6 steps to start dealing with those prone to bullying

By Dr. Victor Schueller | Relationships health family business friends community culture work school life blogs blogging

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” ~Henry Ford

[tweetmeme]Yesterday I talked about what is going on in the mind of those who are prone to bullying.  Today, as promised, I want to discuss just how one can deal with a person who is using ineffective coping strategies or engaged in ineffective behaviors.  As I had mentioned last time, I don’t claim to have all the answers.  All I can say is that the approach I will lay out below has been shown to be successful in those I have coached through the process.  Be advised that this approach, like any other, is based on opinion and personal preference.

People have written entire books about some of these topics, so for me to try to capture every minute detail or nuance in this one article, it would be a tall task.  My objective is to give you some easy ideas to implement, which may help you better manage these difficult encounters and relationships.

Here are my six recommendations for dealing with those who may be equipped with ineffective coping strategies or engaged in ineffective behaviors:

1. Be assertive – Assertiveness is all about balance.  It’s about identifying your needs and wants and respecting the needs and wants of others.  Many times when one lacks assertiveness, they are viewed as either being weak or being overbearing and bossy, depending on which side of the spectrum they are operating on.  You could conduct a multiple-day seminar teaching people how to be more assertive.  A great book on the subject is When I Say No I Feel Guilty, by Manuel J. Smith.  His “Assertive Bill of Rights” is worth the price of the book alone.

2. Determine whether what you are getting all worked up about is even worth it – Sometimes you just have to, in the words of my good friend, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” Ask yourself one simple question, “Is this situation interfering directly and thus preventing me from doing my daily tasks at work?”  If the answer is no, then it’s not really your direct concern, and you can look to re-direct your focus to the work at hand.  Don’t inflame things.  Lots of bad things happen in this world, and if you fought every battle you faced, you’d be at war constantly.  Stick to what’s important.  If your answer is yes, then take time to think about what you may be doing that is contributing to the issue.  This is not an assignment of blame unto yourself, but sometimes you don’t realize that you may be appearing to be unapproachable or difficult to someone else.  Softening your approach may help (see numbers four and five below).

3. Always play by the rules…Always…No matter what other people do – If you maintain a sterling work record and maintain civil relationships with those you interact with on a daily basis, you are building a reputation for yourself of engaging in model behavior that cannot be disputed in the future.  If you always try to play by the rules, it’s pretty hard for someone to accuse you of doing otherwise.  You will also have the backing of the collective workplace that can vouch for your integrity and model behavior, if it were ever to be questioned.  Yes, other people get away with bending or breaking the rules, and yes it is frustrating, but if you play by the rules then nobody can ever rightly accuse you of doing anything otherwise.

4. Push for collaboration whenever possible – If you are on a team, always push for collaboration and the betterment of the team.  Operate out of a spirit-based consciousness, where love, forgiveness, and compassion are in abundance.  This abundance-based mindset will convey to those who fear losing power that you are not after their power.  Instead, you will convey that you want to increase it, and for the betterment of the team and the organization.  It’s also hard for others to argue that collaboration and team work aren’t what’s best for a team or organization!  I’d like to hear that argument!

5. Be empathetic and compassionate – Approach interactions with other people with a sense of wonder.  When someone is angry or upset, move into an “inquiry” mode.  Ask yourself why this person may be acting this way.  Wonder what need of theirs is unfulfilled — ask yourself what it is that they need to have in order to feel better about the situation.  You will find yourself less defensive and more compassionate and empathetic.  You also will be in a great position to work collaboratively with the other person to see how you can help them meet their needs.

6. Build friendships – You should make attempts to reach out to others and forge friendships.  I use the term “friendships” loosely.  This doesn’t mean that you have to hang out outside of work — this just means that you have someone who you can talk through any concerns with.  Find someone who is a good listener and helps you work through your problems (without becoming a complaining session), and more importantly, make sure it’s someone who is empathetic and values you.  If you have several “key” people identified that you can confide with, it will help you get through the difficult times and come up with solutions to your problems.  Don’t let yourself become isolated and alone — the alienation will severely affect your self-esteem and self-confidence.

All of these approaches are designed to reduce the level of activity in the reflexive area of the brain.  By diffusing the level of the threat that a person perceives, it will tone down the defense mechanisms activated.  By down-regulating the more reflex-based primitive areas of the brain, the higher, more advanced areas of the brain are able to function more effectively.  This allows the person to shift away from stress-hormone, reflexive measures (which are usually ineffective) to more rational and better-thought-out strategies that lead to much better outcomes.

