Playground Behaviour

I am being bullied at work. I recognise the feelings of vulnerability that I experienced as a child at school. I was not very good at making friends, never with the in-crowd, and therefore vulnerable. Left out of games and not picked for school teams, I sidled around the edges of the playground trying not to be noticed to avoid being picked on. I attended a small all girls school and girls can be particularly nasty. University was such a release as I got to know a broader group of people, including men who seemed much kinder.

I have experienced bullying at work at other times and I seem to attract it – I am not good at organizational behaviour. Perhaps I am naive enough to believe that all perspectives and skills can be embraced and incorporated into the workplace, but those who work out and stick to the corporate line are so much more successful than those, like me, who are arrogant enough to try to take the organization in another direction. So to understand my cackhandedness at organizational behaviour, I did a masters in management science. This explained bullying but did not save me from it.

I also spent some years running workshops in conflict resolution for members of the community, mostly Quakers, and prisoners. As part of that, I ran roleplays where people could practice confronting those that they were having trouble with – their bosses, families, partners, friends, other prisoners, prison officers – or negotiating with their antagonists to protect themselves from psychological damage. I tried to persuade the roleplayers to declare their own feelings and to avoid blaming the other. But eventually I thought that this tactic made participants more vulnerable and validated the strategies of the bully by confirming the power they had over them.

I would often think that the participant should leave the relationship if they could or change it by altering their own behaviour – a difficult thing to do, given the complex nature of relationships and the pasts that we bring to them. It was particularly difficult for prisoners who existed in an environment drenched in power differentials where they expected oppression and humiliation. For them, it may have been more important not to get physically hurt rather than mentally damaged – although of course these are related.

During this time, I came across a model, the power triangle ‘Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer’ where those in conflict perpetuate an argument by taking up one of these roles – with the victim triggering bullying responses in the persecutor or avoiding responsibility by asking to be rescued. I often reflect on the role I play in conflicts. In this blog, I come across as the victim.

I also think that I am fragile and controlling – perhaps making me an easy target as challenges to my intellectual competence bring out a defensive fury that surprises me sometimes. I tell myself that the research project where this persecution is taking place is a piece of nonsense not worth my time but it does not make much difference to my emotional state. Thus I become a persecutor myself and so on in an endless circle.

So, I will seek to leave. The principal investigator and I dislike each other heartily. She has worked quite hard to erase me from the project as people on other projects in other organisations have done before her. I have clearly learnt nothing from previous situations, or perhaps I am just awkward and do not fit in. I remain the girl who tried to avoid conflict in the playground but appeared to create it. I am quite proud of my awkwardness but it costs me.

I think my early interest in conflict resolution was an attempt to resolve the suffering of the bullied girl. The prisoners taught me that resolution is impossible because of inherent and necessary power structures – organizations will always make us suffer. I often hear claims from celebrities that they were also bullied but transcended it through their talent and skill because of a fierce desire to be liked and popular. I did not have the confidence to transcend my outsider status to become popular. And the suffering remains unresolved and occasionally resurfaces.