Leaders Fail to Take Strong Action At Rutgers University

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Leadership Fails Student

• Rutgers Basketball
• Coach Bullying Incident

Donna Price Leadership Consultant
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The video released by ESPN

• The behavior of the Rutgers Basketball
  Coach demonstrate a total failure of the
  University Athletic Director and University
  Leadership to protect students from bullying on
  the part of staff.

Picture Only
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Bullying goes beyond student to student
interactions.  

• When students are bullied by teachers, coaches or
  leaders, action must be clear and strong. 
• Business leaders can learn valuable lessons from
  their failings that translate to the workplace as
  bullies continue to work in leadership positions
  throughout organizations worldwide.

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What to do

• Organizations should have strong policies for
  incident management and review.
• Leadership needs to evaluate bullying situations
  quickly and swiftly and include their incident
  review system.

Public relations can impact outcomes but should
it dictate the outcome?
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Managing Public Relations 

• The organization policies need to address
  managing public relations but the organizations
  policies should be strong and values driven. 
• The actions of the Rutgers Basketball Coach are
  not a demonstration of acceptable coaching
  practices, they are abusive, bullying actions
  that should not be tolerated in a University
  environment or work environment.

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Harassment policy
Bullying falls into harassment policy within an
organization but need to go beyond employees to
include clients or customers, vendors and
others.  
The Rutgers University Basketball Coach incident
would be kin to clients or customers being bullied
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Question

• How would you, as the leader, handle an employee
  that was bullying your clients?
• Does your organization include bullying in your
  policies at all? 
• Is training provided within your harassment
  policy training?
• Are you assuming because you are in a workplace
  that bullying does not happen that it is just a
  childhood phenomenon?

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How would you react?

• As a manager and leader you should be reacting
  strongly to this incident and reviewing your own
  policies. 

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Within my work experience

• I worked with staff that worked directly with our
  clients people with disabilities this behavior
  would be viewed and handled as client abuse.  

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How we deal with Bully in our company?

• The person would be on immediate suspension
  pending an investigation. 
• The investigation would then become part of the
  incident report and the review committee would be
  involved in determining the disciplinary action. 
• There could also be legal action!
• Founded cases of client abuse would result in
  immediate termination.
• It is not tolerable!
• Why a University would continue to employ a coach
  that physically abused his players (students of
  the University) is unbelievable!

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Leaders and staff within organizations need
training on bullying and the policies of the
organization for dealing with situations that
involve bullying of clients (students), staff or
others.
Bullying of anyone connected to the organization
should not be tolerated.
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The Rutgers case

• The Rutgers case is a public relations nightmare
  for the University but taking right actionat the
  beginning would have prevented the severe
  backlash they are now experiencing including
  strong statements by NJ Governor Christie. 
• A strong incident management policy and review
  would have prevented this. 
• When decisions are left to individuals outside of
  policy it leaves organizations vulnerable.
• Every incident management policy should include a
  category for sensitive situations.
• These are defined any situation that has
  potential ramifications to the organization. 

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A Take action for your company

• Review your incident management policy be sure
  that it includes a category for sensitive
  situations.
• Review your harassment or bullying policies
• Train your leaders and staff on your policies
• Manage any incidents that arise quickly and
  ethically

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What Level of Bullying Does Your Organization
Tolerate?

• 1. Bullying with organizations cannot be
  tolerated by leaders and especially cannot be the
  action on part of leaders. 
• 2. When bullying occurs, the organization
  leadership must take strong action that is
  consistent whether or not the media is involved. 

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• 3. Media backlash should not be a result of
  inaction. 
• 4. When you have a strong policy that deals
  effectively with incidents occur there is less
  room for a media reaction because you have gotten
  in front of the incident, dealt with it and your
  actions followed good policy.

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In a state where bullying has been a public issue
that has resulted in the strongest anti-bullying
laws in the country,

• Rutgers failed to follow good management practice.

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