Leadership Bullying – The Silent Epidemic Part Two
In my last newsletter, I reflected on the feedback I had received after publishing several of my newsletters on bullying in the workplace.
These included “Bribery, bullying, backflips, and bullshit.” “When they go low, you go high – leadership bullying” and “Bullying has no place – anywhere.”
Your feedback confirmed that bullying has evolved into a new form. It is silent, subtle, psychological, and insidious. You used words like toxic, fear, control, sabotage, sanction, dysfunctional, ostracism, coercion and systemic.
I explored policy-driven bullying and digital bullying. This week, I want to look at bullying in the form of inconsistent and unfair leadership, psychological bullying, and micromanagement. I also want to suggest how the epidemic can be eradicated.
Leadership bullying is the new workplace silent epidemic.
Inconsistent and unfair leadership
When employees are placed in a position of fear, they are being bullied. Fear comes about when employees cannot predict what will happen. This could be a leader who exhibits unpredictable moods, changes the rules for no apparent reason, and changes expectations without warning.
This is the leader who says, “Do it by the end of the week,” and the next day demands to know why it has not been done.
This is the leader who constantly changes what they want from you. Sometimes they want detail, sometimes they want the big picture, sometimes good is good enough and sometimes they demand perfection.
Employees never know what is expected of them. They live in fear of being wrong. This creates anxiety, confusion, and self-blame. Employees must become hyper-vigilant.
Inconsistent leadership provides support one day and criticism the next, praise one day and punishment the next, attention one day and ignored the next. Inconsistent leaders create unpredictable environments, and unpredictability is one of the most powerful psychological stressors in the workplace. When you cannot predict your leader’s behaviour, you go into survival mode.
Unfair leadership is displayed when there is favouritism, uneven consequences, changing rules depending on the person, inclusion of some and exclusion of others, and protection of some and exposure of others. Unfair leadership is when the leader is always available to some but unavailable or dismissive with others, sets higher standards for some than others, and gives high-value opportunities to a select few.
Inconsistent and unfair leadership puts people on edge, and the brain perceives it as a threat. Therefore, it has the same psychological effect as classic bullying when unpredictability is used as control. Emotional manipulation occurs when an employee internalises a leader’s insistence as their own failure. The emotional labour spent trying to predict what may happen and tiptoeing around a leader is mentally exhausting. Employees do not feel safe, and without safety leadership, it becomes harmful.
Unfair leaders discriminate, which is bullying, as they use differences as a weapon. Discrimination can occur based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, age, disability, beliefs, and many other factors. It is bullying because it excludes, marginalises, minimises, punishes, harms, silences and devalues based solely on identity.
Why leaders do it
Leaders lack self-awareness and therefore cannot recognise their inconsistencies and the effects on others. They are influenced by biases and prejudices, both conscious and unconscious. These include affinity bias, where a leader prefers people like themselves. Expedience bias results in decisions based on emotions rather than facts. Confirmation bias causes leaders to seek out and favour information that confirms their existing beliefs.
Many leaders do not discriminate maliciously. They do it because they are operating from unexamined bias, fear, insecurity, or power-based habits. They are not self-aware and have never examined their assumptions, privileges, blind spots, or impact. Leaders may avoid or undervalue people who are different because they lack cultural intelligence. It is a fear of what they don't understand, which can make them feel insecure. The dangerous thing is that many do not even realise they are discriminating.
Psychological bullying
This is the most common form of bullying, but also the hardest to prove. Psychological bullying is the silent, invisible, and often deniable form of workplace harm. Unlike physical or verbal bullying, it rarely involves shouting, insults, or threats.
It occurs when leaders use mind games, control, fear, and exclusion, and manipulate to erode employee confidence.
It could be a leader deliberately withholding information from someone, causing them to fail or appear incompetent. They could change expectations without any warning, which results in employee stress and a fear of being wrong. Leaders can gaslight by denying reality or twisting the facts, causing self-doubt and confusion.
Leaders can publicly correct or criticise an employee in meetings, emails, or on digital platforms. Employees can be excluded from meetings, conversations, or decision-making, leaving them feeling invisible, not valued, or undermined.
