A Significant Difference: Pride, Bullying, Confidence

There’s been a lot of buzz in my environment over the past several months. It has to do with pride. The pride that the community criticizes is that attributed to conceit, unmerited satisfaction and inflated status about something.
While the detractors scorn pride, they only recently stopped to consider the positive side of pride. This is being elated over doing something well and bringing positive credit to those who deserve it. Once reminded of this other aspect of being proud of something, the community admitted that there is the negative aspect of pride and the one that is positive. There are different dimensions to the one characteristic.
Now there is yet another perspective with regard to pride, or actually something we call self-confidence. It is possible to be confident, that is, have a belief in one’s own abilities or being certain, having assurance. That can be expressed in various ways that one goes about doing or saying things. However, let’s not get confidence mixed up with bullying.

Bullying can look like extreme confidence. It can seem to have the appearance of leadership traits. Bullying is definitely not being a leader. In fact, two different dictionaries contained very similar definitions of the word. Intimidation, aggressiveness, overbearing, oppression of the weak or small were descriptions of “bullying.” (See Dictionary.com)
There is a significant difference between being confident, being a leader, and being a bully. Although the bully may speak softly during the interview, say all of the right things and appear humble, their true nature tends to come out in different ways. Sometimes that true nature becomes apparent during the interview; at other times, it is not readily discernible until after the candidate has become an employee.
The bully can be a terror. They wreak apathy, inertia, malcontent, internal destruction, and lost profits and customers, in addition to positive workforce. In fact, one definition makes reference to the bully as a tyrant, their reign is one of tyranny. There are remedies for this aside from firing the horror from hell. But it takes training and behavior modification — lots of it over a long period of time. It also takes showing the person how to develop something called emotional maturity.
When analyzed, the bully is actually someone who has very little confidence in themselves, extremely low self-esteem, and in many cases has little training. The way they got to their position was via bombastic plowing through the ranks, bellowing as they went, pounding tables on a regular basis and throwing various forms of tantrums on a routine basis. They missed the maturation process. Unfortunately, all of the truculence got them rewarded by reaching positions of authority. No doubt the pinnacles were won at the price of conceding to threats. Nevertheless, there were rewards that spurred the bully to push the envelope even further.
The other remedy to the bully syndrome is to stop rewarding it. Stop understanding it. Start rejecting the results gained at the behest of any form of bullying conduct.
While it may appear that the bully is confident and therefore management material, they are not. The company that passes on this personality is wise for they are saving many hiring and retraining dollars, not to mention saving itself from lost profits, morale and customer goodwill.
The company that passes on the covert bully candidate is a company that should be sought out by those looking for a good corporate culture in which they can either survive by doing the best job of what they do for the company or growing their workskill sets in order to develop into the most that they can be in that environment.
There’s a significant difference between being a bully, being prideful, being confident, and being emotionally mature and successful.