Strategies to Defeat Workplace Bullies and Emerge Victorious by Megan Carle

A Playbook to Combat Workplace Bullying. Embark on a journey to reclaim your professional life with “Walk Away to Win,” a beacon of empowerment against the dark shadows of workplace bullying. Discover transformative strategies that not only spotlight the issue but also equip you with the tools to rise above it.

Ready to turn the tables on workplace toxicity? Keep reading to unlock the secrets to a bully-free career and a healthier, more productive work environment.

Genres

Self-help, Professional Development, Business Ethics, Leadership, Human Resources, Workplace Culture, Personal Growth, Organizational Behavior, Psychology, Women in Business

“Walk Away to Win” by Megan Carle is a compelling guide that addresses the pervasive issue of workplace bullying. Drawing from her personal experiences and extensive research, Carle provides insights into recognizing, confronting, and overcoming the toxic behaviors that plague modern workplaces.

She outlines practical strategies for dealing with bullies, from ignoring and resisting to finding allies or choosing to walk away. The book underscores the importance of healthy workplace cultures and the detrimental effects of bullying on individuals and organizations alike.

Review

Megan Carle’s “Walk Away to Win” is a crucial read for anyone facing the challenges of workplace bullying. The book is well-structured, offering clear and actionable advice that resonates with a wide audience. Carle’s firsthand account adds authenticity to the narrative, making it not only informative but also deeply relatable.

While the focus on high-level corporate experiences may not translate universally, the underlying principles of resilience and self-advocacy are universally applicable. The book’s positive tone in the latter sections provides a hopeful outlook for those feeling trapped in toxic work environments. Overall, “Walk Away to Win” serves as a valuable resource for individuals and leaders alike, advocating for a no-tolerance approach to bullying and a redefinition of what it means to truly win at work.

Recommendation

Have you been the target of workplace bullying? In this helpful guide, former Nike VP and bullying victim Megan Carle explains how to spot and address this widespread problem. She offers tactics for dealing with workplace bullies – ignoring, resisting, complying, finding allies or walking away – and cites research revealing the extent and the consequences of unchecked workplace bullying. Weak or inattentive leaders breed unhealthy cultures that permit bullying, she writes. Carle describes how bullying erodes victims’ health and deprives firms of talented workers who either stop producing or quit.

Take-Aways

• In 2016, Megan Carle left her dream job at Nike due to relentless bullying.
• Half of all workers will suffer bullying at some point in their careers.
• Bullying might include sexual harassment, but it usually doesn’t.
• Good leadership and healthy workplace cultures prevent bullying.
• Being bullied is not your fault, but you can choose how you respond.
• Recognize the kind of bully you’re facing.
• Bullying is more often subtle than overt.
• Focus on what you control: your choices and your option to leave.

Summary

In 2016, Megan Carle left her dream job at Nike due to relentless bullying.

Having served Nike for almost three decades and risen to a global executive role, Megan Carle left a company and career that she loved, believing she had no choice. Despite her seniority, her direct connection to Nike’s legendary CEO Phil Knight and a stellar record, Carle could not overcome nor prevent the bullying she suffered during her last years at the firm. She didn’t know it at the time, but Carle was not alone in suffering harassment, sexism and other forms of bullying at Nike.

Half of all workers will suffer bullying at some point in their careers.

Men constitute two-thirds of bullies and most often target women. Bullies apply their tactics insidiously, chipping away at their victim’s confidence, fueling self-doubt, loss of selfhood and virtual paralysis. Whether the victim stays or leaves, their organization loses out when bullying goes unchecked.

“While behaving like a bully is unthinkable to most people, it’s fair to say that bullying is far more common than is generally acknowledged.”

For the target, bullying equates to trauma. Workplace bullying victims may lose sleep, suffer migraines, experience heightened anxiety, develop heart-related and other medical conditions including depression and endure chronic exhaustion. The target’s health gradually declines mentally and physically over months or years of bullying, rendering that person ineffective at work and elsewhere. The cumulative effect resembles the symptoms of PTSD.

Bullying might include sexual harassment, but it usually doesn’t.