Employees receiving the silent treatment from a leader can feel anxious, confused, and experience psychological stress. Silence is an easy form of control.
The impact is emotional, psychological, physical, and behavioural.
Why leaders do it
Psychological bullying usually eventuates due to insecurity, fear of being exposed, lack of emotional intelligence, a need for control, ego, a need to assert dominance, 1and immaturity as a leader.
Micromanagement
Micromanagement turns into bullying when it reaches the point of ultimate control. It involves constant check-ins, hourly requests for updates, monitoring activities, interference in decisions, and a lack of delegation or autonomy. It is not about oversight; it is about complete control.
This is a leader who cannot let employees do their jobs.
These leaders want visibility of every step in a task, not just the outcomes. They rewrite or redo an employee’s work even when it was fine. They hover, either in person or digitally, saying, “Just checking…”, or “Quick question…” They want to be copied on everything.
There is no provision for autonomy, and they control the decisions that employees should make. They interfere with even the smallest of choices and override decisions that have already been made. They have no trust.
They expect employees to always be available, leading to 24/7 surveillance by stealth.
Micromanagement is bullying when it is persistent, undermines capability, removes autonomy, creates fear, causes psychological harm, and prevents a person from doing their job freely.
It destroys confidence, kills creativity, triggers stress and anxiety, and results in low psychological safety.
Why leaders do it
Most micromanaging leaders are insecure, overwhelmed, or lack competency. Their behaviour is driven by fear of failure, low leadership confidence, and perfectionism. Their identity is in being seen as the expert. They cannot let go, and so they interfere in work that they should delegate. They do not trust their employees, and they do not know how to lead.
Who will stop it?
In my newsletter “Bullying has no place -anywhere” I talked about the three levels at which workplace bullying can be attacked: personal, team and organisational.
We need to remove the conditions that allow bullying to exist at each of those levels. We need to increase transparency, accountability, psychological safety, boundaries, questioning and oversight.
There is a bigger question, though. Who is going to make it happen? When the system protects the status quo, who can act? When leaders are the problem and the gatekeepers, who can drive the change? So, if the people causing the harm won’t stop it, who will?
Bullying will only stop when the system around the bully makes it impossible to continue.
It will require a specific set of actors with legitimacy, leverage, and independence.
The organisation
Bullying is a psychosocial hazard. Therefore, it falls under Work, Health and Safety (WHS), Risk and Compliance, and governance obligations.
When bullying is treated as a safety breach rather than a personality conflict, leaders cannot dismiss, deny, or deflect.
Risk, compliance and safety teams
These teams do not report to the bully. They report to the board and the law. They can investigate, demand corrective action, document patterns, escalate beyond the leader, and enforce behavioural change.
HR, when backed by compliance muscle
When HR teams up with safety, risk, and legal, it is a coalition that no leader can ignore. The powerful coalition can mandate behavioural changes, redesign processes, enforce accountability, protect employees, and remove toxic high performers.
The board
Boards don’t care about egos, excuses, and politics. They care about liability, reputation, culture risk, staff turnover, regulatory compliance, and profitability.
The board does not need permission to act; they just need visibility into the problem, which means there must be a functioning reporting system.
Middle leaders
These are often the silent allies. They may not be bullies, but they may be bystanders. This middle layer of supervisors, team leaders, and managers has the power to disrupt the harmful norms, protect their teams, refuse to pass on the toxic pressure, model safe behaviour (digital and in person), and escalate through the correct channels.
Employees
When one employee raises a concern, it is a “problem.” When ten employees raise a problem, it indicates a pattern. When twenty do it, it signifies a system failure. When fifty do it, there is a cultural crisis.
A collective voice can stop bullying.
External oversight
If the system will not fix itself, external forces can. These include WorkSafe, ombudsman, unions, legal entities, industry regulators and the media when the situation escalates. An organisation will be quick to act when there is a potential lawsuit, public exposure, regulatory intervention, and potential irrevocable reputational damage.
Epidemics can be eradicated
Bullying will stop when the system around the bully makes their behaviour impossible. Leaders, HR or employees alone may not stop it. But when there is an ecosystem of safety, risk, compliance, collective voice, courageous middle leaders, a board that understands cultural risk and external oversight, the epidemic can be stopped.