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Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
Dear Bev,
This is a very difficult subject for me to write about – I don’t know if you will even dare to answer it – but I am struggling so much to work alongside a person who posts (to their personal accounts) disgusting, horrible, mean memes and nasty writings about a certain political party, on a daily basis.
I, and three of my colleagues, belong to the “immoral” political party (that’s what this person calls us) and we try and ignore what is said. My mother always told me the worst thing you can do to a bully is ignore them! However, it is hard when others send us this person’s posts. We are in a small firm, so there isn’t a compliance person to go to, and our owner isn’t one to “get involved.”
One of my colleagues tried to tell this person how hurtful their actions were and they got a barrage of insults and yelling as a result. My colleague went home totally shaken about the incident.
I get this is the world we are living in now. I get people go into their corners and come out swinging. I get there are “differences of opinion.” But I don’t get the hatred and vitriol, and the impact it has on the working relationship of others.
Do we just wait this out and hope the person spirals out of control and/or quits? Do we continue to ignore them, even though that’s really hard to do? Do we stage a walkout and show our owner we won’t take it anymore? Where do we go from here?
Anonymous
Dear Advisory Team Member,
I really want to address this, given how much I understand the hurt and the upset. I know that dealing with someone who is irrational is next to impossible. Trying to show them how much their approach hurts others only fuels the fire and gives them more righteousness.
Your situation is what I call “nailing Jell-O to the wall”: You know you have the higher ground, and probably facts and data in your corner, but someone who has gone “all in” with a group in this manner isn’t going to listen to any reason or a differing opinion.
What do you do? I think you have two key options here, none of which are optimal. However, I’m a realist, so I don’t like wasting time on things that can’t work at all:
1. Remember, as often as you can, that each of us as can only control the controllable. What other people do or say is not in our control. Our reactions are in our control, how we treat others is in our control, and our own thoughts are in our control. You may have to find yourself several times a day remembering this as you deal with your colleagues.
We have things in our influence, such as trying to make an appeal to someone who is rational, but if the person simply won’t listen, or abuses someone who brings something up to them, it isn’t worth it. I call controlling the controllable “coming back to center.” I do this many, many times throughout my day, when I want to respond to something someone has written or something that has been said. I remind myself that responding is useless.
Instead, I take a few deep breaths and bring my attention back to what I am doing. I actually say out loud, “Come back to center,” and sometimes I have to do it over and over again.
2. If the above doesn’t work for you, you definitely could all gather together (the remaining colleagues affected by this person’s actions) and go to your owner to announce that you won’t be taking it anymore. You have to be prepared to take action, such as walking out when you do this. Or stage a “sick-out” where you all don’t show up for two to three days. I’m not a fan of threats, but sometimes – when you can’t get a response and the situation becomes untenable – you are left with no choice.
I wish you well. I truly do understand what you are going through and the pain associated with it.
Dear Bev,
I appreciated your column about working with difficult people. We have a person in our office (I’ll call him “Guy”) who seems to enjoy making people cry. He is in a senior position and lords over others until they finally crack, and then he brags about it. Last week, I walked into our break area and he was telling two interns about how he “made Sally cry, and only guilty people cry so you know what that means.” Sally is not her real name, of course, but the situation is real. Those of us who were sitting there got up all together and walked out.
Guy has never made me cry, nor will he, because I see him for what he is – a scared little man. However, in our advisory firm we need the people who are supporting us to be confident and enthused about what they are doing. How do I get him to see he is not only hurting the people he abuses, but the entire team?
Anonymous
Dear Advisor,
I saved your inquiry for a bit, because when I received the previous question for this week’s column, I thought they went together somewhat.
Bullying in the workplace is a real thing. Reading your question actually gave me PTSD flashbacks, because I had a leader years ago, in a mutual fund company I worked for, who relished making people cry. I had another one, in an investment firm I worked for, that would throw things at us if he didn’t like what we had to say when we came into his office. This same person enjoyed coming into the lunch room and yelling at someone in front of others. I tell you this just to say that I get it and I have lived it.
The problem with bullies is that they like to bully! They don’t often listen to anything about how their bullying impacts others. The way we dealt with my boss who enjoyed making people cry was to band together. We would support one another, build each other’s confidence in any way we could and give each other much needed boosts on a daily basis. We became quite a close group as a result. It’s like living through a traumatic event that brings you together – it can create a unique bond. We didn’t disparage my boss, and we didn’t take him on or confront him. Instead, we chose to become a bonded, supportive team who worked through things together. To this day, many years later, we are mostly all still in touch and still provide professional support to each other when needed.
You can’t change your senior colleague, and you will be potentially exposing yourself to some angry rants if you try and confront Guy. Instead, become a stronger team despite Guy. Don’t waste energy hating him or disparaging him. Rather, spend your time building one another up and focusing on as much positive as possible! I know it sounds like a Pollyanna mindset in some ways, but, over time, it really does work.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
