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Hey there, Maureen China here, founder of the MindSight Academy, neurocoach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you flourish and exceed expectations. Welcome back to another episode of Lead to Excel Podcast, a show designed to equip you with knowledge to understand the science of how your brain works so you can unlock your leadership potentials with the tools to require your brain for you to flourish, excel, and achieve high performance in every area of your life. I am so thrilled to be with you today because, as this is Anti-Bullying Week, we are looking at bullying in schools and in the workplace. In this podcast, I'm going to refer to a lot of information from Bullying UK, and you can visit their website from the link I leave in the description. This is a charity working across the UK to support anyone affected by bullying, whether it is at school, in the workplace, or in another area of your life. The number of incidents of bullying and harassment reported in schools doubles each year. This number is understated in the workplace because many incidences go unreported. But what is bullying? Bullying UK are quoted as saying there is no legal definition of bullying, but it's usually defined as repeated behavior which is intended to hurt someone either emotionally or physically, and is often aimed at certain people because of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, or any other aspect such as appearance or disability. This is a really personal topic to me because as a young girl I was bullied in school. I remember hours alone in my room crying and anguishing over the bullying I silently endured at school. And I remember my mom really pushing me to tell her why I did not want to go to school because I truly enjoyed going to school. I would rather skip breakfast than go to school late. But then suddenly she noticed my behavior changing. I had two girls in particular that would wait for me at the gate of the school to take my lunch from me, to taunt me with all sorts of names, and it was just horrific. The name calling, when we go out for games, I'll be the one that would not be picked, and I'll be left on my own because no one wanted to play with me. It was awful. And what they did then was that they would tell all the other people in the class not to speak to me. It was really a horrible time. And my main response at that time was withdrawal to just keep away from them and just kind of withdraw into myself. And in a way, sometimes I kind of attribute this to me becoming really shy later on in life. You know, as I got into secondary school, I was such a shy girl. And I attributed the bullying I experienced in primary school to this. Research shows that about 10% of students are bullied on a regular basis. Bullying can involve physical aggression when someone pushes you, hits you, or harms you in any way physically. It could be verbal bullying, which is usually face-to-face, using insults and offensive nicknames or comments like I experienced and endured. Social bullying, also known as relational bullying or emotional bullying. This can include leaving you out, fake rumors, damaging a person's reputation, excluding others online and offline, turning friends against a person. I totally can identify with this because I experienced it. Now, cyberbullying is quite common where people get bullied online via social networks, apps, messenger and phones, or even trolling. Sexualized bullying, which is unwanted sexual advances, when people get pressurized to do sexual things, sexting, sexuality, or spreading sexual rumors. Notions of what constitutes bullying behavior can vary widely according to context and the perceptions of the people involved. What may be considered the reasonable behavior or even management action by one person may be experienced as bullying by another, and the options for resolution can be correspondingly unclear. Reflecting the nebulous nature of workplace bullying, Akers provides a broad description of it as offensive, intimidating, malicious, or insulting behavior, and abuse or misuse of power through means that undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient. Now, despite a growing awareness of the negative outcomes associated with bullying and the significant wider cost to society and the economy, its complexity continues to pose a challenge for those seeking to prevent and manage such behaviors in schools and in the workplace. It's also clear that in many workplaces, bullying is not taken seriously enough. Now, I I really debated when I was going to do this podcast whether I should just focus on schools or whether I should just focus on bullying in the workplace. But I decided to really combine them because the fact is that they're so similar. Bullying is bullying. Wherever it is, and adults experience bullying, children experience bullying, and the impact that it has on a child as they grow up into an adult is unbelievable. It stays and lingers on unless it's dealt with. Being bullied personally as a young girl, I then realized that as time went on, I was always bullied until it got to a time that I went, No, enough is enough. I'm not having this anymore. And I literally had to fight back. You know, I refuse to be the victim anymore. But you see, not many people are able to actually fight back that way. Not many people are able to recover quickly from bullying, and you find that it does affect a lot of people much later in life. And I remember someone saying how when he went back to his school as an adult, those emotions you know came flooding back up, and in a way, he kind of reverted back to being that 13-14-year-old boy that was bullied at school. There is no bigger threat to an adolescent sense of being accepted than being bullied while others stand by doing nothing. Observer's inaction is taken as