How can emotional abuse happen in organizations that seem to take an explicit stand against bullying and harassing?
The tone of an organization is set by administration and management. If an organization nurtures mutual respect, the staff will follow suit. If an organization allows abuse, passive aggressiveness, incivility and manipulation to fester, the workplace becomes toxic. It seems contradictory, but toxic organizations can still have anti-harassment policies. In the worst case, the policy lacks clout. In the best case, management doesn’t know how to implement it. That’s when managers need training to understand emotional abuse and the company’s response to it. Sometimes, even when an anti-emotional abuse policy exists, nothing is done because a boss may benefit from the bullying supervisor’s ability to instil fear. The boss can seem like to good guy, while the abuser terrorizes staff into submission. Bosses who rely on an enforcer so they can bully staff from afar make it hard to implement policy. Other times, the supervisor builds himself or herself up at others’ expense, cultivating favouri