Bullies’ actions usually don’t cross obvious lines of legality, which hinders punishment and prevention. Some bullies humiliate their victims openly in front of as many people as possible. Others praise victims in public but berate or micromanage them in private. Or they treat victims like friends, then turn on them at an opportune moment. Some operate more subtly, using head games and gaslighting to make victims question their competence, quality of work or sanity.

“Being a target of workplace bullying doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

Holding people to high standards isn’t necessarily bullying. A leader might intimidate you, expect a lot from you or pit you against others in competition. This may cause stress, but the person’s intent might be to bring out the best in you or perhaps to mentor or sponsor you. Distinguish a bully by the intent behind the person’s actions. Bullies don’t want you to succeed. Bullies single you out for humiliation and sabotage.

Good leadership and healthy workplace cultures prevent bullying.

When leaders fail to regard their people as their organization’s greatest assets, an unhealthy culture develops that enables bullying. Firms should select leaders for their emotional intelligence (EQ) at least as much as for their IQ. High EQ leaders know their reports, build them up, value and respect them, and create a culture that nurtures and rewards people who support one another as allies, sponsors and mentors. A leader’s EQ and attentiveness to workplace dynamics enable that leader to recognize and stop bullying. In healthy cultures, when team members see something, they say something.

“The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” (Education experts Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker)

In healthy cultures, leaders give their team members autonomy and accountability, supporting them when asked. They encourage risk-taking and learning from failure. They create a shared vision for the future, admit they don’t have all the answers, recognize and appreciate team members and reward behaviors that strengthen the culture. In healthy cultures, leaders never tolerate sexism. This includes eliminating gender tokenism in the senior ranks and discouraging exclusionary activities like male-only golf outings. Locker room talk about female colleagues, and shaming of any kind, should trigger severe sanctions, if not immediate dismissal. These measures stop bullying before it can take root and spread.

“Just as all the positive work experiences we have add up to us being well suited for promotions, so too do the negative effects of bullying start to chip away at our abilities and confidence.”

Everyone in a culture has a duty to watch over and protect it and to raise the alarm should it turn hostile. When people or groups exclude others or deliberately set them up for failure or humiliation, their actions may be subtle and difficult to articulate, but the feelings they produce are undeniable. Such emotions eat away at your confidence and effectiveness. You lose your self-belief, and the organization loses the benefit of your contributions.

Being bullied is not your fault, but you can choose how you respond.

You did nothing to deserve bullying but have agency over your response to it. You can choose to ignore the bully, avoid that person wherever possible and hope the bully will get bored and move on. You can fight back or at least hold your ground – though that risks increasing the bully’s motivation to attack you. You can do what the bully wants, hoping they’ll back off. But behaving in ways counter to your nature will eat at you, affecting your health and confidence.You can seek support from peers and allies who might intervene or bear witness. Bullies want control; knock them off their game by responding in ways best suited to your strengths and personality.

“Your bully has declared who they are. Now it is time for you to declare who you are.”

Get to know your bully. Study strengths and weaknesses. Realize that bullies target people they see as threats. Bullies mask their insecurities and fears by making you look bad. You have the right to respect and dignity at work and should not have to waste time and energy psychoanalyzing your co-workers and bosses. However, many workplaces feature unhealthy cultures that tolerate bullying, so you need a strategy. Acknowledge your victimhood and determine your response, whether to ignore, resist, comply, seek allies or walk away.

Don’t normalize bullying by accepting it as an inescapable part of a job or career you otherwise love or need. Don’t feel shame at being victimized or think the bully is right – that you don’t deserve your job. Don’t believe you must toughen up, and never assume you can negotiate or reason with a bully.

Recognize the kind of bully you’re facing.

Understanding the kind of bully you’re dealing with can help you determine how best to respond to that person’s behavior. The first bully type is “in-your-face.” This sort seeks to demonstrate their power by humiliating you in public. The bully might swear at you, call you names or throw a fit based on what the bully claims is your mistake. This bully thrives on confrontation. Resist firing back at them. Call the person out later or take the issue to the bully’s boss. The next time you have to deal with that person, bring allies or refuse to work with the bully.

“Businesses thrive when employees respect each other; they die when insecure managers marginalize others.”

The “rat-face bully” aims to undermine you in covert, underhanded ways. This bully might wrongfully sideline you or take credit for your work. You might ignore this and let the bully fail when that person tries to take the lead wrongfully. Or you might insist on taking the lead or not permit the bully to sideline you by taking the issue to someone higher up the corporate food chain. If you fight back, expect the bully to push back harder in subsequent encounters.

