How to spot a bully in the workplace (w/ Master Fixer Amy Cuddy) - Part 1 (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Frances, today we have the pleasure and the privilege of speaking with our friend and colleague, Amy Cuddy.

[00:00:48] Frances Frei:
Ugh. Amy is one of these people that she's known around the world, and if you ever walk down a street with her, strangers will stop her and tell her the influence she has had on their lives. It's really quite extraordinary. 


[00:01:02] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, she has this great rockstar force for good energy around her and you, you really see it in public. Uh, I've witnessed those same interactions. Well, let, let's give the audience some context for the few people walking the planet who may not know her.

Amy is a social psychologist and bestselling author whose work often focuses on bringing large, messy challenges back within our own locus of control, allowing us to perform better as leaders, as colleagues, even just as humans moving through a complicated world.

Many people will know Amy for her mind-body research on the benefits of power posing. So, she gave a TED talk on this a few years ago. It's now one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, 70 million views and counting. 


[00:01:54] Frances Frei:
You know, Amy and I worked together at Harvard, and so I know firsthand how incredible she is. Her first book Presence, it changed my life. I couldn't be more excited for her next one, which is coming out literally any day now. It might even be out by the time you're listening to this. 


[00:02:11] Anne Morriss:
Yes, we're, we're I, I'm super excited and this is what we wanna talk with her about today. So, the book is called Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts. 


It's about workplace bullying, what it looks like, how it progresses, how to intervene. We had such a great conversation with Amy that we're, actually, gonna make this into a two-part episode. So, this one will be the nitty gritty of knowing how to spot bullying. And, next week we're gonna get into how to stop it. 


[00:02:38] Frances Frei:
It is so important, a master fixer on workplace bullying. I'm excited to get into it. 


[00:02:48] Anne Morriss:
I'm Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:02:50] Frances Frei:
And I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School and I'm Anne's wife.

[00:02:54] Anne Morriss:
And, this is Fixable from the Ted Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable, and good solutions are usually just a single brave conversation away. 


Amy Cuddy, welcome to Fixable.

[00:04:50] Amy Cuddy:
Thank you.

[00:04:51] Anne Morriss:
So, let's get into it.

[00:04:52] Amy Cuddy:
Okay.

[00:04:52] Anne Morriss:
And, I wanna start with some definitions because I think this is a really critical part of this conversation. What is workplace bullying? 


[00:05:03] Amy Cuddy:
Well, I, let me start by saying that the fundamental thing that, that separates bullying from other negative forms of interpersonal behavior is that bullying requires more than one person. A-alone bully is impotent. 


And, when you look at other forms of really bad behavior, which I'm not saying are less bad, they can be enacted by a single person. Bullying requires other people to join and to turn on its target. So, I am, I'm, actually, gonna read the definition, if that's okay.

[00:05:39] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Please.

[00:05:39] Amy Cuddy:
You can use it wherever you want to.

[00:05:40] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:05:40] Amy Cuddy:
But, I do think it's so important to get the definition right and for us to have, have a shared language to talk about this, because I think there's, people fear being labeled bullies when they're not bullies. they're afraid to say something is bullying because it feels so loaded, and so we do need to get it right. 


So, after looking at decades of research on bullying, interviewing hundreds of targets of bullying, having my own personal experience with it, seeing it repeat over and over again, this is the definition that I use. Bullying is a profound intentional targeted serial and escalating attack on a person's social and professional integrity and viability that's carried out by multiple people. 


Bullying involves a power differential that favors the bully, but that power differential need not be formal or structural, and doesn't have to exist when the bullying begins. Either way, the gap grows over time. While bullying tends to be instigated by one person, it is not a single assault perpetrated by only one person. 


It's an ongoing campaign to shame, humiliate, discredit, demoralize, punish, and socially kill, or permanently exclude the target. 


[00:06:57] Anne Morriss:
Wow.

[00:06:58] Frances Frei:
Oh.

[00:06:59] Anne Morriss:
I'm just letting that land.

[00:07:00] Frances Frei:
I am letting that land.

[00:07:01] Amy Cuddy:
I know. It's a lot.

