Phoebe Prince Suicide Alerts Us to Stop School Bullies

Maybe the suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince will finally wake us up.  Maybe the articles in the New York Times, Huffington Post, People magazine and dozens of others will wake us up.  Maybe the long list of charges against the bullies and tormentors will finally goad the public to demand strong action.  Maybe charges of statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury, harassment and stalking will get a stronger response from the district attorney than, “The inactions of some of the adults at the school are troublesome.” Phoebe’s suicide is another red alert.  But we know that hundreds of other children in our schools are being bullied, harassed, tormented and abused every day.  And parents and school officials are not protecting these targets of bullying.  Some of these kids will gain strength by fighting back effectively against these predators.

Others will be overwhelmed and destroyed by the bullying, but even more, by the lack of protection by the very adults who have taken on the responsibility to protect them.  These kids will grow up concluding that they are helpless and their situations are hopeless.  They will grow up with debilitating, negative self-talk, with anxiety, stress and depression, with little confidence and low self-esteem.

We don’t need more suicides to remind us of what we saw at our own schools, what we see in our adult personal relationships and the interactions we observe at work.  We know the depths to which humans can sink.  We know how alert and courageous we must be to prevent the worst consequences.

A huge number of people failed in Massachusetts.  Start with the two boys and four girls between the ages of 16 to 18 who have been charged as adults.  Continue with the three minors who have been charged as juveniles.  Continue with their parents.  Their parents failed to teach and control their children.  Of course it’s difficult to teach and control teenagers.  But will those parents now defend their venomous children or will they stand with Phoebe Prince?

I think the greatest failure is that of the school authorities, especially the principal and the district administrators who set the tone for the teachers and staff.  They pretend to be education experts.  They pretend to be worthy to teach children.  Yet none would stand up for Phoebe or for the other girl in school who was bullied by one of the accused teenagers.

We know that there are difficulties and that they will hide behind the lie that “we didn’t know how bad it was.”  So what?  Personally as a parent and grandparent, professionally as a coach, consultant and expert on how to stop bullies I say that these people represent failure and should be forced to go into jobs in which their tasks don’t matter.

Would you want someone who pleads “difficulties” as an excuse for their failures when your life is on the line – for example, a school bus driver, a doctor, a pilot, a cop, a fire fighter, a repairman of train tracks, a quality control worker on an assembly line for your medication, pacemaker or your car’s brakes or accelerator?  I wouldn’t give them the responsibility.  All that education has been wasted on them.  And maybe the type of education currently in how-to-be-a-teacher courses is a waste.

Then there’s the rest of us: the legislators who didn’t pass laws and demand policies and programs that would protect courageous principals from law suits by the bullying parents of bullying kids; the parents who didn’t demand the best from their legislators or the enforcement of strong anti-bullying programs by their principals; the by-standers who looked the other way and remained uninvolved; the citizens who won’t pay teachers enough to attract courageous and good ones; the unions that protect their failures from consequences.

Whether the abuse is cyber-bullying, physical violence, sexual attacks or the many varieties of mean and vicious verbal and emotional abuse – the spite, gossip, rumor-mongering, ostracism, targeting or mocking – there will always be “experts” who say “it’s not so bad,” lawyers who say that it’s too difficult to write enforceable laws, and there will always be difficulties in stopping harassment, bullying and abuse.  So what if there are difficulties?  If we can’t overcome those difficulties, we don’t deserve the responsibility and trust, and we will reap the bitter fruits that will await us in our hours of need.

Stop bullying cliques at work

In the last post, we analyzed the tactics bullying cliques typically use and 10 common reasons why people form or join hostile, predatory cliques at work. Both men and women form and join cliques, even through their tactics are often different.  These predators verbally, sexually and physically harass and abuse both men and women.  They sabotage performance.  Don’t be surprised to learn that women prey on other women in the office – you’ve seen the evidence through elementary school, junior high school and high school.

What can you do if:

• You have a pattern of being bullied all your life?
• You’re a target?
• You have a chance to join such a pack of jackals and are afraid to refuse because you might get attacked?
• You’re a bystander and your heart goes out to a victim?

Bullying, cutting-out and creating and attacking scapegoats comes from a deep place within us and is found in almost all cultures, places and times.

Sometimes you can see that the person on the receiving end has done many things to offend almost everyone else.  But let’s put that situation aside for this post and focus on all the rest of the times when the person being cut out or attacked has been okay and the problem is the group that attacks their scapegoat.

If you’ve been bullied all your life, you have a problem that you’ll have to solve before you can deal effectively with a bullying clique.  Even if you haven’t done anything wrong to the pack of predators, you’re wearing a neon sign: "Kick me."  Lions, wild dogs and sharks can see who the weak and vulnerable ones are.  Bullies can too.  You’ll have to change your attitudes and beliefs so you’ll have a different sign: "Don’t mess with me!"  Let’s also leave this situation for another post.

Many people hope to stop cliques of bullies by analyzing why they do it and then using their understanding to design solutions.  Don’t waste your time.  You know why some people find others to pick on.  That catalogue of reasons is enough.

Management training rarely works.  Textbook and educational approaches – we’ll talk and I’ll show them why it’s wrong and they’ll see the error of their ways and become caring – rarely work.  They won’t stop bad behavior that’s driven by underlying emotions.

Predatory behavior by packs isn’t driven by intellectual reasons, it’s driven by emotions.  Of course the perpetrators can find reasons to justify their behavior, but they don’t do the behavior because of the reasons.  They do the behavior because of their own emotional needs and then they try to cover up the ugliness with a pretty picture of justifications.

Ignoring the problem or begging, bribery and appeasement simply reinforce low attitudes and behavior at all levels.  A major part of the problem are conflict-avoidant leaders, managers and co-workers who think that if we all talk nicely to each other or try to make bullies happy, they’ll stop bullying cliques.

Some real-world, stepwise approaches are:

• Make efforts to be friendly in practical ways, in order to give them a chance to change – without doing anything immoral, illegal or odious.  Bring pizza and donuts.  Cover for them when they need help.  Socialize with coworkers.
• If they continue targeting you (which they usually will), get help to develop tactics to isolate the ringleaders or get them fired.  The key goals are: separation and isolation.  Terminated is better than transferred, because transferred means that you’ve helped them create another bully-scapegoat situation.  How nice is that?
• Get firmer and firmer.  Don’t threaten or share your tactics with them.  Get an attorney to advise you about local laws.  Get allies – HR and managers rarely want to be involved, but give them one chance.  Document, document, document.
• If you have a chance to join such a pack of jackals and are afraid to refuse because you might get attacked, you have an integrity choice to make.  Do you want to live in fear or do you want to win a workplace war?
• If you’re a bystander and your heart goes out to a victim, you have another integrity choice to make.  Often, if you help a victim, the victim won’t help in return.  Be prepared to act alone, if necessary.

Of course, individual coaching will help you design tactics that fit your specific situation.

The strong and clear voice of an outside consultant and coach can change these behaviors or empower managers and staff to remove these bullies.  I’ve often helped companies and even non-profits and government agencies create and maintain behavioral standards (team agreements, ground rules for professional behavior) that promote productivity.

As I show in my books and CDs of case studies, “How to Stop Bullies in their Tracks” and “Eliminate the High Cost of Low Attitudes,” bullies are not all the same, but their patterns of behavior, their tactics, are the same – whether they’re men or woman.  That’s why we can find ways to stop them.