The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence (24 page)

When dealing with a difficult and violently inclined employee, it is important to understand that TIME is on his side unless you act quickly. Management may correctly intuit that he will not go quietly, but the sooner in the process he is fired, the easier it will be. If you believe it will be hard to fire him now, you can be certain it will be even harder later.

The Scriptwriter is often someone who has successfully used manipulations or intimidations in the past. His employer has, in effect, trained him that these strategies work and for this reason, he expects them to work again. When management does finally take the bold step of firing him, they are faced with a person who is shocked and who feels he is being treated unfairly. He may be partly right about the unfairness, because compared to all the things he has done that he didn’t get fired for, the cited reason may appear petty. He is angry, threatening, and cannot be appeased.

When manipulations that have worked for him in the past appear not to work now, he escalates them. At this point, management must consider all the harms this person could do to the company or its personnel. When they saw this side of him before, they always retreated. This time, they’ve stood their ground, and he has upped the ante by saying or doing things that make clear the obvious: They should have fired him long ago.

▪ ▪ ▪

Before I provide some PINs that are a call for further scrutiny in the workplace, I want to explain that I generally avoid the use of checklists because they mislead people into believing that there are shortcuts for high-stakes predictions. I have waited until this point in the book, when you are familiar with predictive resources and philosophies, before providing a list of behaviors. In less prepared hands, it could be misused. In yours, it will inform intuition.

The employee resists change, is rigid, and unwilling to discuss ideas contrary to his own.

He has obtained a weapon within the last ninety days, or he has a weapons collection, or he makes jokes or frequent comments about weapons, or he discusses weapons as instruments of power or revenge.

He is
s
ullen,
a
ngry or
d
epressed. Chronic anger is an important predictor of more than just violence. People who experience strong feelings of anger are at increased risk of heart attack (in fact, anger supersedes even such risk factors as smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol). Such people place others at risk and are at risk themselves. Accordingly, chronic anger should never be ignored. Signs of depression include changes in weight, irritability, suicidal thoughts and references, hopelessness, sadness, and loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities.

He has made statements like “What’s the use?” “Nothing ever changes anyway;” “I’ve got no future.” He makes suicidal references or threats, or he makes or describes plans consistent with committing suicide (gets his affairs in order, sells off possessions, etc.). Pessimism is an important predictor of problems (just as optimism is an important predictor of success).

He identifies with or even praises other perpetrators of workplace violence. He refers to, jokes about, or is fascinated with news stories about major acts of violence. He is attracted to violent films, magazines like
Soldier of Fortune
, violent books, or gruesome news events.

Co-workers are afraid of or apprehensive about him (whether or not they can articulate their reasons). This PIN seeks to capture the intuition of co-workers.

He has used threats, intimidations, manipulations, or escalations toward management or co-workers.

He feels others are “out to get” him, that unconnected events are related, that others conspire against him.

He reacts adversely to criticism, shows suspicion of those who criticize him, and refuses to consider the merits of any critical observations about his performance or behavior.

He blames others for the results of his own actions; refuses to accept responsibility.

He has undertaken or attached himself to crusades or missions at work. (This is particularly significant if he has waged what he might characterize as a “one-man war”).

He expects elevation, long-term retention, an apology, being named “the winner” in some dispute, or being found “right.”

He has a grievance pending or he has a history of filing unreasonable grievances.

He has had recent police encounters (including arrests) or he has a history that includes assaultive or behavioral offenses.

There have recently been news stories about workplace violence or other major acts of violence. Press reports on these subjects often stimulate others who identify with the perpetrators and the attention they got for their acts. Like public-figure attacks, major incidents of workplace violence tend to come in clusters, with perpetrators often referring to those who preceded them in the news.

He has monitored the behavior, activities, performance, or comings and goings of other employees, though it is not his job to do so; he has maintained a file or dossier on another employee or he has recently stalked someone in or out of the workplace. (Since nearly half of all stalkers show up where their victims work, companies are wise to learn about this dynamic.)

If he was fired, he has instigated and maintained contact with current employees; he refuses to let go and appears more focused on the job he just lost than finding other employment.

While no single PIN can carry a prediction, and not all serious cases will contain the entire list, these are some warning signs to be alert to. Most of us know or have known people who have a few of these characteristics, but if you work with someone who has many, that is a matter for further attention.

