Kollegen können Sie bei der Arbeit untergraben, indem sie Gerüchte verbreiten, Informationen zurückhalten, Anerkennung für Ihre Arbeit einfordern oder Sabotage betreiben. Dies führt zu Stress, Schlafstörungen und anderen negativen Folgen. Eine Studie ergab, dass Rache die negativen Folgen eskalierte, Vergebung sie jedoch neutralisierte.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12536

Your coworkers can make you sick: An investigation of coworker undermining and employee health

Abstract

Although mistreatment in the workplace has been widely acknowledged, the impact of coworker undermining has not been adequately explored in the literature. Using insights from the job demands–resources model, we suggest that coworker undermining is a job demand that is associated with negative affect and somatic complaints. In mitigation of this, we propose two personal resources (i.e. forgiveness and revenge cognitions) as buffers of the positive relationship between coworker undermining and somatic complaints via negative affect. We explore these relationships in a time-lagged study involving 229 participants who responded to three surveys over a month-long period. Our findings show that coworker undermining is related to high levels of negative affect in the following week, and that this spills over to somatic complaints. However, this is only true for victims of undermining who do not forgive their colleagues.

From the linked article:

How to Rise Above the Person Who Tries to Undermine You

When someone undermines you, new research shows a surprising way to overcome it.

KEY POINTS

– Social undermining can wreck a person’s feelings of psychological and physical well-being.
– New research on undermining in the workplace tracks the coping strategies of forgiveness vs. revenge.
– Rather than fantasize about the harm you would do to the underminer, you’ll benefit more from moving on.

Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE)’s Sandra Costa and colleagues (2024) framed their study of social undermining as a form of workplace mistreatment, which they note is a common occurrence. Although bullying, insults, and aggression are more blatant sources of mistreatment, social undermining sits there under the radar with a persistent and enduring drumbeat. A coworker who threatens you physically is likely to get reprimanded, but one who engages in more subtle forms of mistreatment can easily get away with it.

Forms of social undermining, the ISCTE authors point out, include spreading rumors, withholding information, excluding or isolating a colleague, claiming credit for their work, or engaging in acts of sabotage. The negative outcomes on affected workers include “feelings of insecurity and workplace vulnerability” and can lead to “diminished productivity, increased turnover rates, and engagement in counterproductive workplace behaviors” (e.g. stealing office supplies, slow-walking completion of projects) (p. 2). Social undermining can also make people sick.

Negative affect items included ratings of emotions such as afraid, nervous, irritable, hostile, upset, and distressed. Finally, somatic complaints included problems sleeping, headaches, backaches, fatigue, and lack of energy. Because the study used a lagged design, undermining at time one could be used as a predictor of negative outcomes at time two, one month later.

Turning to the results, as the authors predicted, workers who reported higher levels of undermining did have higher levels of negative affect which ultimately translated into more somatic complaints. The only strategy that served to negate undermining’s effect was forgiveness.

Why was forgiveness so effective? Costa et al. suggest that this strategy works because it allows you to overcome “debilitating thoughts and emotions resulting from interpersonal injury” (p. 17). Revenge doesn’t neutralize those negative outcomes but only serves to magnify or escalate bad feelings. It’s also possible, the authors suggest, that forgiveness outweighs revenge when people want to maintain positive relationships with people they like.

Forgiveness has an added benefit as an alternative to revenge. When you engage in revengeful thoughts, you remain stuck in a ruminative rut where you constantly replay harmful scenarios. It’s much harder to move on from there to any kind of reconciliation. Better, according to the ISCTE research, to find a way to repair the damage done by the mistreatment.

To sum up, it’s all too easy to imagine dire consequences for the underminer rather than follow the path toward forgiveness. However, as in so many situations in life, it’s forgiveness that will lead you to the path toward fulfillment.

Negative outcomes being only your sleep, it doesn’t do anything in terms of getting the workplace abuse to stop. What, forgive them and be a doormat, let them step all over you, and continue to ruin your career?? Weird how choices were revenge fantasy or forgiveness, not any pathway to taking action.

Did they research behaviors as well as cognitions? Or how about revenge followed by forgiveness? Or forgiveness and repair, followed by revenge. I suspect one combination is better than the other.

Also, they really should have factored out religiosity and age, though I don’t have access to the full article and they may have.

People conceptualize forgiveness differently. Some use it as a form of thought suppression, which certainly isn’t effective, and others use it as a somatic experience to process the harm. The paper seems too simple for my taste and reads like a liturgy.

It’s kinda hard to let go of being undermined when rumors and sabotage put you at risk of losing your job or actually result in losing your job.

Fighting for respect has been worth it in my experience. That has involved reflecting on transgressions and developing strategies to mitigate their consequences or prevent/preempt future efforts from my enemies (or, as an HR director once referred to them, my “fellow coworkers”).

At the least fighting signals to aggressors that you respect yourself.

I prefer to make them quit or get fired.