Bullies come in different forms, shapes and ages. Nevertheless, people tend to have typical images of bullies, usually little boys in elementary schools and playgrounds. Or an adult bully demonstrates violent and threatening behaviors or emotions. Those typical bully images were forged in the editing room of anchors and journalists through the lens of most of the popular media.
This article is to describe other unaware but extremely dangerous but silent bully prototypes. This type of skillful bullies do not throw punches in schools or playgrounds but holding leadership positions in political power center, holding the key to the financial power, having executive power of the business world, controlling the channels of news/images in media, and high-ranked clergies in spiritual world.
As people’s eyes and mouthpiece, media do not focus on the center of the political/financial/spiritual power and scrutinize those well-established powerful “leaders” (bullies), instead of focusing on some young boys/girls in schools and playgrounds so that all the viewers can be manipulated by anchors’ perspectives and see the world through their powerfully manipulated lenses that they want audience to see and to believe.
Façade of Success
What are the criteria of a candidate on the becoming path of a skillful bully in a successful executive’s mask?
An intelligent individual has high caliber in cognitive capacity, such as analysis, reasoning, and calculation. As a charismatic and confident individual, he/she is also articulate, ambitious and on the fast track in climbing corporate/organization ladder. Under a rigid hierarchical organization, these behavioral traits can be outwardly reinforced and manufactured to perfection and difficult to detect the concealed shrewd and self-serving nature. After the long term well-established images, credentials, and networks, skillful bullies in a successful mask, they are considered as leaders, role models and celebrities in political system, companies, and churches. Externally, it is very difficult to differentiate the genuine successful executives from the skillful bullies.
It is just like a genuine diamond and a fraud diamond and no one can tell which one is real and which one is faked. Sometimes, fraud diamonds outshine the genuine ones. Only a well-trained professional can see through the faked shine of those faked diamonds. Along the same line, only a highly skillful professional with conscience can see through the true nature and the integrity of a genuine executive as well as a skillful bully without engaging power play or political gain.
Concealed Real Intention
The difference between a genuine successful individual and a skillful bully lies in his/her internal motives. A skillful bully is sensitive to assess other people’s power and how to exercise his/her personal charm to ally in the competitive business world. He/She knows how to pro-actively affiliate with those powerful people for his/her own self-interest and power-grabbing. He/She shows loyalty, respect, and obedience to win the trust from the higher-ups.
In private life, a skillful bully continues the high-power superior persona and is addicted to his/her inflated self-importance over personal relationships, such as in-laws/family. He/She treats in-laws and family members as subordinates and is good at translating their transient value into tangible benefits or service for his/her own advantage.
Magical Tool-Manipulation
- Establish Superior Atmosphere
A skillful bully is quick in identifying invisible leverage (age, rank, power affiliation, earning power, gender, ethnicity, etc.) and exudes superficial warmth and friendliness which creates a polarized superior-or-inferior or convincing-or-mistrust prelude as a foundation for his/her favorable influence. A skillful bully is good at exaggerating, bragging and portrait himself/herself as a virtuous and righteous person to increase the weight of superiority.
- Create a Superior-Inferior Power Structure—From Influence, Control, to Manipulation
Invisible leverage turns into persuading influence and then distorts misstatement into twisted truth to gain control, domination and then manipulation. The goal is to demonstrate his/her superior performance and justification in grabbing (or stealing) more power, privilege, and assets from submitting ‘inferior’ or ‘disadvantaged’ counterparts.
Steps in Gaining Power
#1 Gaining Power Strategy—Proclaiming Visible and Invisible Favorable Superior Traits
#2 Gaining Power Strategy—Spotting Gentle, Good-Nature, and Non-Assertive Individuals, Such As Supporting Staff, Supervisees, Younger, Older, or Inexperienced People in an Organization
#3 Gaining Power Strategy—Intimidating, Belittling, or Overly Critical in Private Settings to Degrade Opponents/Counterparts into Inferior Status
#4 Gaining Power Strategy—Gaining Psychological Territory, Conquering Easy Preys, Putting Down Victims, Claiming Victims’ Credits and Assets Legitimately
Ultimate Goal of Control and Manipulation-Exploitation
Skillful bullies are natural predators and have innate ability to identify easy preys. The ultimate goal is to exploit others for self-serving interest and gratification.
Discrepancy-Lack of Integrity
Lack of integrity can be interpreted as hypocrisy or two-faced characteristics. The deceitful side has to be hid in secrecy, isolation, and darkness, (i.e. alter boy’s sexual abuse as a secret, Clinton’s emails).
The best way to detect a skillful bully is his/her lack of integrity and incongruence between publicly benign image and privately abusive behavior and the duration of revealing the skillful bullies may take at least 2-3 decades. A skillful bully is generous in spending company, public or others’ funds but stingy in spending his/her own funds. On the same note, he/she is generous in praising powerful allies publicly but verbally and emotional abusive to subordinates privately. A genuine successful executive tends to be congruent in public and private interactions. The emotional reactions with a genuine successful executive after a certain period of time tend to be positive, consistent, supportive, and empowering.
However, a skillful bully tends to elicit negative emotions such as confusion, a sense of inferiority, insecurity, powerlessness, loss of personal boundary or identity. A skillful bully in a successful mask is an intelligent criminal who steals others’ power, voice, credits and asset and financially, mentally, or sexually abusive toward vulnerable victims, co-workers, voters, a company, even a society without a trace. The current legal system can only capture ordinary criminals who commit petite crime with visible evidences. How can you prove invisible motive, manipulation strategies, stolen power, stolen self-worth, stolen votes through legitimate ways and capture the mastermind of the well-designed legitimate scheme?
Bio:
Dr. Trudy is a psychologist in California and Oregon working with Asian American communities. Her website: www.DrTrudy.com. Tel: 503-439-0514 or 503-895-8360