When managers and supervisors and co-workers know these warning signs, they are far more likely to detect a serious situation before it becomes a critical situation. Park Dietz brought his brilliant thinking to a multi-year study of workplace violence incidents. After that, he and I produced and wrote a video training series used by many corporations and government agencies (see
appendix 4
). The comment we heard back most frequently from organizations using the program was that spotting these employees early was far easier than they expected. They also said that the most common resolution of these situations was counseling problem employees, not firing them. Counseling was possible because they recognized early the fact that a given employee needed help. After studying every major incident of multiple shooting in the workplace, Dr. Dietz concluded:

His study also confirmed my beliefs about the relationship between media reporting and workplace violence:

Many situations that evolved into violence had been brewing for a long time, and senior executives had no idea what was going on. Why? Because nobody wanted to report it to a supervisor. Why? Because someone might say, “Hey, can’t you handle your own people? Don’t you know how to deal with these things?”

I had a meeting a couple of years ago with a client who is the CEO of a large national company. During a discussion about restaurants owned by the company, I said, “You must have had plenty of circumstances where female employees had to deal with unwanted pursuit or stalking.” He replied, “I heard about one of those cases, but it really hasn’t been a serious problem for us.” A couple of hours later, I asked the Human resources director and he said, “Oh, sure, we’ve had about six or seven of those cases in the last year; they can sometimes be a problem.” Then he called the executive in charge of the restaurant division, who said, “We probably have two of those a month. I can think of about 20 we’ve had in recent years. It’s a very serious problem.”

If managers never get an opportunity to comment on or to influence a situation that might be relevant to safety, then critical decisions are left in the hands of people who are only making them because they think their bosses want them to or because they are afraid to tell anybody they can’t. Companies can stimulate reporting by communicating that they want to know and by welcoming information even when it is bad news. In some companies, if a manager makes a prediction that an employee’s alarming or disturbing behavior might escalate, and he brings this to his seniors, he runs the risk of being perceived as wrong for over-reacting and wrong for not being able to handle the matter himself. Most unfairly, he may be perceived as wrong every day that nothing happens. I propose that large organizations redefine the word
wrong
in this context to include just three criteria. A manager is wrong only if he or she:

1.    Doesn’t consider safety first

2.    doesn’t ask the right questions

3.    doesn’t communicate concerns clearly and early

I am fortunate to work with some forward-thinking companies that tell their managers, in effect, “We do not expect you to handle these behavioral-sciences issues. We do not expect you to know about how to manage people that are alarming or volatile. If you can manage 95% of the people you are dealing with, that’s an accomplishment. The 5 percent that depart from normal behavior—those that intimidate, threaten, or frighten—they should be reported to us.”

▪ ▪ ▪

Difficult terminations and situations involving threatening employees are similar to other volatile social situations. These include divorce, disputes with neighbors, disputes with financial institutions, acrimonious lawsuits, and dissolving partnerships. What they all have in common is that the interests of one party are in direct conflict with the interests of another party. Accordingly, resolutions that are completely satisfactory to all parties are rare.

To complicate matters, the difficult employee often has similar problems away from work as well. The good things in his life are like dominos that have started to topple: Confidence has toppled into performance, which topples into identity, which knocks over self-esteem. The loss of his job may knock over the few remaining dominos, but the one that employers must be careful not to topple is the dignity domino, because when that falls, violence is most likely. Consider JACA:

Justification:
The employee can feel justified in using violence when the employer has taken
everything
away.

Alternatives:
He may perceive fewer and fewer alternatives to violence, particularly if he has exhausted all appeals processes.

Consequences:
His evaluation of the consequences of violence changes as he sinks lower. If he feels angry enough,
particularly if he feels humiliated
, the consequences of violence may become favorable.

Ability:
Often, angry current or former employees over-estimate their ability to deliver violence. This is dangerous because they are more likely to try grandiose attacks intended to “kill everyone,” or to “blow up everything.” Though they rarely succeed at quite the level they envision, they still hurt plenty of people.

▪ ▪ ▪

What is it that employers who have had the worst outcomes did, or failed to do?

Of course hiring is where it starts. The hiring officer has made a prediction that the candidate will meet the needs of the company and will be a well-adjusted, capable, and productive employee. We know predictions are better with more information, so investigating candidates’ backgrounds is key. I don’t mean that background checks can be expected to reliably screen out employees who will later act violently, because violence is a process that evolves over time; it is not a condition or a state. But effective background checks do give an employer the opportunity to learn important information about a candidate the easy way.