[00:07:01] Frances Frei:
It's a lot.

[00:07:03] Amy Cuddy:
Every word is heavy. 


[00:07:03] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:07:05] Anne Morriss:
Let me ask you this for, um, for the more sensitive souls out there like me, how do I know if my skin is too thin or if I'm really in the early stages of a bullying scenario? 

Because I can, I feel those words and I can see, oh, in retrospect, this was obviously bullying, but in those early stages of that distinction between criticism and early-stage bullying, I can imagine second guessing myself, think in those moments. 


[00:07:36] Amy Cuddy:
I think most everyone who feels that they're being bullied is actually being bullied. 


[00:07:42] Anne Morriss:
Got it.

[00:07:42] Amy Cuddy:
It is that clear. It's that…

[00:07:44] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:44] Amy Cuddy:
It's that different from other bad experiences that they've had, but I think that one way to, to check in with yourself and your interpretation of your own experience is to look at some of the, kind of, the organizational or cultural or environmental conditions that lead to bullying. 


Right? Are you in an organization where this might be more likely to happen? And, understanding the dynamic with that person, that seems to be the primary bully is important. I mean, primary bullies share a lot of common characteristics. Bullies tend to be people who never have enough status and become threatened when someone who they saw as, uh, lower ranking than them in the relevant hierarchy suddenly gains more respect.

[00:08:43] Anne Morriss:
Status.

[00:08:44] Amy Cuddy:
Status both inside and outside that community, like with an external audience, for example.

[00:08:51] Anne Morriss:
Okay.

[00:08:51] Amy Cuddy:
That is what, sort of, triggers the bully. That's what we call crossing the line of resentment. 


And, so a lot of targets, they know it's when I, for example, won that national award in architecture or it's when I had that duty at work, uh, rewarded with a, you know, an employee recognition. I, I mean, whatever it is…

[00:09:13] Anne Morriss:
I, I won sales leader of the year.

[00:09:15] Amy Cuddy:
Exactly.

[00:09:16] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:09:16] Amy Cuddy:
It, it awards recognitions, things like that are often what I call the critical incident that, sort of, sets it off. 


And, so also know that this is more likely to occur in organizations that are very hierarchical, where scarcity mindset is common. So, where people are kind of encouraged to be competitive in an unhealthy way. So, the more one person gets the less you get. That's the mindset as opposed to sort of celebrating each other's victories. 


[00:09:48] Anne Morriss:
Got it.

[00:09:49] Amy Cuddy:
It's more likely to occur in places where sort of prestige and status are the main currencies. Right? So, it's very common in law firms, in hospitals, in academia.

[00:10:01] Anne Morriss:
And, do bullies think they're bullying? What do they think they're doing in these scenarios?

[00:10:06] Amy Cuddy:
No, they don't. And, they're not losing sleep at night. 


They rationalize their behavior. Either they believe that they've been somehow cheated unfairly out of something they deserved. 


[00:10:16] Anne Morriss:
So, they have lower status than they earned.

[00:10:18] Amy Cuddy:
Right. They should have gotten more.
[00:10:20] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. 


[00:10:20] Amy Cuddy:
Or, they believe that they're, actually, like moral crusaders. And, they feel that you are casting aspersions if you call them a bully. 


And, one of the problems for targets is that they do tend to be seen as do-gooders, and they don't wanna hurt other people. They don't wanna get somebody fired and they're reluctant to report what's happening. And, by the time they do, whoever they're reporting to is likely to turn it around and sort of say, maybe you're the problem. And, there's a term for this, um, DARVO, D-A-R-V-O: deny, accuse, reverse, victim, and offender.

So, what happens often with HR and, because HR isn't really seeing what's happening, they're not in that department or unit or situation, they're just getting this, you know, this sort of sketch six months later, is that they believe that it's some kind of personality conflict and probably you're the problem. Because, the bullies are more likely and there's good evidence of that to have established relationships with HR in advance of these things being like reported.

[00:11:31] Anne Morriss:
Like protective relationship.

[00:11:32] Amy Cuddy:
Exactly. Exactly. 


