Bulldozed: When mistreatment becomes a cultural problem and how to prevent it

I worked with an executive recently who repeatedly described being “bulldozed” at work. I didn’t know what they meant, but the term haunted me. It seemed like something more than just typical corporate power plays and politics, and implied more pernicious mistreatment. This situation was also puzzling because this client was not the type of person who I’d expect to be the target of mistreatment. They were high-performing, stress-resilient and assertive. In other words, they were not a doormat.

What is bulldozing?

After some discussion with my client, I realized bulldozing involved several characteristics:

1. Interruption and shushing: Someone in a more powerful position would interrupt my client in a meeting, raise a hand and gesture them to stop talking (i.e., the “shush”) and state that they were “wrong” about the issue at hand.
2. Outnumbering: A coalition of people from another function who outnumbered my client would attend a meeting and work together to refute my client’s points. They would also suggest (in a way that seemed pre-arranged and insincere) that they were “starting to coalesce” around a position my client opposed.
3. Pre-deciding: Here, the functional coalition would arrive at the meeting declaring they had already decided about an issue, even though my client was supposed to provide input on it. They acted as if they’d reached irreversible closure and that the issue couldn’t be revisited.
4. Stonewalling: Colleagues would refuse to respond to messages or meeting requests on an important topic. In-person visits would result in assurances to schedule time that never materialized. In parallel, the evasive leader would work around my client, seeking support, allies and approvals without their involvement.

See also: Tackling the growing problem of workplace rudeness

Bulldozing is mistreatment

Even after mapping out these characteristics, I wondered: Could bulldozing be just normal, “rough and tumble” corporate infighting?

Then I realized bulldozing met the criteria for workplace mistreatment.

Researchers have mapped out four major kinds of workplace mistreatment:

• incivility (low-grade, hard-to-detect disrespectful behaviors, like interrupting);
• aggression (behavior designed to physically or psychologically harm, like shushing and telling someone they’re wrong in public);
• social undermining (behavior that harms relationships, work success or reputation, like cutting people out of a decision they should contribute to); and
• ostracism (ignoring or excluding others, like stonewalling).

Bulldozing includes elements of all these forms of mistreatment.

Mistreatment may be a cultural problem

When I realized bulldozing was, in fact, mistreatment, I also gained clarity on another important insight: This wasn’t just a localized conflict between my client and one or two others; this was a cultural problem.

Senior leadership had dismissed the situation as a “personality clash” between my client and some colleagues, but other data pointed to deeper dysfunction.

For example, the mistreatment was happening all over the place, not only to my client, but between multiple parties.

Also, engagement surveys confirmed that morale was exceedingly low in this functional corner of the business.

Another clue that this was a cultural problem was that senior leadership was uninvolved in resolving the situation. Presumably, if bulldozing didn’t fit with the culture, one or more leaders would say “this isn’t who we are” and intervene—but that wasn’t happening. This made me wonder if bulldozing and mistreatment were part of the culture and had become normalized interaction patterns.

If mistreatment is cultural, it’s leadership’s job to intervene

So, if mistreatment is cultural, who’s responsible for that culture?

A major, primary role of executive leadership—especially the CEO—is to manage culture. This responsibility shouldn’t be delegated to the conflicting parties, consultants or junior team members lacking the authority to set behavior standards.

One reason that senior leaders need to get involved is that cultural forces are too powerful for individuals to fix on their own. My client was stress-resilient, but it was unrealistic to expect them to rewire cultural patterns of mistreatment using their willpower alone. Culture-level mistreatment can’t be resolved by individuals, and requires significant
interventions, backed by the full authority of senior executives.

What HR leaders can do

1. Question if mistreatment is cultural: Question our automatic reflex to conclude that conflict is the result of isolated personality clashes, and investigate whether a broader cultural pattern of incivility exists. This will help determine which intervention to use (small-scale coaching versus a larger-scale, executive-sponsored program).
2. Engage top leadership in interventions: Insist that top executives intervene directly to change mistreatment subcultures, in partnership with HR. This may involve addressing the passivity of the leader overseeing the problem area.
3. Challenge faulty assumptions: Some will try to normalize mistreatment. “Power struggles, ‘healthy tension,’ collateral damage … that’s normal, and if you want a high-performance culture, you have to tolerate it!” These are just assumptions, not “truth.” In fact, respect and civility can coexist with high performance standards and pulsating ambition. Encourage the use of updated assumptions like “respect and civility contribute to high performance at our company.”
4. Create accountability frameworks: HR can lead by creating tools that promote respect and civility. For example, company-wide values can help correct in-the-moment behaviors in a non-confrontational way (“what I’m hearing sounds values-inconsistent”). Other frameworks could promote positive meeting dynamics (like fewer interruptions) and responsive communication patterns (i.e., answer email within 48 hours, no stonewalling).
5. Broaden detection systems: Traditional HR complaint mechanisms may miss bulldozing and other subtle mistreatment behaviors. To counteract this, use 360s, engagement surveys, exit interviews and cultural pulse surveys to scan for “low-grade” mistreatment patterns.
6. Train on incivility: Train leaders and team members on incivility, so they can recognize its subtle characteristics and arm themselves with language to call it out.
7. Address lopsided structures: The concentration of people, resources and power in some groups may create a temptation to mistreat. Where these concentrations are unnecessary, consider structural changes that increase balance and parity.