I wish you the best. If you try these methods (or have tried), please let me know how they work out for you!

Have a great day!

-Victor

Photo source: freedigitalphotos.net

Inside the minds of those prone to bullying

By Dr. Victor Schueller | Relationships health family business friends community culture work school life blogs blogging

“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” ~Jim Morrison

Getting inside the mind of a person who is prone to bullying can be helpful when trying to figure out how to deal with them when their ineffective (and harmful) behaviors negatively affect you or other people.  I always figure if you can get in the mind of someone, perhaps then you can start to answer the “whys” behind their behavior, and once you understand the “why” you know where they are “coming from,” you can begin to come up with ways to solve the problem you are facing.So what makes someone who is prone to bullying “tick?”  Why is it that someone can be a perfectly respectable person in one context, yet one who significantly disrupts the lives of one or more people in a different context?  What is going on?It really comes down to an appreciation for a “balance” of “power.”  A person prone to bullying usually sizes up one or more people and assigns a certain “threat potential” to them.  They essentially are sizing up others to see how much “power” the other person can potentially “take away” from them.  The bigger the threat, the bigger the potential problem.  This concept of power being a finite or fixed quantity goes right back into a post I had previously written about the “F” word — fear.I know it sounds like I may be beating a dead horse here, but really the concept is largely the same.  When someone fears losing something — “power” included — they start to become more concerned with self preservation.  In a nutshell, when a person perceives a situation (or person) as a threat to the balance of “power” (usually meaning they will end up with less than they currently have), they fear losing out on their piece of the “power pie.”  They have to act in ways that take power out of the hands of others so they have a bigger piece of the pie.  This is especially difficult if they have held a large share of the pie, only to see that a new up-and-comer in the organization has the potential to take some of their share away from them.

This belief system is entirely flawed, of course, because there is no fixed amount of “power” out there.  “Power” is not a commodity available in fixed qualities.  I believe that it’s hard to even define what “power” is.  Is “power” defined as popularity in the eyes of others, or is it defined as authority over others or certain responsibilities?  Is “power” defined as a set of information that is proprietary to someone?  What really is “power?”  When it comes down to it, the issue is not about what  “power” is in the eyes of someone who is prone to bullying…It’s more about the level of fear over losing that source of “power.”  The greater the fear, the more drastic the measures that need to be taken to prevent the loss of that “power.”

Our brains are built as two systems in one, really.  One system is the higher, more advanced and “thinking” part of the brain.  The other system is the lower, more reflex-based system which resembles reptile brains.  It is involved in tasks which are aimed at keeping us alive, from controlling our breathing and heart rate, to detecting external threats and mobilizing to prevent injury or death.  Whenever we perceive something as threatening, our lower brain centers become active, and we move into a self-preservation mode.

The truth of the matter is that a threat to someone’s source of “power” hardly is the kind of threat that is going to cause the loss of life.  Our primitive brains, however, don’t know the difference.  They just know they are “agitated” for some reason, and they need to prepare to either fight or flee.  Usually through ineffective behavior patterns and coping mechanisms, the individual is engaged in “defend” or “attack” mode, or both, resulting in the behaviors usually associated with bullying.  I don’t need to go in to the types of behaviors associated with bullying, because it seems like everyone has a good idea of what those behaviors typically are.

If you peel everything away down to the core, it’s clear that the lower centers of the brain of someone who is prone to bullying is engaged in a “defend” or attack” mode, initiated by a perceived threat of the loss of “power.” More correctly, it is initiated by the fear of losing the source of “power.”

So you may be thinking, “Well, now I know the ‘why,’ but that doesn’t help me fix the problem.”  You are right — it doesn’t.  However, I can provide some recommendations for you, which are basic and may give you some success.  I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have utilized these techniques when coaching individuals who have been dealing with difficult people, and have experienced great success.

I’ll be happy to share those recommendations with you — tomorrow!  Until then, have a great day!

Best wishes,

-Victor

Photo source: freedigitalphotos.net

Report: Workplace Stress Could Be Killing Careers

By Dr. Victor Schueller | Relationships health family business friends community culture work school life blogs blogging

 

This article starts out with, “Anxiety, depression, irritability — they are the cost of doing business for many first responders such as police officers, soldiers or physicians.