[00:11:35] Anne Morriss:
Um, you mentioned, you know, law firms, hospital. Can you give us a sense of what you believe to be the scale of the problem right now? 


[00:11:45] Amy Cuddy:
About half of people will be the target of a bully at some point in their lives, but I think even maybe more important, almost everyone will witness it and witnessing it causes moral injury, just, just to observe it happening unchecked alone causes pain. Right? And, and, and also normalizes it. And, we can go on and on from there, but it is just, it's remarkably common and yes, it, it has become more pervasive.

We see entertainers, we see politicians, we see leaders bullying people very publicly with impunity.

Um, and I mean, even, you know, somebody was telling me the other day, uh, she said, “Don't you think even like reality TV does this?” You know.

[00:12:36] Anne Morriss:
Right. 


[00:12:38] Amy Cuddy:
Like, reality shows are almost all about these ridiculous escalating conflicts over nothing. 


Like, we're used to seeing people fight and attack each other as entertainment. You know, that's what you're waiting for, you know, and, and people will post the popcorn eating meme, like, I'm here for this. Like, like it's, you know, it's, it's, it's fun to watch someone be destroyed. So, um, I think it's not just social media. 


There's so many ways in which media have, have worsened the problem.
[00:13:06] Anne Morriss:
Right, right. Um, you have talked about and written about, uh, bullying often following a pattern. So, talk, talk to us about the pattern and why it's so stable.

[00:13:20] Amy Cuddy:
So, what I, I think I found most surprising, upsetting, and, also, validating as I, I've been working on this book and interviewing targets is how predictable and stable the anatomy and physics of bullying are across situations. It doesn't matter if you are working in the dairy aisle at a small grocery store in a small town, or if you're a celebrity, or if you are a, a nurse, it, it works the same way.

So, what tends to happen is that, as we already discussed, you have a person who ha-has some power and views the world as fundamentally hostile. That's one of the characteristics that bullies share. They have a scarcity mindset. They believe the world is fundamentally hostile. They tend to be over placed relative to their actual abilities, not always, but they tend to be. And, they have this deep, deep hunger for status and recognition. 


So, what tends to happen is the target has some, kind of, success or recognition. People notice the target for doing something well. That target then, uh, gains respect or status, not just inside the organization, but also with people outside the organization.

So, I'm gonna use the example of the target who worked in a, a dairy aisle of a grocery store 'cause this is a real story. Um, he was beloved, not just at the store, he'd worked there for 30 years, but also by people just in the community who came in and they wanted to say hi to him. When a new manager came into town, she was very threatened by how much people liked him, and so for her, people coming into the store and saying, “Hey, can I see?” And I'm I, I'll use the name Michael. “Can I see Michael? We just wanna say hi to him.” That really bothered her. He had crossed the line of resentment and then she started to, and this is what happens next, to do little tests, to figure out if she could get away with bullying him and that's what bullies do first. 


And, often those tests fail and they move on to another target. And, so this is something that I want people to notice. These are little slight, like little comments in front of other people to, to hum-humiliate the target. Those are what I call bully tests. Sometimes, they fail and people are like, Hmm, nah. 
Bro, that's not cool. Like you can't do that.

[00:16:12] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:16:12] Amy Cuddy:
When that happens, they're like, fine, you know, they stop, they move on to the next person.

[00:16:16] Anne Morriss:
And, then in, in Michael's case, what were those tests?

[00:16:20] Amy Cuddy:
Um, well, he was very fastidious about his job. He did his job perfectly and he was a rule follower, and there was a mask mandate by this grocery store chain, and he followed it and she did not like that. 


And, she saw him as a, you know, as a do-gooder. And, as you know, um a problem for her because he was following rules that she wasn't following. He was not giving her a hard time about it, but he would, she would start to make fun of him in team meetings.

[00:16:53] Anne Morriss:
Got it.

[00:16:54] Amy Cuddy:
And, other people, you know, other people just let it go. 


[00:16:57] Anne Morriss:
Right. 


[00:16:57] Amy Cuddy:
It escalated. But, those were the early things that happened, which hurt him, but he didn't see what was coming next. 