The “two-face bully” extols your virtues in public and bullies you in private; this bully wants you to know that he or she holds the power. The bully might undermine your authority or, if you report to this person, may reverse your decisions. You might comply, for example, when the bully tells you to fire a good employee you recently hired. Avoiding confrontation means you lose more power, and an innocent team member loses a job. Instead, enlist allies who will vouch for the employee and form a coalition against firing the worker. This might turn your allies into targets for the bully, but it saves the firm from losing a good employee.

“Gaslighters are the ultimate at head games. Like their covert cousins, they want you to know they’re in power.”

The “about-face bully” goes about his or her work quietly, almost in hiding. This bully surprises you with sudden vitriol to throw you off balance. The bully might attempt to control everything you do under the guise of ensuring quality, making light of your experience and qualifications. You might resist by emphasizing your competence and insisting on doing things your way, but the bully is insecure and may seek revenge. Or you might do nothing and give in to the bully. This will likely end the bullying for a while but will weaken your influence and your passion for your work.

The “gaslighter” might tell you to meet in his or her office and show up in yours. This bully might throw you off by telling you a colleague earns much more than you for doing the same job. This bully might engage you in conversation about your life to collect information that the person can leverage later. Gaslighters play head games to keep you off balance and cause you to question yourself. Due to their deliberately deniable tactics, you will have difficulty accusing a gaslighter of bullying. You might find it best to walk away from this situation and get another job or build your case over time through careful documentation.

Bullying is more often subtle than overt.

Even simple microaggressions, such as refusing to call someone by a preferred name or pronoun, can wear away at that person over time. Despite your seniority, a boss may require you to copy him on every correspondence or share your calendar with him and file reports on your activities daily or weekly. These and other seemingly small slights signal that you don’t matter and do not deserve respect. Make no mistake; these actions constitute bullying.

Each type of bully and every bullying circumstance presents challenges for which no easy answers exist. Given the often hidden and subtle nature of bullying, don’t expect immediate or comprehensive solutions. Each of your options and courses of action – to ignore, resist, comply, enlist allies or walk away – carries potential rewards and risks.

“When the organization and HR don’t hold the bully or the bully’s enablers accountable, talent walks.”

Sometimes, a new boss will undermine a healthy culture, bond with HR for protection, and bully team members to exert power and mask insecurities. If you witness these behaviors, document them, call them out – even though you might become the next target – and offer support to targets. Act as a sounding board for the target, document what you see and try to form a coalition that can elevate the problem to HR. A group of workers acting together wields more influence. Note that you typically have more influence before you become a target of bullying.

If you have a leadership position, you have a special obligation to act when you experience or witness bullying. Consider how to intervene. Talk to the targets and confront the bully, calling out the bullying behavior for what it is. If you go to a more senior manager or leader to report bullying, state clearly that you expect them to take concrete action. Ultimately, these actions may get you nowhere. If so, consider moving on to another role in the firm or walking away.

Focus on what you control: your choices and your option to leave.

Your bully won’t relent; HR does nothing, and your leadership couldn’t care less. This scenario plays out often. In these circumstances, deal with bullying directly. This might entail walking away, hopefully with the means and support systems to cushion you. Prepare by separating your work and personal emails, consulting a lawyer and searching for a new job while still employed. Determine your narrative for why you left and plan your exit and last day.

“Exits can be long, messy and unsatisfying, but ultimately they are what frees us.”

When Carle quit Nike, for example, she emphasized the positives of her career with the firm. In her last meeting with Phil Knight, Carle thanked him for persevering through the company’s tough times and giving her opportunities over the years. She determined ahead of time to say nothing about the bullying she experienced, saying instead that she was leaving to spend more time with her young children.

After you leave, engage in other activities, such as coaching your kid’s sports teams, helping friends or volunteering. Expect to harbor resentment, feel lethargic and experience other symptoms from having been bullied. Never regard walking away as a win for the bully and a loss for you. It’s your choice, your action and your win.

About the Author

Former vice president and general manager of North America Basketball at Nike Megan Carle founded and operates Carle Consulting LLC.