Real Answers About Workplace Bullying

This is the standard definition of workplace bullying:

• Workplace bullying occurs when colleagues deliberately and consistently direct abusive, unprofessional behaviors—subtle or overt; emotional, digital, verbal, nonverbal, or physical—at an identified person over a sustained period of time with the intent to cause harm. This ongoing mistreatment affects a person's well-being at work and at home.

Where Stop Bully Culture Goes Further

• The standard definition frames workplace bullying as an interpersonal issue between the person being bullied and the workplace bully. It does not explain the systemic issues that sustain workplace bullying.

Workplace bullying continues because:

• Leaders fail to intervene early.

• Harmful behavior is rewarded or overlooked.

• Interventions unintentionally reinforce the bullying.

• Group dynamics change as coworkers choose silence, participation, or self-interest over action.

Over time:

• Workplace bullying becomes normalized.

• The behavior becomes embedded in the workplace culture.

• Employees are socialized into those norms and behaviors.

• Workplace bullying becomes self-sustaining and much harder to stop.

Workplace bullying occurs overtly or covertly. Workplace bullying behaviors are intentional, repeated, and designed to cause harm. Workplace bullies use multiple workplace bullying behaviors and tactics throughout the workday and overtime.

Workplace bullying occurs regularly, which often means the person being bullied at work experiences workplace bullying multiple times a day and every week.

Common tactics are digital, psychological, physical, nonverbal, verbal, and institutional.

Digital workplace bullying is the intentional use of technology to intimidate, undermine, isolate, manipulate, or harm a person at work.

It occurs through email, messaging platforms, collaboration tools, video meetings, social media, or other digital communication used in the workplace.

Psychological abuse at work is the repeated use of behaviors intended to undermine, control, intimidate, isolate, or emotionally harm another person.

It includes tactics such as gaslighting, abuse of power, credit theft, humiliation, manipulation, micromanagement, retaliation, scapegoating, and shaming.

Physical workplace bullying involves intentional physical acts or damage to property that are used to intimidate, threaten, control, or harm another person at work.

It includes physical assault or the deliberate sabotage or destruction of a person's belongings or work materials.

Verbal workplace bullying is the repeated use of spoken words to intimidate, belittle, embarrass, or undermine another person.

It includes aggressive speech, attacks on character, derogatory comments, repeated interruptions, and lying to damage a person's credibility or reputation.

Institutional workplace bullying is a category developed by Stop Bully Culture to describe situations where organizational policies, procedures, or systems are used to punish, isolate, or disadvantage a person instead of being applied fairly.

It includes practices such as policies used to disadvantage employees, retaliatory performance reviews, gatekeeping through workplace processes, and the unfair application of workplace procedures.

Nonverbal workplace bullying is the repeated use of body language, gestures, facial expressions, or physical presence to intimidate, isolate, control, or undermine another person at work.

It includes dismissive gestures, intimidating body language, blocking a person's movement, or other nonverbal behaviors intended to cause harm.

Conflict is a normal part of workplace life.

• It happens when people disagree, miscommunicate, or have differing perspectives.

• Conflict can be resolved through communication, clarification, or mediation because both people generally have equal power in the situation.

Workplace bullying is an organizational problem sustained by workplace culture.

• Workplace bullying is consistent, intentional harm directed at an identified individual by colleagues.

• It is not a misunderstanding — it is abusive behavior that escalates over time, damages well-being, and undermines someone’s professional standing.

Key differences:

Conflict

• Interpersonal

• Can be resolved between the parties

• Focused on a specific issue

• Ends when the issue is resolved

Workplace Bullying

• Abusive behavior

• Requires organizational intervention

• About control, dominance, and harm

• Persists, escalates, and adapts over time

When organizations mistake workplace bullying for conflict, they use the wrong tools — and unintentionally protect the workplace bully.

Common workplace responses often fail because they assume equal power, neutral group dynamics, and objective decision-making.

Workplace bullying changes all three.

• The workplace bully often has both real power and bully power, which can be used to influence how people view the situation and how they respond to it.

• Over time, coworkers may learn that remaining silent, going along with the behavior, or protecting their own interests benefits them more than intervening.

• As group dynamics shift, workplace bullying often becomes less about the workplace bully and the person being bullied and more about a group process that isolates the person being bullied.

• People in positions of authority may also become influenced by these dynamics, giving greater weight to the majority view rather than the experiences of the person being bullied.

Most leaders do not know how to identify or intervene in workplace bullying. They treat it as conflict because conflict is familiar, and most organizations have conflict-based policies that support those responses.

As a result, leaders often rely on approaches that may reinforce workplace bullying rather than stop it.

Yes. You can have more than one workplace bully. This is often referred to as mobbing.

At Stop Bully Culture, we use the term co-bullying because mobbing often creates the impression of a large group openly bullying someone.

• While that can occur, co-bullying often involves a smaller number of workplace bullies working together or reinforcing one another's behavior in more subtle and covert ways.

Co-bullies function more like partners.

• They reinforce one another's behavior, support the same narratives, and contribute to the isolation, trauma, and psychological abuse experienced by the person being bullied.