[00:17:05] Anne Morriss:
So, the bully essentially tests to find out, socially, if they can get away with it. And, if nobody checks them, then they move on to the next stage. 


[00:17:14] Amy Cuddy:
Yeah. If, if no one checks them, they move on to the next stage. 
If people do check them, they move on to the next target.

[00:17:18] Anne Morriss:
Got it. Got it.

[00:17:19] Amy Cuddy:
So, they're gonna move on in one direction or the other.

[00:17:21] Anne Morriss:
Either way, bullies are gonna bully. 


[00:17:22] Amy Cuddy:
Exactly. 


[00:17:23] Anne Morriss:
Okay. 


[00:17:23] Amy Cuddy:
Yeah. So, that's a bully test and I want people to, as they learn about how it unfolds, see all of the opportunities where they might have been able to step in and do something so small to stop it from escalating. 


[00:17:37] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:17:38] Amy Cuddy:
To see those bully tests and just say really just to say that's not cool.

[00:17:43] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:17:43] Amy Cuddy:
That sometimes…

[00:17:44] Anne Morriss:
So simple.

[00:17:44] Amy Cuddy:
…is enough for somebody who the bully admires to say that, is really powerful. 


[00:18:01] Anne Morriss:
Okay, so I'm a bully. I've, I've tested, you know, whether I can get away with it. I haven't been checked, so I'm moving on. What, what happens next?

[00:18:10] Amy Cuddy:
Well, the, the bully uses the fear of a threat to the community in order to rally supporters, but the threat that they use, that they propose is what I call a decoy threat. 

It's not a real threat. I mean, we saw this used in like a lot of, uh, political strategists have used decoy threats in place of the, what they, actually, felt threatened by, which was, you know, um, black people or women, right? So, they couldn't reveal what the actual threat was, and it wasn't, the actual threat still wasn't a real threat. 


It was their own perception of a threat. The decoy threat is something that's socially acceptable, right? So, the decoy threat might be, I'm gonna switch to another case, a woman who was bullied by a famous tech bully in the kind of Gamergate era. One of the early victims of the misogynistic bullying of women in tech in the early 2000’s. 


She was beloved. She got computer science classes, but she also had a blog that people loved and she was just a very warm, friendly person and very smart. And, she did moderate comments on her blog and she was very open about that. She's like, this is my home and I won't allow people to be cruel to each other. 


The, she was gaining so much popularity that this bully who really, who was just very threatened by her, he used that to say that she was a threat to a free and open internet. And, that at that time, she said, isn't just like kicking a puppy. It's like bagging up all the puppies in the kittens in the world and throwing them into the water and drowning them. Like, it was the worst thing to, to be a threat to, to a free and open internet at that time.

[00:19:56] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:19:56] Amy Cuddy:
Was seen by people in tech as the worst thing you could do.

[00:20:00] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:20:00] Amy Cuddy:
The truth was that he was deeply misogynistic and very threatened by, by her popularity and her, just her good naturedness. Um, and so that's the decoy threat, and so people can, will fall in line behind that and then he'll use examples, um, that support his claim that she's a threat to a free and open internet, even though she really isn't.

So, he's already distorting the facts.

[00:20:29] Frances Frei:
Does he know he's distorting the facts?

[00:20:32] Amy Cuddy:
Yes, I believe most do at least at some level. I, I believe some really know what they're doing. I do believe that he knew he was distorting the facts, but also had convinced himself that it was the right thing to do. 


[00:20:47] Frances Frei:
Right.

[00:20:47] Amy Cuddy:
So, they aren't fully aware of what they perceive to be the threat to them, which is women in tech. But, they know it enough to know that that threat is not going to be, to allow them to enlist people that they need something else…

[00:21:03] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Right.

[00:21:04] Amy Cuddy:
…to get people on board.
[00:21:05] Anne Morriss:
So, there's the decoy threat stage.

[00:21:07] Amy Cuddy:
Right.

[00:21:08] Anne Morriss:
What’s the next stage?

[00:21:09] Amy Cuddy:
So, after they've done the bully test and they've tested the decoy threat to see if people will get wound up about it.

