I've mentioned this book on another thread already, but it bears repeating here, because the behaviour your supervisor is exhibiting falls right into the category, even though it has its roots in his religious beliefs. It's called Mobbing - Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, authored by Noa Davenport, Ph.D., Ruth Distler Schwartz, and Gail Pursell Elliott.
When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporal murder. Evil is also that which kills spirit - M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil
Mobbing is an emotional assault. It begins when an individual becomes the target of disrespectful and harmful behavior. Through innuendo, rumors, and public discrediting, a hostile environment is created in which one individual gathers others to willingly, or unwillingly, participate in continuous malevolent actions to force a person out of the workplace.
These actions escalate into abusive and terrorizing behavior. The victim feels increasingly helpless when the organization does not put a stop to the behavior or may even plan or condone it.
As a result, the individual experiences increasing distress, illness, and social misery. Frequently, productivity is affected and victims begin to use sick leave to try to recover from the daily pressures and torment. Depression or accidents may occur. Resignation, termination, or early retirement, the negotiated voluntary or involuntary expulsion from the workplace, follows.
For the victim, death - through illness or suicide - may be the final chapter in the mobbing story.
For the organization, mobbing is like a cancer. Beginning with one malignant cell, it can spread quickly, destroying vital elements of the organization. Remedial action must be taken at an early stage.
Aggression Against "Anyone": Workplace Expulsion
Mobbing is aggression against "anyone" - rather than specific discrimination against someone based on age, gender, race, creed, nationality, disability or pregnancy - using harassing, abusive and often terrorizing behaviors. Mobbing is done intentionally to force the person out of the workplace.
Two different types of such malevolent conduct can be identified: active aggression and passive aggression. These tactics vary according to the subtlety of the aggressor. Passive aggressives are a special problem, since they can wrap their malevolence in acts of occasional kindness and politeness.
Injury Not Illness
The psychological consequences of mobbing should be termed in an injury not an illness, thus attributing the cause of the suffering to the persons who intentionally inflicted the harm.
Mobbing TypologyDr. Heinz Leymann identified 45 mobbing behaviors and grouped them in five different categories, depending on the nature of the behavior. See boxes on the following pages. Not all of these will happen in every case.
Any one of these behaviors, taken alone, may be despicable, uncivilized, and generally not acceptable. Any one, by itself, could possibly be tolerated as a sometime occurrence, or brushed off by assuming that a person doing such a thing might be having a bad day. And who has not? However, when these behaviors are displayed continuously and in many different variations, they become intentional abuse and create terror.
In the U.S., some of the discriminatory behaviors mentioned in category three, and any of the outright physical assault behaviors mentioned in category five, are illegal and covered by laws in all 50 states. They would be, taken by themselves, ample grounds if the affected persons wanted to file a law suit. The majority of behaviors in categories one, two and four fall into behaviors that are considered within any employer's prerogative. Although considered management of the worst kind, there is no basis, as yet, that would allow one to build a legal case. Exceptions are: oral or written threats, and management that orders colleagues not to speak with you. Should you be given meaningless tasks to do or ones that are below your qualifications, this could be construed as another prerogative of the employer.
Leymann's Typology
First Category: Impact on Self-Expression and the Way Communication Happens
- Your superior restricts the opportunity for you to express yourself.
- You are interrupted constantly.
- Colleagues/co-workers restrict your opportunity to express yourself.
- You are yelled at and scolded loudly.
- Your work is constantly criticized.
- There is constant criticism about your private life.
- You are terrorized on the telephone.
- Oral threats are made.
- Written threats are sent.
- Contact is denied through looks or gestures.
- Contact is denied through innuendoes.
Second Category: Attacks On One's Social Relations
- People do not speak with you anymore.
- You cannot talk to anyone, i.e., access to others is denied.
- You are put into a workspace that is isolated from others.
- Colleagues are forbidden to talk with you.
- You are treated as if you are invisible.
Third Category: Attacks on Your Reputation
- People talk badly about you behind your back.
- Unfounded rumors are circulated.
- You are ridiculed.
