What is a Business Bully?

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man-37410_640In all walks of life there are people who suck time away in political maneuvering, grabbing resources, and creating distractions. Not all problem people in your office are bullies, they are just people trying to strive and thrive like you are and you may not like everything they do just like they don’t like everything that you do.  Still there are people who are egregious in their ambition.

These people can get your eyes watering:

  • They secretly present your ideas as theirs.
  • They take credit for your work to help them get ahead.
  • They attempt character assassination.
  • They provide you misleading information to their own benefit.
  • They step over people, you included.
  • They fabricate to try to save themselves.
  • They endeavor to bring you down with disrespect.
  • They create conflicts of interest.
  • They try to trick you into badmouthing the company.
  • They share private peer conversations.
  • They go over your head and behind your back.
  • They work to get your job away from you.
  • They disassociate from you after you help them.
  • They undermine you with micro-inequities, such as not returning phone calls and leaving you out of meetings, and generally make you feel, as one CEO put it, like “a sharpened instrument is being eased into the fleshy portion of your body.”

You can’t avoid them but you can be on the watch out for them so they minimize damage to you.

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Debra Benton

D.A. (Debra) Benton has been helping great individuals and organizations get even better for over 20 years. Just as exceptional athletes rely on excellent coaching to hone their skills, Debra's clients rely on her advice to advance their careers. She focuses on what is truly important to convert what you and your organization want to be from a vision into a reality. TopCEOCoaches.com ranks her in the World's Top 10 CEO Coaches noting she is the top female. And as conference keynote speaker she is routinely rated in the top 2%. Her client list reads like a “Who's Who” of executives in companies ranging from Microsoft, McDonald's, Kraft, American Express, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, and PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Washington Beltway and U.S.Border Patrol. *She is the author of ten award-winning and best-selling business books including The Virtual Executive and CEO Material. She has written for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fast Company. She has been featured in USA Today, Fortune, The New York Times, and Time; she has appeared on Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS with Diane Sawyer. To learn more Debra advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop, or speaking: www.debrabenton.com

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