During the seven years that I have met with alumni to advise and coach them on their career transitions, I have heard horror stories about bad bosses and managers. Often in tears, individuals have communicated workplace abuse running the gamut—from feeling victimized, isolated, and insulted, to being made to feel useless and redundant. Sometimes workplace abuse is a result of downsizing, cost-cutting, and demands to accomplish more with fewer resources. In such instances, stress can elicit dysfunctional behaviors in managers leading to deteriorating relationships, which appear as an ongoing form of harassment.

On one occasion, a client—a very accomplished woman—related to me her tale of maltreatment in the workplace after discovering she had breast cancer. While undergoing chemotherapy, and in a weakened condition, she was none the less maligned for her performance and criticized for not being up to par. Amazingly, she worked in a hospital setting at a major university where they should have known better. Another client described her boss’s paranoia, which caused him to constantly undermine her workplace skills.

No doubt, these full-frontal attacks can be disarming and painful. But the good news is that there is help out there—in the form of a relatively new book written to rescue readers from workplace victimization.

Using the research for her doctoral dissertation as a basis, Laura Crawshaw distilled her findings into a highly readable book, Taming the Abrasive Manager—How to End Unnecessary Roughness in the Workplace. 

I first met Laura at a coaches group in Salt Lake City, and then heard her present at an SHRM (Society of Human Resource Managers) luncheon. Known as the “Boss Whisperer,” Crawshaw has gained both a reputation and a following for successfully coaching abrasive and abusive executives and dysfunctional staff teams from a psychodynamic perspective. With more than 20 years of experience as a clinical practitioner, she consults globally with 600-plus corporations.

Crawshaw is usually summoned by upper management distraught and alarmed by the number of individuals leaving their organizations due to bullying.  Since employee retention is one of the biggest concerns that organizations face today, destructive managers need to be dealt with. Crawshaw is sought to sooth the savage beast and staunch the hemorrhaging of employees. Her methodology consists of “coaching” and “taming” abrasive executives, teaching them to understand the impact of their behavior on others.  In most cases, these individuals are simply blind to the havoc they have created.

This groundbreaking book is written as a survival guide for managers, coaches, HR professionals, or anyone who works for or with an abrasive individual. Crawshaw’s research explores the reasons abrasive managers resort to interpersonal bullying and destruction, and then tells them what to do about it. She writes about a tough subject in a humorous, disarming way and leads readers into discovering why some bosses act like beasts in a corporate jungle. She pinpoints the kind of language that bullies use (just in case we don’t recognize it) and offers specific examples of conversations that illustrate how to “tame” destructive types so that they back off and behave appropriately.

Crawshaw has discovered, through empathy, that these abrasive bosses usually do not intentionally seek to harm employees, thereby destroying a commonly held belief. She shows that these individuals lack the ability to read other people’s emotions as well as the EQ or emotional intelligence quotient to understand the impact of ruling with belittling words and deeds. 

Another myth she confronts is the belief that these individuals cannot be changed. She explodes that notion by demonstrating how corrosive behaviors can, in fact, be altered.  Her strategies provide a road map for coping with and addressing these behaviors. Ultimately, she demonstrates that we can learn how to stop being hostages without being dragged into defensive combat.

It’s a great summer read, and I highly recommend it to employers and employees alike.

Are you suffering in the workplace?  Contact Julie Swaner, Alumni Career Counselor at the University of Utah: jswaner@sa.utah.edu, or (801) 585-5036.

For more information about career services offered to University of Utah (and other) alumni, go to www.alumni.utah.edu/career/.

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