 

But a groundbreaking study suggests that even indirect exposure to the trauma of others may profoundly affect the mental health of some surprising public servants.”

Here’s the article:

Workplace Stress Could Be Killing Careers – Health News Story – WISN Milwaukee.

A great way to deal with anxiety and stress is through meditation. Here’s a quick, 4-step crash course in meditation, courtesy of TIME Magazine (Time International (South Pacific Edition), 8/4/2003, Issue 30, p48-56):

1 FIND A QUIET PLACE – If it helps, turn out the lights. The fewer distractions you have, the easier it will be to concentrate

2 CLOSE YOUR EYES – The idea is to shut out the outside world so your brain can stop actively processing information coming from the senses

3 PICK A WORD, ANY WORD – Find a word or phrase that means something to you, whose sound or rhythm is soothing when repeated

4 SAY IT AGAIN AND AGAIN – Try saying your word or phrase to yourself with every outbreath. The monotony will help you focus

How do you deal with more complex social situations? Grow a larger brain.

By Dr. Victor Schueller | Relationships health family business friends community culture work school life blogs blogging

“What we think, we become.” ~Buddha

In the book Mindblindness, author Simon Baron-Cohen discusses the evolution of the brain which occurred, obviously, as humans evolved as a species (if you are a proponent of evolutionary theory).  Baron-Cohen suggests that humans are able to “mind read,” meaning that humans are able to observe other human behavior and come up with the “maybes” that would justify the observed actions.

As Baron-Cohen goes on, he suggests (and this is purely speculative theory, which is backed by scientific data and research that seems to support this theory) that humans evolved to be “mind readers” through the development of a larger brain.  He suggests it was necessary in order for humans to sort out and manage more complex social situations.  The end result was the development of a large “neo-cortex” which rests on top of a more primitive area of the brain below.  This is all very interesting (at least to me) because the book is really a book about autism, and Baron-Cohen discusses how it appears that autistic individuals, for some reason, are unable to do the “mind reading” that other humans are able to do.  The manifestation of this inability to “mind read” results in the clinical presentation and features of autism.

Getting back to the neo-cortex, Baron-Cohen is suggesting that it developed to accommodate the larger “tribes” we were living in and increasing social complexity.  No longer was it a matter of how big or strong you were (when it came to survival)…Now it came down to how shrewd you were, and how well you could “read” and navigate through ever-more-complex social situations between individuals in the tribe.  Those with the larger brains, capable of sorting out complex social situations, thrived and survived and became our ancestors.

There are three parts, or “nodes” that are believed to “house” the “mind-reading” system of our brains.  Those three areas are the superior temporal sulcus (located on the side of our brains, about where our ears are), the orbito-frontal cortex (located in the front of the brain above our eyes), and the amygdala (which is the almond-shaped structure located in the lower area of the brain, connected to the limbic (or emotional) system).  These three components allow us to “read” the minds of others, to try to figure out why people do what they do and act the way they do.  The first two components are located in the neo-cortex, while the amygdala is part of the lower and more primitive area of the brain.  It’s much more reflexive in nature.

As you well know, these parts, while well intentioned, can get us into a lot of trouble when we let our imaginations run out of control.  We start to make assumptions and conjure up our defense mechanisms and ego to protect us from attack, or humiliation, or both.  The amygdala is wired right into our automatic nervous system, so if we let it do all the talking, we run into trouble.

The key is to actually use the larger cortex that sits on top of our more primitive areas to be, well, more human.  Instead of letting our imaginations run amok, we need to step back, rationalize with ourselves, and truly seek to be compassionate and empathetic.

It’s time we use the large brains that we developed to rationalize that while it’s possible that or worst assumptions and fears may be true, it’s also possible that we are making assumptions which are in reality just not true.  We can’t jump to conclusions about what we see or hear.  We have to use the “outer rim” of our brains to actually think through our interactions with others, and override the more reflexive and painful stimuli running through our limbic system and more primitive brain structures.

I really believe that learning more about Non-violent Communication (NVC) (and this is not a paid endorsement or plug by any means) is a great way to learn to use these more advanced regions of the brain to reason through what we observe.  Peggy Smith, a certified trainer in NVC, joined me a few weeks ago on my radio show.  I would highly recommend listening to her suggestions, because they are extremely applicable and helpful, plus she has great resources on her website too!

