YOUNG PROFESSIONALS SAY NO TO BULLIES TOOLBOX YOUNG PROFESSIONALS SAY NO TO BULLIES TOOLBOX | Page 5

“Young professionals! Say no to bullies!!!”
The actions which have negative impact on the victim’s quality of professional and private life:
 Delegating tasks which include offensive aspects which disturb victim’s dignity
 False assessment of victim’s professional involvement
 Questioning of the decisions taken
 Not delegating any tasks to the victim in order to prove his/her redundancy
 Delegating particular tasks followed by the ostentatious cancelation
 Giving absurd, contradictory, or meaningless orders
 Delegating tasks which are below, or above the victim’s skills and qualifications
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Delegating constantly new tasks with unrealistic deadlines so as to discredit the victim
The actions which have negative impact on the victim’s health:
 Delegating tasks which are harmful and physically unsuitable for the victim
 Threating with physical violence
 Physical abuse
 Making a particular employee bear the costs
 Sexual activity, sexual harassment
 Causing mental harm at work or at victim’s home
The repertoire of behaviours typical of mobbing is ampler than the one presented by Heinz Leymann,
and it seems impossible to identify all mobbing behaviours. It depends on the mobber’s creativity and
skills what behaviours will be used for achieving the assumed goal. However, the presented list
identifies the spheres in which mobbing can occur, and it depicts the behaviours which should trigger
our vigilance if we are exposed to them.
The characteristics of mobbing:
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The behaviours are persistent, consequent, and repetitive – they are never random and incidental
The behaviours are long-lasting – the length of mobbing period is individual and may stretch from a
few weeks to a few years
The action is intentional – the person who uses mobbing is aware of his/her conduct and the
consequences that the mobbing behaviours may have on the victim – these consequences are the
mobber’s goal; it should be remembered that mobber will never admit to harassing his/her victim,
what’s more, mobber’s negative behaviours will often be intermingled with kindness and affection so
as to relax the vigilance of the victim and the people around
The behaviour often has the form of mental, rather than physical terror, though the latter occurs as
well
The person who is exposed to mobbing feels humiliated and ridiculed; at a certain level of the exposure
to mobbing, the employee usually secludes himself/herself from his/her colleagues spontaneously (as
he/she blames himself/herself for the negative experience), or as a result of mobbing practices he/she
is eliminated from the personnel
Mobbing practises often embarrass and confuse the victim who cannot clearly understand what is
happening and blames himself/herself for being oversensitive; such feelings are exacerbated by
mobber’s interchangeable use of positive and negative actions and frequent acts of mobbing ‘in
diguise’
It should be remembered that mobber cares about staying unexposed, hence the actions are supposed
to remain unnoticed, so that the mobber could not be caught red-handed
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'Informational and workshop guide for mobbing, discrimination and sexual harassment'