a tacit endorsement, and thereby it can be experienced as a broad rejection by peers, which is exactly how I felt because when I was being bullied, other people did nothing. So, as far as I was concerned, that's how they saw me. In a way, I kind of felt I was worthless to them, and that was why nobody did anything to defend me, or nobody came to play with me during playtime or partner with me during sports. I really remember hoping that the teacher would tell someone to partner with me, but they didn't. As might be expected, bullying in school is associated with negative changes in self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Young adolescents experiencing more bullying or rejection at the hands of their peers can result in subsequent decreases in their performance and school attendance. Now, powerlessness leads to fear and desperation. Look behind an act of violence from bullying to terrorism, and you'll often find a frantic attempt to escape powerlessness where kids give excuses not to go to school, or undergraduates or college students avoid going for lectures. And for me, that was my escapism because I really totally felt powerless. All I could do was to stay away from school, and I remember my mom blessed her. What the bullies used to do is they would take my lunch from me when I come in, so she'll give me my own lunch and give me one for the bully so that she could leave me alone. And I know eventually my mom went to speak to her mom, but it was just an awful time, and you can imagine after so many years, I still remember it vividly. Often there's a loss of confidence on the part of those on the receiving end of unwanted behavior and a reluctance by some to name their problem as bullying because then they will be seen as being victims, or they're just afraid to say anything in case the bullying then increases. It's not unusual for individuals to hold back from taking action on ill treatment, in some cases, just absorbing the impact for several years. Bullying hurts so much, not because one individual is rejecting another, but because it makes the recipient believe that the bully speaks for others. It's just that whole perception that if you're being singled out by the bully, then you're probably unliked and unwanted by most. Otherwise, why would all those others watch the bully tease you rather than stepping in to support or help you? Absence of support is taken as a sign of mass rejection. Now let's look at causes of bullying. Research finds that low-level negative behavior such as rudeness, disregard for others, or treating others with disrespect, but which may not be considered extreme enough to constitute bullying, often overlaps with bullying, and when left unchecked and unmanaged, contributes to the creation of cultures in schools and in the workplace that inadvertently accept bullying. Too often, victimizing another person originates in the perpetrator's own frustrations and insecurities, and a lack of knowledge of healthy strategies for solving problems and managing emotions. So, what they then try to do is to prove that they are in control or they are better than the person. And to be honest, a lot of times bullies themselves are probably being bullied at home or going through issues that they cannot resolve. So they put that frustration onto someone else, which then results in bullying. Many organizations operate in a culture whereby the achievement of organizational goals is the primary focus with managers, which leads to managers adopting whatever techniques or behavior that they deem necessary to achieve these goals. Results of a UK study by Unison reported that bullying prevails because bullies know that they can get away with it. And in a lot of cases, it's something people know about and just carry on as if it's normal. In the struggle for efficiency and profit in turbulent market conditions, organizations exert pressure on their managers. Organizational change, including redundancies and the introduction of new technology, increases organizational demands on managers and consequently can increase managerial stress. These pressures tend to lower the threshold at which managers, particularly those operating at the limits of their skill competencies, might adopt bullying behaviors. In most cases, it's actually voluntary where they don't even realize that what they're doing is bullying. Let's look at the reality and cost of bullying. Bullying behaviors by managers, such as sarcasm, threats, verbal abuse, intimidation, bad mouthing, manipulation, assignment to unpleasant jobs, exclusion, isolation, and forcing of resignation, this significantly degrade the health and well-being of most people that experience these behaviors. Many people who experience these behaviors end up seeking counseling or medical attention, with many taking time off work. In the UK, for example, the cost of lost working time and legal fees associated with the impact of workplace bullying has been estimated at 4 billion per annum. There is a need, therefore, for a new, more compassionate, caring, and human management style. Capable managerial styles create positive experiences during organizational change or restructuring. The inability to communicate effectively is one of the main reasons for inappropriate behavior by managers, especially during restructuring or when under pressure. Employees' demand for information during this time increases. While the management ability to provide accurate information tends to decrease concurrently, negative experiences may therefore be perceived by the workforce. Such experiences encompass confusing and ambiguous information from management, authoritarian behavior, increased conflict, lack of communication, bullying, and vindictiveness. Looking at some of the impacts of bullying, self-harm and depression, suicidal thoughts, people might withdraw socially and just keep