[00:21:15] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:21:17] Amy Cuddy:
You know, can they virtue signal? Can they, can they stoke moral outrage? Um, yes. Okay. Then they move on to what I call spotlighting, stigmatizing, and shaming.

And, throughout the book, I try to point out how bullies use a lot of the social psychological principles that can be used for good, for ill. And, so when you look at the research on fundraising, say, we know that people are much more likely to give money when you focus on an individual victim. And, you spotlight that person, you elicit sympathy for that person. 


If you say a million children are sick, that's not as motivating to people as, let me show you this one child who's sick. That motivates people.

[00:22:04] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:22:05] Amy Cuddy:
It's the same with bullying. If a bully says, well, these people are doing something that hurts us and, we need to take them down, that doesn't do much. 


But if you say that one person, she's the one doing it. And, so that's the spotlighting. So, now you really start to bring more attention to that person, whether it's in real life, in meetings, online, wherever it is, you bring more attention. You could go, you know, I don't mean to, I don't mean to, you know, be a nag about this, but I have noticed that this person, right? 


So, you keep bringing attention back to that person. You then get enough sort of traction where people are going, oh, wow, maybe, maybe something is going on there. Maybe she is wrong. Maybe she is bad. Maybe she is hurting us. That you've then stigmatized that person, right? So, now that person is, um, is, you know, n-not to be, to be associated with. Um, to not be given opportunities.

And, you've also shamed them. Right? So, now even, even if they know full well that they haven't done anything wrong, it is impossible to not feel shame in this situation. It's impossible. Especially when the targets are more likely to have friendly universe worldviews, right? 


Like, to feel that the world is fundamentally friendly. If this is happening to them, well, they must have done something to deserve it.

[00:23:34] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:23:34] Amy Cuddy:
So, now they've been, you know, the spotlight's fully on them. They have been stigmatized and they've been shamed. So, that's the next phase. 


[00:23:43] Anne Morriss:
And, they're experiencing shame, self doubt.

[00:23:44] Amy Cuddy:
They are…

[00:23:45] Anne Morriss:
All the things that human beings are gonna experience in that situation.

[00:23:48] Amy Cuddy:
They are being, just, overtly shamed and they are feeling that shame. 


[00:23:53] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. 


[00:23:54] Amy Cuddy:
Uh, and that makes it hard that, that's where you really start to take their voice away.

[00:24:00] Anne Morriss:
Because they're less likely to use it now.

[00:24:01] Amy Cuddy:
Right. The outcomes of shame are just not good. 


[00:24:04] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:24:05] Amy Cuddy:
It's not a good, uh, uh, tool, you know, to, to elicit a sense of shame and so they start to become silenced. You then, uh, see bullies start to really recruit people, and they do that by giving them status for signal boosting them.

All bystanders have the potential to become what I call accessory bullies. 
And, the accessory bullies tend to be people who have less status than the bully, who also feel that they've been slighted or some the world hasn't been fair to them.

[00:24:43] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:24:44] Amy Cuddy:
And uh, and they're also, they're both, they respect the bully a little bit. They kind of look up to them, but they also fear the bully and they know they can get status with them if they signal boost them. 


So, they start to mindlessly signal boost them even when they have not checked the facts. People who really know better and, I'm talking, you know, obviously in academia, you see it happen all the time, but even, even journalists, I, I, I've seen, you know, science journalists for example, who really look up to a particular academic and they will signal boost that, that bully without checking the facts.

[00:25:22] Anne Morriss:
Right. 


[00:25:22] Amy Cuddy:
They just go with that story. Um, so.

[00:25:25] Anne Morriss:
And, what did this look like? For example, for Mike, I'm still hanging out with Michael in the dairy aisle. What did this look like out in the wild?
[00:25:33] Amy Cuddy:
So, in that case, when the spotlight was on him, there was this stigmatizing, the shaming. So, he was starting to be more silent and the rest of the people working there were starting to kind of fear her, but also, kind of, admire her strength. 


