But, as the days wore on, she seemed to every day get a little bit stronger. Every day, she seemed to get just a little bit braver. Every day, she got a little bit of that confidence back.
And whereas previously on the way into nursery she’d be caring behind my leg, now she’d be walking beside me, holding my hand.
And, a couple of weeks after that, she’d be running past me to get into the door of nursery. And then, one lovely, summery day, we were out riding the bike, and she told me a little story.
“Way to go! That was really kind and brave. I’m really proud of you. What did you do next?”
“Daddy, we went off and played Missoni makes us happy.”
You can edit that up. And look, I know it’s really, really hard to stand up for ourselves. It’s really hard to stand up for other people. It’s hard to be the one that stands aside from the crowd and says no. It needs bravery.
But this is what this little girl taught me, that bravery is a heck of a lot easier if you’ve been empowered. And it got me thinking: if a four-year-old can take such simple little principles and use them to turn around their own context, in quite a short space of time as well, all by herself, then why couldn’t some of this thinking apply to the workplace as well?
I think it can.
So, number one: play with people who make you happy. So, recruit for values, recruit to maintain and build a positive working culture. Prescreen out the bad guys.
Number two: those people that make you sad are not your friends. If we find a bully in our midst, they’re swiftly ejected, because we acknowledge that having a positive working culture is one of our greatest assets.
Number three: if someone else is making your friend sad, you’d better do something about it! So, we form internal communities built around principles of trust, respect and support.
If one of us steps out of line, we nudge them straight back in, and this way we become self-regulating. This does not require policies, procedures and paperwork.
And look, I’m just a guy, by the way. I’m a customer experience design consultant. I’m not an expert on bullying or leadership. But I think that’s kind of the point, because neither is she.
And you know what? It’s hard — It’s hard to stand up for ourselves, it’s hard to stand up for other people, it’s hard to be brave.
But here’s the thing: if I can look across to my left and see that he’s got my back, if I can look across to my right and see that she has got my back, and if I’ve got all of your backs and if you can all go out and empower each other to be the ones brave enough to step aside from the crowd and say stop it — then maybe we could solve a cultural problem with culture, because eliminating bullying in the workplace is a team event.
