Stop Telling Employees to ‘Manage Their Emotional Responses’ to Abuse in the Workplace

If I read one more article, blog post or pithy statement about how it’s an employee’s responsibility to ‘manage their emotional responses’ to abusive behaviors in the workplace, I’ll probably let loose a scream that will be heard around the world.

You don’t ‘manage’ abuse. You stop it or get away from it.

In a brilliant example of how limited AI really is, the generated response by the LinkedIn AI mechanism to my recent post on Narcissistic Rage in the Workplace offered ‘suggestions’ on how employees could respond to this behavior starting with …you guessed it…better managing their own emotional responses to it….instead of focusing on the organization’s responsibility for stopping the abuse. This is also the standard response to the issue of burnout (a workplace induced condition, not an individual problem) and just about every other human emotional condition plaguing workplace eco-systems today. Considering that AI is a regurgitation of what is already on the web, it’s no surprise that these unhelpful and frankly uninformed ‘suggestions’ are what is coming forward from supposedly an ‘intelligent’ source. What is needed around this issue is a change in thinking and behavior, not a regurgitation of conventional thought.

There absolutely is wisdom and an imperative to develop coping skills and emotional maturity for workplace engagements, and the stunning lack thereof, is a huge driver of relational ‘scratchiness’ that is pervasive in work environments today. This is not, however, what I’m talking about here.

Telling anyone on the receiving end of abusive behavior, regardless of environment, that it’s their failure to ‘manage their responses’ to this as the biggest cause of their distress and they just need to ‘work’ on this…well, that my friends is called gaslighting.

Blaming people for their response to abuse is an age-old technique of abusers to dislocate attention and examination of their behavior and to sap the self-confidence of their targets so they’ll continue to acquiesce.

Would you tell someone in an abusive domestic relationship experiencing verbal or physical violence, that if they would only do better at managing their responses to this, they’d be more successful and feel oh so much better? Bet not. In fact, we’d be horrified to hear anyone offer such insensitivity, right?

Yet that’s exactly what’s happening in work environments. Why? Because abuse in the workplace has been happening with impunity for so long it’s been normalized. We've been acculturated to embrace the notion that if you want a paycheck than one has to expect and tolerate bullying, narcissistic rage, toxic stress, harassment, and myriad other behaviors that, outside of a professional environment, would be considered unacceptable. And because of this normalization, bosses and co-workers who engage in this behavior have no incentive to change.

This is resulting in evidence-based physical and emotional harm to employees, their relationships, the communities they live in and ultimately the companies who employ them. Active shooter and employee violence statistics are chilling in exemplifying the results of experiencing chronic bullying, harassment, and other common abusive workplace behaviors.

Example: I worked with a coaching client who had been officially diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and depression ‘specific to the workplace’ by their physician because of a senior leader who routinely exhibited narcissistic rage. The employee wound up on a cardiac halter monitor with real-time biological data transmitted to their doctor’s office whilst at work to prevent a serious health event.  After one particularly terrifying episode of screaming by this direct report for an hour and half, the doctor’s office called the employee alarmed, advising they come in immediately or go to the Emergency Department of the nearest hospital. These episodes never happened outside of work. Sit with that a minute.

And this is not an aberrant example. Read Jeffrey Pfeffer’s 2018 book called ‘Dying For a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance-and What We Can Do About It.

Yet these management practices are anything but ‘modern’, bolstered from long-standing and historically unchallenged attitudes about work that have been with us for over 100 years.

Consider the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory fire in NYC that led to the deaths of 146 workers, almost all teenage women, who worked 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week, on the upper floors of a building woefully and deliberately kept unsafe to avoid the costs of instituting basic precautions. Management (who had a long history of well-known but overlooked abusive practices) kept doors locked from the outside to keep workers from leaving and to prevent stealing. Only 1 of the 4 elevators was operational, which stopped working after 4 trips because of the heat and the fire hose was rotted, with a valve rusted inoperable. The fire escape, so narrow for the size of the building and number of workers, was useless.

It only took 18 minutes. Trying to survive, victims jumped from windows, plunged into the elevator shaft, and were found cramped in corridors, many burned to death, or suffocated. Photos of the 146 victims, (many unidentifiable) who were lined up on Charities Pier, (aptly known as ‘Misery Lane’ for being a makeshift morgue following disasters), demonstrated the toll of this preventable tragedy and created a fierce outcry that fundamentally changed the establishment and adherence to building safety codes for the entire country. You may say…”well, that’s different…that abusive behavior by management caused physical harm...that’s a safety issue.”

Physical or emotional…harm is harm. If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that mental well-being is just as important in the workplace as is physical well-being and is essential to productivity. We are awash every day in public discussion around mental health.

It was the exposure of abusive workplace practices resulting in the Triangle tragedy and the ensuing public outcry rendering it unacceptable, that created the desperately needed changes we still benefit from today. No doubt, many at that time thought this impossible to achieve.

We need more of that.

Employees shouldn’t be expected to don a suit of armor before logging in or arriving at their place of business to ‘manage’ aka ‘survive’ their work experience.

When organizations create cultures that are ‘allergic’ to abusive behaviors, regardless of who it’s coming from, and employees refuse to be silent about abusive work environments, this preventable stressor and ‘thief of organizational life’ will become a relic of an unenlightened age.