RapierFugue
Posts: 4740
Joined: 3/16/2006
From: London, England
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyConstanze
I'm not at all for being PC, at work we do sometimes make slightly risky jokes to let off steam (especially when something needed to be fixed and we all just did a few hours of overtime and then kick back), but we know each other pretty well and it's within the department, if anybody feels uncomfy about it (and they don't need to speak up, you can tell by their reaction) - that's it then, it's going to be toned down. Not just because people who are comfortable are more productive, also out of respect for colleagues.
I'm about the least "PC" manager you could possibly meet, and my take on “comments” is it's context that matters; among colleagues who know each other well and know each other’s mentalities it’s fine within the boundaries that the team/group work to and set for themselves, and people with any sense of empathy are generally capable of working out when it’s gone too far. If not, a comment from me is almost always enough to sort the situation. What I would point up though is it can make life more difficult for new team members, especially younger ones, as the degree of “comment” is something that's hard for an “outsider” to judge, and work to. But so long as the rest of the team understand that, and make allowances for it (again, with me leading them carefully to the correct conclusions if necessary) then it’s not automatically a bad thing.
But bullying is a totally separate subject in my opinion; as I said, we all have to work unless we’re independently wealthy, therefore a person has no choice but to be there, and do certain work, in order to earn a living. It’s the 21st century; “boys games” (although women can be dreadful bullies too, I should add) and bullying aren’t acceptable anymore (and never were to me, and I was well ahead of the game in this respect, from years back), and regardless of someone’s race, religion, gender, sexual preference or personal beliefs they have the right to go to work and perform their duties without being subject to duress or threat, be it physical or verbal. I simply won’t have it, and it’s very rarely that I need to speak to someone twice.
It’s also my experience, through observation, that bullies make terrible employees; they're generally lazy (bullying is often geared towards them offloading more work onto others than they would otherwise be able to), and waste more time establishing and maintaining the “hierarchy” as they see it than they do actually performing the tasks I'm employing them to do. In addition, bullying is an extreme form of cowardice, and again it’s been my experience that those who participate in it on an ongoing basis either lack the empathy required to work in a team (and almost all modern work is team-based to some degree), or the moral courage required to take tough decisions and see them through (especially important in my sphere of work). Ergo whenever I see someone bullying a work colleague it immediately rings alarm bells for me.
The only exception to this I've seen was a chap who worked with me (not for me at that time, although I later recruited him for a team I was setting up on behalf of a larger company) some 15 years ago; he was a terrible verbal bully to everyone, and we had a couple of mild run-ins before I finally unloaded on him verbally (in a calm, thoughtful fashion - I don't generally do "angry" unless it's a tactical choice on my part). It became rapidly obvious that his bullying stemmed from his own insecurities, as well as a total lack of empathy for the feelings of others, yet he didn’t, upon having an in-depth conversation with him, strike me as a “bad” person. So we had a few extended chats over the course of a few evenings, with me pointing up his methods and why they didn’t produce a happy working environment, and he actually turned around 180 degrees. He simply wasn’t aware of what he was doing or, on those rare occasions when he did, he didn’t understand the degree to which he was upsetting people. Within 3 months he was a totally different person, and genuinely so, not just an act. Never seen anything like it, before or since. So I guess there is hope. For some.
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