Bullies, Jerks and Weasels

Bravo to Michael Fischer on “Defending Collegiality” (Change, May/June 2009).  Robert Sutton’s list of misbehaving faculty—“bullies, creeps, jerks, weasels, tormentors, tyrants, ... unconstrained egomaniacs”—conjures painful memories in most of us of unsuccessful attempts to cope with their behaviors.  But the real power of Fischer’s case for “defending collegiality” (aside from wanting those behaviors to stop) is research data.  We know what colleagues want, we know how students learn, and we know the impact of bad behavior on individuals and the community at large.  
 
Fischer tells us more than 9 out of 10 faculty think that being a good colleague is either “very important” or “essential.”  Judith Gappa, Ann Austin and Andrea Trice provide evidence that young faculty “hope to participate in communities characterized by collegial interactions.”  The academy is increasingly diverse—by age, background, race, ethnicity, expectations—and it’s crucial that we negotiate those differences with tact and care.  Bottom line: bullying doesn’t work.  
 
I didn’t know that negative responses from colleagues have five times more impact than positive ones, but I believe it.  It takes only one outburst of bullying behavior to bring a meeting to a screeching halt.  The result is increased gossip, triangulation, coalition-building, and conflict escalation. Worse, colleagues drop out, disengage, detach, and become indifferent.  
 
A code of conduct may help, but it is insufficient. Though faculty anchor their careers in critical thinking, self-discipline, and autonomy, these need not exclude the capacities for cooperation and collaboration. Deans and department chairs can and must learn how to cope with conflict, how to use it constructively, and how to teach those within their units the value of collegiality.