Bullying is a Concern for Leaders/Mentors

      While employed as a Youth Education Professional with the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service, I was offered the opportunity to work with teenage boys on a weekly basis, specifically on the discipline of mentoring.  I gladly accepted the offer and began searching for topics to include in the training. To become well-rounded mentors to younger boys, I thought, a lesson these teenagers should have was on a topic that was receiving much attention in the educational literature: bullying. During preparation for the lesson, I learned much about this devastating human behavior. Though there exists more current research on "bullying" and, indeed, more media coverage, let me share some facts from the 1990s.’

      Bullying exists to greater or lesser degrees in almost every westernized culture, to include Japan and China. Most Americans do not take bullying very seriously – not even in schools; they tend to think it is a given part of childhood. Teachers don’t want to admit it, because they rarely see it in the classroom.

      Bullying is among the most stable of human behavior styles, progressing from childhood to adulthood. However, it is a problem that does not sort itself out naturally. The aggression of a bully can be physical, or verbal, directed towards a particular person or it can be covert or subtle, such as lies communicated to others about a particular person.

      Several studies from research have shown that 60%-70% of children are never involved in bullying, either as victims or as bullies. 15% – 20% are involved more than once or twice a school term, once again, either as bullies or as victims. According to authorities and researchers in the social sciences, estimates are that incidents of bullying will increase.

     The thing about bullying is that, without intervention, children who are bullies grow up to be bullies. Charlotte Rayner, a human resource management professor at the University of Portsmouth (England) states, “bullying in the workplace is as much about what people don’t do, such as excluding targets from meetings, withholding information or leaving them off an important e-mail, as what they do, such as name-calling, making threatening statements, micromanaging or undermining somebody’s reputation.” The workplace culture, “see no evil mentality,” is what allows bullying to become the norm; a finding from psychologist Pat Ferris’ own experience and from her recent research.

      Research, which was not mentioned above, exists (I am sure) on the effects of bullying within the family unit; what initially comes to mind is the abuse inflicted by adult children on their elderly parents. Bullying is, indeed, a serious topic.

Information in this column is from the American Psychological Association Online (July/Aug. 2006) and Psychology Today Online (Oct. 2009)