We grew larger brains for a reason…Why not use what we were blessed with?

Best wishes!

-Victor

 

Photo source: freedigitalphotos.net

It’s so cold I can see my breath, but I am sweating — what’s going on here?

By Dr. Victor Schueller | Relationships health family business friends community culture work school life blogs blogging

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Please note: Don’t miss my exclusive interview with #1 NY Times Bestselling Author of the book Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan tonight at 4:30 PM!  Click here for more details!

[tweetmeme]In about three weeks, I’ll be celebrating the tenth anniversary of one of the most critical moments of my life.  It was in early March of 2002 when I got off of the couch and signed up for a membership at a nearby gym.  By March of 2003, I was seventy pounds lighter, and so much happier.

One of the main ways I got the weight off (and kept it off since) is by running…I greatly enjoy running, but let me tell you, when it comes to winters here in Wisconsin, I don’t like running in the cold. In the ten years that I have been running regularly, I had never run in temperatures below 40 degrees…Never…

My rule of thumb has always been that if it’s under 50 degrees and I want to run, I am doing it indoors. I usually experienced discomfort when breathing when it started to get colder outside, and I didn’t like to bundle up only to get warm and uncomfortable during the run because of all the layers of clothes.  I didn’t like wearing too little and then be uncomfortable and cold during the duration of the run either.  Simply put, it was just easier and more comfortable running inside than outside during the cold winters.

Well, yesterday I did it!  I decided, almost on a whim, to go out.  It was in the low to mid 30s outside (which is pretty mild for a Wisconsin February day), and I ran my usual, warm-weather route.  It felt great, with exception to my cold ears in the early leg of the run.  After I got going, however, they warmed up.  I think the only thing I would have done differently is put on a hat for the early part of the run.

Until yesterday, I was extremely uncomfortable with the idea of running in cold weather.  It’s not that I didn’t think I could do it — I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it because the perceived physical discomfort I believed I would experience while running in cold weather.  It got me thinking about the concept of change and trying new things, and why it is so hard to accept change sometimes, and why we resist change and the thought of trying something new and uncomfortable.

Our brains (and the mind within) were developed with the purpose of not only thriving, but surviving.  While our conscious minds deal with our everyday interactions at the obvious conscious level, our unconscious mind takes care of making sure we are safe.  Our conscious mind knows that we should do things, like watch what we eat, lose weight, stop smoking, and the like, but it has to actually convince our unconscious mind that it is a good idea to make a change.

This “sales pitch,” however, is a tough one.  The unconscious mind, as mentioned above, has survival down as its most important responsibility.  It likes comfort, consistency, and safety.  Our unconscious mind comes up with great excuses as to why it’s a great idea to just keep on with the status quo, because, after all, it was the status quo that allowed us to survive to see today.

Well, today my conscious mind carried the day — it was able to “pitch” a winner to my unconscious mind, to the point where it actually was convinced that it would be a good idea to venture out of the comfortable and familiar and take a run.  Consciously, I understand the benefits of exercise and why I should do it, but I am guessing the pizza that I ate the night before and the left-over pizza I ate today didn’t hurt when it came to coming up with a compelling case as to why I really felt the need for the run! 🙂

By pushing past the uncomfortable, I did a few things — I realized how my perception was skewed (and wrong); I could obviously run in cold weather, but my (somewhat unconscious) excuses to avoid it kept me from doing so.  I realized that I could actually do it, so now I can’t say that I never ran in the cold ever again.  I also felt good about doing it, so I got a boost of healthy positive self-esteem, and confidence in myself that I can venture outside of the uncomfortable in another way in the future and achieve success.

Is there something that your conscious mind knows should change, but find that your unconscious mind is continually ignoring the conscious request?  Is there something you want to try, but fear venturing into the uncomfortable?

I challenge you to find something that you know you need to change, and I challenge you to take a small step toward making that change a reality.  It’s not always easy — you really need to allow for about 10 to 14 days of repeated “nudging” by the conscious mind before the unconscious mind finally gives in and agrees to go along with the suggestions of the conscious mind.  The road may be long and hard, but trust me, great things lie ahead if you can convince your unconscious mind to make the change you consciously know you want to make!

I wish you the best in embracing change today!  Who knows?  Maybe today will be the start of something great!

Take care, and best wishes!  Have a great week!

-Victor

Photo source: freedigitalphotos.net

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