1. What is silent treatment? It is simply bullying/manipulative punishment meant to isolate the victim by not talking, a kind of emotional abuse meant to control the behavior of the victim and may be used to get them to do what you want ('sulking child').
2. The main about silent treatment is that is actually never silent. The bully uses it to get what they want - an acknowledge from the victim that the bully was right/great. When the bully is being silent, they are 'loudly' showing their anger/frustration/displeasure, and that the victim is is worthless incompetent (in the workplace).
3. Silent treatment in the workplace: The Workplace Bullying Institute says silent treatment is fourth most common workplace bullying tactic (also see 'bullying' in table of contents) and is considered a kind of abusive supervision.
4. A particularly hideous form of silent treatment at work: They won't give you proper credit for your good performance.
Other kind of silent treatment at work: They will not answer your calls/emails/voice mail.
How to deal with the silent treatment
- Never take it personally: Either the bully is facing same problem in their own life, or there is some problem with the business itself, and people may have other priorities at the time.
- Don't pester with repeated follow-up calls/email etc. 2-3 times maximum.
- Don't stress out, just record everything: Build up your case.
- Don't explode in rage or hurt: This will only give more ammo to the narcissist bully.
- Some suggest to remain relaxed and positive before them (without ever laughing at them): This is will infuriate them and may push them towards taking a mistake at their own job.
- As long as you have a high self-esteem and acknowledge that the problem is their, not yours, they won't have much power over you, whatever fun antic they might try.
Just keep calm, and do your job. As long as someone keeps paying you a good salary, they can sew mouths if that's what they want.
Also, kill them with your good performance.
Tip: You can easily rework these tips to fit into other situations in life, can't you?
Kill them with kindness.
Thank you for reading.
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