And, and I, I don't like to use that word, but that's how they perceived it. They started to, to see that that was the winning team.
[00:25:56] Anne Morriss:
Right. 


[00:25:56] Amy Cuddy:
Right. Michael was not the winning team. It didn't matter that the town liked Michael, he was gonna lose.


[00:26:02] Anne Morriss:
In a world of winners and losers.
. 

[00:26:03] Amy Cuddy:
Exactly. Exactly. So, they start to align with, with the bully and, and laugh at her jokes about him in front of him, not in front of him. So, she's become emboldened now. She's like, oh, I can completely take this guy down.

[00:26:18] Anne Morriss:
Right. Right.

[00:26:19] Amy Cuddy:
So, I call that recruitment and retention, um, because they're recruiting, but they're also showing that they retain them by giving them status.

[00:26:27] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:26:28] Amy Cuddy:
You know, awarding them status by promoting the accessory bullies. 
And, so now they've got like a group of kind of minions who will carry out their agenda.

[00:26:38] Anne Morriss:
Right?

[00:26:38] Amy Cuddy:
And, and so that's the recruitment and retention. What happens after that is in some ways the m-most painful part of this, the most crazy making part of it for the target, and this is what I call silencing, but in two ways.

The target is silenced both, um, in that they can't defend themselves. If they defend themselves, they're being too defensive and then they're guilty. If they don't defend themselves, they're guilty 'cause they haven't defended themselves.

[00:27:10] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:27:10] Amy Cuddy:
There's no response or non-response. There's nothing they can do that will be seen as exonerating. 


[00:27:20] Anne Morriss:
And, they've also lost their social connections.

[00:27:22] Amy Cuddy:
Completely. No, this is not like being sick in a hospital bed where people are rallying by you. It's the opposite. People run.

[00:27:30] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. 


[00:27:30] Amy Cuddy:
People who you thought would never run, run. You are alone. So, I talk about the silencing phase as having two components. One comes from tech, which is denial of services attacks or, or, or DDoS attacks. And, that's where, you know, the servers being overloaded and can't do its work.

But, but in this case, what happens is the bully and the accessory bullies more the accessory bullies start to accuse the target of all kinds of wrongdoings. 


And, so there are all of these, what I call sham investigations. So, whatever you were doing, which might have been defending your work, you're now defending everything that you've done in your professional life. You've taken the server out completely.

[00:28:17] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:28:17] Amy Cuddy:
So, now the person is silenced or, or made to look just totally incompetent so they cannot demonstrate their competence. 


[00:28:27] Anne Morriss:
Got it.

[00:28:27] Amy Cuddy:
And, that is a very powerful tool. I see it all the time. And, in the case of the grocery store worker, what this manager did was, and remember this is a guy who just loved his job, took it so seriously, and there is recorded evidence of this. She started to swap out, um, fresh products for expired products.

[00:28:52] Anne Morriss:
Come on.

[00:28:52] Amy Cuddy:
After he left for the night. 


And, then say you've let these, you know, people are buying expired dairy products. And, so that now he's defending himself against this. Uh, I mean, you can imagine how shocking that would be, I mean, and, and wait, did, could I have done that? How, and, and if I didn't, like who would possibly do that?

[00:29:14] Anne Morriss:
Right. 


[00:29:14] Amy Cuddy:
I mean, he, he didn't believe that she was doing that to him 'cause who would do that? 


[00:29:16] Anne Morriss:
Right. 


[00:29:17] Amy Cuddy:
So, it could look like that? 


[00:29:19] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Wow. 


[00:29:21] Amy Cuddy:
So, people are silenced in two ways. They're, they're silenced on, um, their ability to, uh, demonstrate their competence and, and their sort of, their trustworthiness as a professional. And, then there's also what I call denial of sanity. And, that's the gaslighting. 


And, so that's where you do, you are being attacked from every angle and having people who you once thought were really normal, I mean, certainly not threatening, starting to, you know, say things, post things about you that just are outrageous. So, you start to think, I must be losing my mind.

And, and no one is telling you, “Hey, no, the lights are not flickering…


[00:30:07] Anne Morriss:
Right. Right.