themselves isolated. You tend to notice people avoiding going on social media, anxiety about going to school or going to work, anger and aggression. People might feel a need to even bully others. So you tend to find that a lot of bullies are themselves being bullied. Some people develop an eating disorder, some turn to drinking or drugs, and one of the main initial things you find is low self-esteem, low self-worth, and very low confidence. Let's look at emotions now. The emotions that are generated during bullying. People who are being bullied may feel lots of different emotions. Often a young person might act like they are okay on the outside, but inside they may be feeling very low. They might not want to show how they're really feeling in case others think that they are making a big deal out of nothing, or they cannot take a joke, and perhaps they're even worried it might get worse. They may even start to believe the verbal bullying, and this tends to take a knock-on effect on their self-esteem. To understand how a person feels on the inside, it's important to try and see how they might be feeling if they are being called these names day in and day out. One of the key ways to get rid of bullying in schools and in the workplace is teaching people to develop emotional intelligence. Let's look at it now. Where there's an emotionally skilled teacher present, you find that students disrupt less in lessons, they focus more, and they perform better academically. In a school that has adopted the whole school approach to emotional intelligence, you find that teachers themselves are less stressed with less burnout, there are fewer intentions for teachers to leave the profession, you have greater job satisfaction and more engaging in the classroom. There's also less bullying and emotional distress, better attendance, fewer suspensions, and greater academic achievement. And emotionally intelligent parents have children who have a greater ability to identify and regulate their emotions. So learning these skills and improving the way you respond to your own feelings doesn't mean you suddenly become happy all the time, but developing the ability to experience and express all emotions, to down or up regulate both pleasant and unpleasant emotions will enable you to achieve greater well-being, make the most informed decisions, build and maintain meaningful relationships, and realize your potential. But it's got to start with everyone in the workplace, in the organization, and everyone in the school. If you're a parent, ask yourself this: what are the qualities you most want your child or children to possess as they grow into adults? Is it math skills, scientific knowledge, athletic ability? Or is it also, most importantly, confidence, kindness, and a sense of purpose, the wisdom to build healthy, lasting relationships? Organizations are now looking for employees who persevere with a task, who take personal responsibility for their work, who can get along with others and function as members of a team effectively. Not technical abilities or specialized knowledge. They are looking first and foremost for emotional attributes. The fact is that technology advances so rapidly today that companies don't hire workers for their current skills. Firms are now looking for people who are flexible, who can present new ideas, inspire cooperation in groups, manage and lead teams effectively. We all want our lives and the lives of the people we love to be free of hardship and troubling events. We can never make that happen because life is a constant change. We all want our lives to be filled with healthy relationships, compassion, and a sense of purpose that we can make happen. And it starts with people now being open to understand and recognize their emotions, to be aware of what they're feeling, and have empathy for other people's feelings as well. I heard this story about kids in a school, and the child was trying to gather boys together to form a football team, and one of the boys, who is not really that sporty, put up his hand that he wanted to join, and the other kids started making fun of him. And one of the boys in the class, who really was a bully, just started calling him names, started calling this boy names. That how can he join a team when he's a wuss? Just all sorts of horrible names. But you know what this boy did? He stepped back and then suddenly looked up and then said to this bully, it would be so nice to really join the club. But I know that you are so good at football, and I know I'm not. If it's to do with art, I'll be absolutely fantastic. I can draw anything without even thinking about it. But when it comes to football, I know I'm not good, and I know you're so good at it, you know, and I wish that I could actually play as well as you could. The bully was completely stunned with the boy's response. And what he did is he went and put his arm around him and said, you know what? Come and join the team. I'll show you how to play. I will show you how to be a good player. So, what he had done is use the emotional intelligence skills that he's acquired from the training that they've gotten at school to now totally suppress this bully. Organizations as a whole need to be aware of the problems of workplace bullying. Organizations need to confront bullying within a problem-solving strategy rather than punitive framework to address the problem. The person identified as a bully ought to be confronted about their behavior. Also, the bully needs to be offered an opportunity to deal with their behavior within the framework of skill development. This suggestion assumes that the person confronted will have the cognitive ability basically to understand the nature of the problem and the desire to address the problem for the benefit of all. All in the team or the organization. Advising that person that was bullying of the likely economic and legal