- You are treated as if you are mentally ill.
- You are forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation/examination.
- A handicap is ridiculed.
- People imitate your gestures, walk, voice to ridicule you.
- Your political or religious beliefs are ridiculed.
- Your private life is ridiculed.
- Your nationality is ridiculed.
- You are forced to do a job that affects your self-esteem.
- Your efforts are judged in a wrong and demeaning way.
- Your decisions are always questioned.
- You are called demeaning names.
- Sexual innuendoes.
Fourth Category: Attacks on the Quality of One's Professional and Life Situation
- There are no special tasks for you.
- Supervisors take away assignments, so you cannot even invent new tasks to do.
- You are given meaningless jobs to carry out.
- You are given tasks below your qualifications.
- You are continuously given new tasks.
- You are given tasks that affect your self-esteem.
- You are given tasks that are way beyond your qualifications, in order to discredit you.
- Causing general damages that create financial costs to you.
- Damaging your home or workplace.
Fifth Category: Direct Attacks on a Person's Health
- You are forced to do a physically strenuous job.
- Threats of physical violence are made.
- Light violence is used to threaten you.
- Physical abuse.
- Outright sexual harassment.
Mobbing as a ProcessIt is important to stress that mobbing happens as a process of abusive behaviors inflicted over time. It begins insidiously, and soon gains such momentum that a point of no return is reached. Like a tornado, the events escalate into a spiral. So what exactly does happen when mobbing occurs?
Leyman distinguishes five phases in the mobbing process:
Phase 1 is characterized by a critical incident, a conflict. In itself, this is not yet mobbing. It can, however, develop into mobbing behaviors.
Phase 2 is characterized by aggressive acts and psychological assaults that set the mobbing dynamics into motion.
Phase 3 then involves management that plays a part in the negative cycle by misjudging the situation if they have not already been participating in phase 2. Instead of extending support, they begin the isolation and expulsion process.
Phase 4 is critical, as victims are now branded as difficult or mentally ill. This misjudgment by management and health professionals reinforces the negative cycle. It almost always will lead to expulsion or forced resignation.
Phase 5 is the expulsion. The trauma of this event can, additionally, trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After the expulsion, the emotional distress and the ensuing psychosomatic illnesses continue and often intensify.
Degrees of Mobbing
We have found it helpful to distinguish three major degrees of mobbing - first, second, and third - according to the different effects mobbing has on an individual. In analogy to the different degrees of injuries suffered from burning, the distinction indicates how deeply a person has been "burned" or "scarred" by the experience.
We do not use a scientific scale to assess these degrees but rather the different effects this experience had on us and our interview partners. The degrees are determined by a number of factors. In addition to the intensity, duration, and frequency of the mobbing, the psychology of the mobbed individuals, their upbringing, past experiences, and general circumstances are also considered. The scale only indicates how people can be affected differently by similar experiences.
Mobbing of the first degree: The individual manages to resist, escapes at an early stage, or is fully rehabilitated in the same workplace or somewhere else.
Mobbing of the second degree: The individual cannot resist, nor escape immediately, and suffers temporary or prolonged mental and/or physical disability, and has difficulty re-entering the workforce.
Mobbing of the third degree: The affected person is unable to re-enter the workplace. The physical and mental injuries are such that rehabilitation seems unlikely, unless a very specialized treatment protocol is being applied.
It goes without saying that concepts such as prolonged, temporary, or frequent cannot be usefully quantified. The only measure of the intensity is the subjective assessment by the targeted individual. What clearly feels like mobbing to one person may not yet be considered such by someone else.
Further on in the book the authors define and outline ten key factors that identify The Mobbing Syndrome.
Please, as other posters have mentioned, do yourself a favor and start documenting all incidents that could be construed as a systematic effort to get you to leave, or ruin your professional credibilty. It took you a long time to get this job that you enjoy and are qualified to do, and you really don't want this jerk of a JW supervisor ruining it for you and also making a negative impact on your ability to find new work if you decide to look for another job.
Hang in there, buddy. We're all rooting for you.