[00:30:08] Amy Cuddy:
…You know the lights, the lights have been on this whole time. You're right.”

No one's telling you that. You are alone and you are starting to feel that you might be crazy. And, so then you become a bit neurotic, right? And, you might seem paranoid, but actually it's justified paranoia. So, then people start to, even the people who might have been supporters start to go, I don't know, like maybe something is off about this person. 


[00:30:34] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:30:34] Amy Cuddy:
So, now you're seen as not confident and also not, not sane or sort of trustworthy in that other sense.


[00:30:43] Anne Morriss:
I'm scared to ask, is there another stage after this?

[00:30:45] Amy Cuddy:
So, after the silencing and then the threatening and harassing, um, you, you know, you're utterly dehumanized. You've now been fully ostracized by your community that you once loved, a community that you identify strongly with, that you were, you were proud of your work in that community. 


The final act is disappearing. And, the bully, in, in order to justify all of this terrible behavior, they sort of have to fully silence and deactivate the person. And, like I said, but most people who are bullied in the workplace leave. The estimates are above 90%. Um, they're, a lot of them are fired. A lot of them choose to leave. 
A lot of them are moved to other departments or even just to other buildings, which is a weird but, but common tactic.

Some just leave public life, move to another place. Um, the rate of stress related illnesses remarkably, significantly higher for people who've been targets of bullying. Some people choose to end their lives and so the final act is disappearing. And, I, I, I find that terrifying and heartbreaking and that that can't be. We cannot allow that to be the final act. 


[00:32:12] Anne Morriss:
Oh, wow, Frances, what a powerful conversation.

[00:32:15] Frances Frei:
Indeed.

[00:32:16] Anne Morriss:
And again, listeners, that is just part one. We're gonna do a part two where we really get into the agency we all have to make progress on this issue. One thing I've been thinking about, Frances, is that, you know, we know from our own experience with our boys is that this is a big issue at the elementary school level. 


Even at the high school level, it's quite discussable and it seems like we have this assumption that the problem somehow goes away, that these dynamics and human behaviors, by the time we get into adulthood, you know, problem has been solved. Like, the adults show up in the room and there's no more bullying. 


And, I think one of the things that's really powerful about Amy's research is that she reveals that this is far from the truth

[00:33:10] Frances Frei:
Yeah, I think that in elementary school it's absolutely fine to discuss it. In fact, we should discuss it. Um, and we all know that bullies, bad guys targets victims. When we get to adulthood, not only is it whispers that we talk about it, but it isn't clear to me that we code bullies as bad guys, as adults. 


In fact, I think we, the vernacular we use for the targets, it's not victims. We somehow think that they're the problem and they're the squeaky wheel and they're, and so it's not just the bullies that want to disappear them. It's, then a whole increasing class of people that feel inconvenienced. 


They want to disappear them. So, I'm really looking forward to part two where we can learn what the role for all of us has in this situation. 


[00:33:58] Anne Morriss:
Okay, so everyone please join us. Come back next week for the solutions part of this conversation.

[00:34:10] Frances Frei:
Don't miss it.

[00:34:13] Anne Morriss:
As always, please reach out to us if you have a workplace problem you need help solving. 
We can't make the show without your submission, so if you've been hesitating to get in touch, just know that you're helping us out by being part of the conversation and every single person who hears you bravely work out these issues on our show.

[00:34:33] Frances Frei:
Reach out. At fixable@ted.com or leave us a message: 234-fixable. That's 2343492253. We like text. We like voice memos. We like live conversation. Give us a call. 


[00:34:49] Anne Morriss:
By the way, we got a great email from one of our listeners. Hello, Grace. Thank you, who shared some fantastic resources on mental health at work after hearing our episode with Lauren Cohen. We'll link those resources in the episode description. 


Thank you, Grace, and everyone else for being part of this conversation.

Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.

[00:35:13] Frances Frei:
And me, Frances Frei.

[00:35:15] Anne Morriss:
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter from Pushkin Industries.

Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar and Roxanne High Lash. This episode was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.

[00:35:28] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out. 


[00:35:34] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review. It really helps us make a great show.