risk to the organization should their behavior continue, maybe one avenue to appeal for their better judgment. Again, assuming that the person then agrees to skill development as a way of addressing the problem, the development of these soft people's skills is so important as a strategy for solving the problem of workplace bullying. Also, if the style of management contributes to bullying behaviors by managers, then it seems reasonable that the introduction of more appropriate people skills may reduce bullying within organizations. The skills identified as most likely to help deal with the problem of bullying behaviors include communication, conflict resolution, interpersonal relations, leadership, negotiation, stress management, and team building. Emotional intelligence and personal mastery would help immensely to develop self-restraint and compassion, just like the story I just told. Many of the greatest productivity gains, innovations, and accomplishments of individuals, teams, and organizations occur in an environment where emotional intelligence is nurtured. So emotional intelligence, which is a social intelligence, enables people to recognize their own and other people's emotions. It's an intelligence that may be learned, developed, and improved, and usually defined as the ability to use your awareness and sensitivity to discern the feelings underlying interpersonal communication and to resist the temptation to respond impulsively and thoughtlessly, but instead to act more receptively with authenticity. So, what's the solution now to bullying? Many teachers feel unprepared to deal with classroom bullying. Teachers also miss most incidents of bullying anyway because of where and how it occurs, and are very unlikely to interfere in disputes between students. And when not trained in emotion skills, often base their disciplinary strategies on what they themselves experience in their own childhood or home. The result is that a lot of children go unprotected from bullying, as I did. They go through the school day feeling so afraid and ashamed that they can't fully focus in class or develop academically or socially. Even the bullies are ill-served because they tend to have emotional or psychological problems of their own, which go unaddressed and unmediated without appropriate teacher training. Schools are known to overreact sometimes to challenging behavior by confusing normal conflicts with bullying or relying on harsh interventions, especially with preschool children. I was recently told of an incident in a school where my friend's daughter was being bullied, and the school did not do anything. I think what actually got me really upset was the fact that a teacher had actually witnessed students verbally abusing this girl and literally did nothing about it. And when the parents asked the school what was going on, they said they had to deal with it privately. Every school must have an anti-bullying policy. But you see, but these are just policies anyway, because if you don't use them or do anything about them, they are pointless. Because schools need to train their teachers and students with this emotional intelligence so that students can understand the impact of what they're doing on others. I recently saw something actually on Facebook where a teacher had witnessed a girl that was being bullied, and what she did is that she got the girl out of the classroom and then asked the students in the classroom if they'd noticed that girl being verbally abused, and they all said yes. And she asked them to just name some of the things that they names that the girl had been called, and she was writing it on the board, and as she was writing it, the students themselves were even troubled by what they saw, and some of them actually ended up in tears. So what she then did was that she now spoke to them about it and said, How would they feel if they were called that name? And how do they feel how do they think that she feels being called those names? And some of them said that, oh, that they they didn't think she would take it seriously, but then they said, okay, now that you're seeing what these names call, don't you think she would believe that it's true? They could see the impact that this name calling would was having on her, and they now all made her a card and apologize to her. If teachers are given the skills to understand how to help these kids manage emotions and understand the impact of what they say to others have on them, honestly, the amount of bullying in schools will drastically reduce, but also in the workplace as well, because a lot of people are so detached from their actions, but they just need to, the impact it has, it will really make a huge difference to how they interact with other people. The truth is, we all have trouble monitoring our own behavior at times. We usually lose any semblance of social sensitivity when we become so consumed with ideas and causes that we end up losing track of what we are doing. We try to bully our way through, we speak when we shouldn't speak, while some just withdraw into themselves. Many schools, I said, are grappling with this whole problem of how to stop children from bullying. Anywhere they're in students and outsiders whom other students shun and exclude, the problem of disconnection plagues the social world of the learner. And it's all that whole in and out group which I experienced. Once they put me in the out group, nobody would speak to me. By offering a secure base, a teacher or a manager or an organization creates an environment that lets their students and employees' brains function at their best. That base becomes a safe haven, a zone of strength from which they can venture forth to explore, to master something new and to achieve their goals. That secure base can become internalized when students and adults are taught to better manage their anxiety. They're