The Importance of Valuing Difference
Instead of valuing differences, we often find bullying. How much is bullying costing us? How many of us have suffered the consequences of bullying? That constant, “nit-picking, criticism of a trivial fault that is distorted, misrepresented, and added to with fabrication, those attempts to undermine you, being singled out and treated differently, being ignored, patronised, overloaded, humiliated, having your responsibility increased but your authority reduced, having leave (especially compassionate leave) refused, being denied training, having unrealistic goals sets that change when it suits those in authority
Some organisations are a hierarchy of unrealistic expectations and personal grievances pursued and enforced though inappropriate use of authority. Layer upon layer of alternative manifestations of bullying from the chief executive who implies that his sales director should cancel his holiday because he, “wants a great result for shareholders”, to the sales person who tells his prospect that he will, “be let down if they do not make the order.”
Some estimate that the impact of bullying is to decrease the effectiveness by at least 50 per cent as the target copes with the physiological and psychological damage that is done. Therefore the annual cost to a business of each person who suffers serial bullying can be half their cost to the company, half the benefit that they were meant to bring, and reduce by a third the effectiveness of colleagues. Of course the bully himself is often a complete loss, whose ineffectiveness is discovered when he leaves.
Add this all up and use research findings that indicate that at least one in every eight people is bullied and one estimate finds that the UK loses at least £32billion every year [might need to quote a study for this]. That’s around 10 per cent of the public spending every year. How’s that for shrinking the resources of a business or nation? Yet it doesn’t feature on the political agenda.
Belief in the benefits of bullying others, especially where there is a grain of truth to justify the bully’s actions, can be extended even to international affairs. George W. Bush’s repeated statements that, “Our nation, in our fight against terrorism, will uphold the doctrine of either you’re with us or against us” are open to misuse. The right thing must be done the right way otherwise, not surprisingly, it becomes the wrong thing.
Turning the other cheek is more than a nice idea. For many people of religious belief it is a requirement for spiritual development. Psychologically, it provides a healthy option to the shrinking feelings of resentment and bitterness. In the business world, it has been termed ‘conciliation’ and plays a major part in reducing the costs of disputes between employer and employee. Politically, initiatives such as the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ commission in South Africa have allowed the country to take tentative steps forward into a future free of blame. Symbolically it is the only way towards a better world.
As Nelson Mandela put it, “You can’t make peace by talking to your friends. You have to make peace by talking to your enemies.”
If no-one forgives, if no-one is willing to absorb bad feeling and respond with good will then a single fault can continue around the world, person to person until everyone lives for payback and revenge. Let’s assign responsibility for actions, but let’s allow justice to be sufficient and where justice is not possible then let it go. Life is not a Charles Bronson movie.
In the world of business, where some have tried to argue that the unforgiving, ruthless person has an advantage, the truth is that we avoid doing business with those who are likely to harm us if we make a mistake; we welcome relationships with those who are honest and understanding. Since we need relationships for commerce, the long-term advantage lies with those who are attractive to do business with. Bullies can get a good press, puff themselves up, but they are invariably disastrous managers.
But what do you do when you are really hurt by someone else? Surely, revenge is justifiable, even just? Isn’t it reasonable to hate the perpetrator? Soon the hate spreads to not just an individual’s actions but to everything about him, to everyone that resembles him, to everything, that hurts you now or in the future. Hate is one of the wrongs that are done to us and it will keep hurting us for as long as we allow it to dwell and fester. Aren’t there alternative approaches that will let you breathe, think, and live again?
Consider the experience of Charlene Smith, a journalist who was violently raped by a stranger. She became a focus for the debate on rape and AIDS in her home nation of South Africa. She has become a national representative for what she choose to call, “rape survivors”. Her story in newspaper for which she works began, “Every 26 seconds in South Africa a woman gets raped. It was my turn last Thursday night.” While she, “does not want it to become the rest of her life”, she has become an activist pressuring insurance companies, health care professionals, police, the government, and counsellors to change their attitudes and actions. She believes herself to have, “been a catalyst”, while, “there are so many people out there doing amazing things.” I think people have been able to push more successfully for some of these initiatives because of the increased awareness of rape.”[iv] Her actions after the rape were largely influenced by the way she was able to keep her, “mind strong and clear”. She explains that, “There are times now and there will be times later when I will feel depressed and fearful. But he cannot imprison my mind. I have the power. He will never be as powerful as me. Even if he had killed me, he would have been left with the knowledge that I, and the others I am sure he has raped before, were the ones with the power.”
Charlene has not allowed the rape to reduce her view in her own value; she believes that she has, “to turn this evil into good [.] Rape victims are not statistics, we are people, and this is our story. We have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a so-called moral society that does nothing that should be filled with shame.”
Distorted perspective confuses us about what really matters and what really doesn’t. The most troubling part of steroid abuse is the value that those who take them place on their potential benefits. Entertainers, like Jesse Ventura, actors, like Sylvester Stallone and body-builders, like Arnold Schwarzenegger have all taken steroids purely for how they make them look.
Those who start to take performance-enhancing drugs often start young and harbour completely unrealistic views on the relative value of the advantages that those drugs give them. More than half of 200 recreational athletes were asked whether they would be willing to, “take a magic substance that would transform them into uncontested world champions. The athletes could live at world-record levels for a year, but at the end of that year, they would die.This is scary stuff when even the “certainty of death isn’t always a deterrent,”[v]
We can become similarly confused about work and life, forgetting which comes first! Sometimes we think that we are working for some purpose, making these sacrifices, working these hours but have never quite linked the life we want to lead eventually with the life that we are living now. In the 1970s film, “The Wild Bunch”, one of the hardened cowboys turns to another and states, “I’d like to make one more score and then back off.” His friend responds sceptically and piercingly with the question, “Back off to what?”
The strange thing that emerges is the seemingly elastic nature of resources when people are sufficiently well engaged. Tragedy often reveals the levels of effort and charitable giving that is possible. No-one pretends that those that give go hungry or lose their homes as a result of giving, so why doesn’t it happen more often?
(This excerpt is from the book Unshrink by Max Mckeown and Philip Whiteley)
