Dear Crucial Skills,

The manager in our department is widely regarded as a bully. Her behavior includes frequent outbursts directed at whoever is nearest, followed by long, accusatory emails. This has become a normalized management style, and it’s taking a serious toll—several team members are now on antidepressants due to the ongoing stress. I’m not directly in her line of fire, which gives me some objectivity, but what I see is deeply troubling. Is the only option for staff to leave or medicate just to cope with this environment? What can I do?

Signed,
Bystander

Dear Bystander,

If you have been reading our newsletter for more than a couple of months, you can likely guess what my initial response will be—a gentle but firm push against the way you characterize your department manager. Your description is rife with stories (judgments and conclusions) and light on facts. When experiencing conflict it is always a best to start by interrogating our own stories and validating them as objectively as possible. But, for today, I will assume you have already done this work and accept your judgment and conclusion—that your manager is a bully.

James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The binary options you lay out—leave or medicate—are valid options if you and your colleagues choose not to “face” your manager’s behavior. Taking either of those paths ensures that nothing in your manager’s behavior will change.

Facing, or addressing the bad behavior, does not necessarily ensure that your boss’s behavior will change, but it represents the only possible chance for it. So, how then can you face the situation?

First, I would encourage you to report the behavior to your human resources department. HR professionals are often highly skilled and when it comes to addressing bad behavior. Even if others have reported the behavior in the past and nothing has seemed to change, I would still encourage you to report it. It is crucial that HR professionals are aware of patterns of behavior, which repeated reports can alert them to.

Second, consider having a conversation directly with your manager. Our thirty years of experience and research have taught us that the health of any relationship, team, or organization is a function of the average lag between identifying a problem and discussing it. That you have not yet (presumably) had a conversation with your manager indicates that there is room for improvement in your relationship with her. Should you decide to hold this conversation, here are three suggestions for how to navigate what is sure to be a tricky interaction.

Be Generous

The stories we tell ourselves about people often have two components: conclusion (my manager bullies people) and attribution (she does this because she is a mean, self-absorbed, all-round horrible person). Even if your conclusion is accurate, you should step back from your attribution and bring generosity rather than judgment to bear.

One of the most efficient ways to do this is to ask yourself, “Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person behave this way?” The effort to answer this question is inversely related to the degree to which you know the person. The better we know someone, the harder it is for us to let go of the judgments we have made. Since I don’t know your manager, answering the question is relatively straightforward. Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person do this? Perhaps because:

• She’s been rewarded in the past because of or despite this behavior (after all, she has been promoted to or hired to the role of manager).
• Her approach gets results.
• No one has ever given her direct feedback about her behavior and the impact.
• She is living (and normalizing her behavior) in a world that celebrates bullying. Bullies seem to get more social media likes, more algorithm-driven engagement (read enragement), and even get elected to public office.

Share Your Good Intent—for Her

No one enjoys hearing critical feedback, even people who appreciate feedback. So when it comes to having tough conversations, we want to make it safe for the other person to hear the message we are about to share. The best way to create safety is to share your good intent.

The hardest part about sharing our good intent is it requires that you have a good intent. If I were to ask you, “Why are you having this conversation?” my guess is you would say something like, “Because her behavior is hurting other people and it needs to change.” Or, “Because her behavior is harming our team.” These are valid and important reasons to hold the conversation. But neither of them will likely create a sense of safety for your manager so she can properly hear your message.

Ask yourself, “What do I really want for her?” As you do so, pay attention to the word “for”—what do I want for her, not from her. Too often when we consider what we want for others, our likely answer is “I want her to change; I want her to be respectful; I want her to be different than she is.” But that is what you want from her. And the question that will unlock good intent and create safety is to see her as a person and identify what you want for her.

Describe the Gap

Once you have shared your good intent, clearly and factually describe the gap between expectations and observations.

You may have some homework to do here. Make sure you know what good behavior looks like (what your expectations are) and what the bad behavior looks like. Avoid telling stories here. You must be more specific than “frequent outbursts” or “long, accusatory emails”.

While you should approach this conversation in your own way, it may be helpful to hear an example of how you might begin. It might should like this:

“Hi Sharon, can we talk?

“It’s important to me that we have a relationship in which we can be open and honest with each other, and that you can trust me to speak up about concerns. That’s why I want to talk to you about something that I think may be holding you back and negatively affecting the team. Would that be okay?

“I’ve noticed that sometimes when something doesn’t go as planned, you get frustrated and can become loud and pointed. For example, last week, when Jaime missed his deadline, you raised your voice in team meeting and said, ‘I can’t count on you to do anything right!’

“I’m concerned that your approach didn’t show the respect that I think we should have for everyone on our team. I’m sure there is a lot going on that I don’t see, but what I do see has me concerned, so I wanted to check in. How do you see it?”

Again, this isn’t a script to memorize. You need to find your own good intent and come prepared with your facts. But hopefully this example gives you a picture of how you might open a conversation with your manager.

I hope you take a chance and have the conversation. I can’t guarantee that she will change, but not having the conversation guarantees she won’t.