able to then focus their attention more on their work. This enhances their ability to reach their optimal potential for learning or for work performance. In schools, one of the best ways to ensure that this social emotional learning takes place is to create programs that are designed to fit seamlessly into the standard school curriculum for children at every age, including skills like self-awareness and managing distressing emotions, empathy, and navigating relationships smoothly. While in organizations, it needs to be embedded into leadership training, into team training as well. And I just developed one of these programs for university for their first year undergraduate students, and it's just amazing the foundation it gives them to start. And at the end of the three sessions, the three workshops we we ran, you could see this the students' confidence grow massively in that time. And what we did on the last workshop was to get them to now hold each other accountable for things they're going to work on as they go through their time at university. Training like this helps students understand theirs and others' emotions and prepares them to confront bullies, to realize when they are the bullies also, and to importantly enable them to seek help when required. They also learn, most importantly, how to rewire their brains. As I mentioned earlier, frontline managers now have extra responsibilities and increased demands placed on them, which makes many to be less able to cope with the new demands of work. Moreover, these frontline managers work longer hours, they are more stressed, more fearful of losing status. Additionally, they have fewer promotion opportunities and tend to face increased job insecurity. And this is one of the things that leads a lot of managers to adopt this authoritarian bullying management style, which is so unnecessary. Because the fact is that you get more out of your people when you care about them, when you're compassionate to them, they will definitely give you their best. But when you come with the authoritarian bullying attitude, they pull back. And what you tend to find is you're micromanaging them because they literally would just do what you tell them to do. You lose their goodwill and their creativity. Whether it's old-fashioned physical or verbal aggression or online abuse, bullying is deeply rooted in a lack of emotional intelligence skills. These skills can and should be taught, though they seldom are. What kids need is a curriculum in emotional intelligence skills. These include the ability to recognize emotions in themselves and in others, understand the causes of emotions and their consequences for thinking and their behavior. They will learn to label emotions, express emotions in socially appropriate ways, and regulate their emotions effectively. Emotionally intelligent people of all ages recognize a healthy range of emotions in themselves and others and gain insight that helps them to form stable, supportive relationships and enjoy greater well-being and academic or job performance. Emotional intelligence protects people from depression, anxiety, and aggression and equips them to face bullying by managing their own fear and reaching out for help. By contrast, a lack of emotional intelligence predicts aggression, substance abuse, and worse still, poor mental health. So teaching emotional intelligence, while quite feasible, isn't as simple as adding a subject to the schedule at schools. On the contrary, a successful emotional curriculum takes a whole school approach. So it begins by educating teachers, administrators, parents, for many of whom these skills will probably be new. Only after doing this should the concepts then be introduced to students. One of the best ways to tackle and overcome bullying is through building self-resilience. Because when bullies do not get a reaction that they seek, they often stop, like the story that I told you earlier about the boy. Having self-resilience can stop bullying in its tracks. One of the ways that can help you build that self-resilience is one to set yourself personal goals. Plan goals for yourself, which will help to boost your self-esteem and confidence. Invest in your own self-esteem. Your self-esteem will help you build resilience against any form of adversity in your life. Understanding yourself and taking time to work on yourself is important. Develop a strong offline social network. Build a support network of friends and loved ones who love you for you. Spend quality time with your network and do the things that you love to do. Believe in yourself and in your abilities. Put yourself first when you need to. Think about all the great things that you do and the great things that you can achieve. And finally, I'll say see the bigger picture. When you're thinking of bullying, think about the vulnerability of the bully that will make you realize that you are actually stronger than them, and actually their behavior is usually a cry for help, whether it's low self-esteem or need to impress or basically issues in their lives. Thank you for tuning in. And remember, bullying does not just happen in schools, it can happen to anyone at any place. It could be out of school, at university, at college, or even at work, and even amongst friends. Bullying is not a normal, acceptable part of childhood or in the workplace. So don't just ignore it. Please confide in someone that you trust. Okay, three things before we finish today. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to it. And now you can actually listen and subscribe to this podcast on YouTube. Subscribing will ensure that you don't miss an episode once it comes out. Can I also please ask you to leave a review and also let me know if there are any topics that you want me to talk about in future? On a final note, I wish you a fantastic and blessed week ahead. Take care, see you soon.