Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Formal Request for Information

From:
Mary Smith
Address
Rest of address

To:
Appropriate Person
Name of University
Rest of address

Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Formal Request for Information

Dear Mrs/Mr …………………………..

I am writing to request information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In order to assist you with this request, I am outlining my query as specifically as possible. If however, this request is too wide or too unclear, I would be grateful if you could contact me, as I understand that under the act, you are required to advise and assist requesters.

Please provide me with the following:

1. How many Employment Tribunals have been brought against the university from 1998 – 2006?

2. A detailed breakdown of what the Employment Tribunals have been brought against the university for?

3. How many such Employment Tribunal applications were successfully upheld against the university?

4. How many Employment Tribunal disputes with individual employees were settled out of court?

5. How many Employment Tribunals and out of court settlements have resulted in a financial settlement, and how much were the settlements for?

6. For the period 1998-2006, how much money was spent in legal fees defending claims of staff workplace bullying?

7. The number of formal and informal complaints by employees concerning workplace bullying and harassment by managers for 1998–2006?

8. How many managers were formally and informally disciplined, due to employee complaints about bullying and harassment?

9. The number of employee resignations due to bullying and harassment from 1998 to 2006?

10. How many workshops or awareness sessions on bullying did the university provide to its employees in the last five years?

If you decide to withhold any of the information requested you should clearly explain why you have done so in your response, by reference to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 legislation. If your decision to withhold is based upon an evaluation of the public interest, then you should clearly explain which public interests you have considered, and why you have decided that the public interest in maintaining the exception(s) outweighs the public interest in releasing the information.

I look forward to receiving the information requested as soon as possible and in any event, within 20 working days of receipt.

Yours sincerely,


Name/Signature

[This template was written with the assistance of Michelle Edwards, thisismeeshe@yahoo.co.uk]
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Remember: Any person can make this request. It could be a friend, a relative, somebody you trust.
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Campaign for Freedom of Information: http://www.cfoi.org.uk/

Some of the things we know about universities due to FOI requests

Below is a small list of things we do know about universities due to FOI requests. There are many more things that we don't know about...

Defend Freedom of Information Act. If you want to object and share your concerns about proposed changes to the Act, then contact Vera Baird a.s.a.p.
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UK university ethics under fire
67 UK universities hold shares in arms companies, it has been revealed. Following an FOI request, 67 out of 183 colleges and universities confirmed they held investments in six of the UK’s leading arms companies, including BAE systems, GKN and Smiths Group. Cambridge and Oxford universities hold 3 million shares between them. The largest investor though is the Universities Superannuation Scheme, the lecturers’ pension body, which holds more than 24 million shares.
25.10.05 The Times

Soas sells off arms shares
The School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London, has announced it will be selling its investments in arms companies. The school is the fourth institution to do so after details of arms share holdings by 67 universities were published under the FOI Act. Oxford, Cambridge and Swansea universities have all started disinvestment campaigns.
9.11.05 The Guardian

170 attacks a year on hospital staff
There were more than 170 incidents of violence and aggression against staff at a Cambridge hospital last year, according to data released under the FOI Act. Staff have been punched, kicked, bitten and spat at in attacks occurring on average three times a day.
15.2.05 Cambridge Evening News

University staff ‘face threats’
More than a thousand incidents of violence or harassment against university staff have been recorded in the past five years. The figures, released by universities under the FOI Act, show there were 178 instances of physical violence and 832 of threatening or intimidating behaviour, with one student sent to prison for assault. However, the disclosures also reveal an uneven level of recording of threats and violence, with 37 institutions saying they had not recorded any incidents of aggression since 2000.
9.6.05 BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk

Hospital staff in £100,000 payout
Personal injury claims by staff cost a Cambridge hospital nearly £100,000 last year in damages and legal fees. Figures released under the FOI Act show that seven members of staff received damages, the largest payment being £9,990 to a staff member who acquired industrial dermatitis. In the same period £9,270 was paid to 73 patients in non-clinical compensation cases including loss of clothes, dentures and glasses.
6.6.05 Cambridge News

Minister reduced student targets
The government target for university entry was revised downward following concerns about a ‘pilethem high’ culture and accusations of ‘dumbing down’. According to documents released under the FOI Act, in 1999 Downing Street intended to set a target of 50% participation by young people in higher education by 2006/7. However, this was eventually amended to 50% by 2010 amid worries that ‘too hasty’ an expansion could also prompt elite universities to ‘break away from the existing system’.
17.2.05 The Guardian

Favouring students from disadvantaged backgrounds
Bristol University has a policy of favouring studens from disadvantaged backgrounds, according to documents released under the FOI Act. The papers recommend that admissions tutors make lower offers to disadvantaged students. Bristol has been running the policy since the mid-90s, the documents reveal.
4.2.05 Times Higher Education Supplement

University cheats on the rise
There were 6,672 incidents of plagiarism and collusion in the 2003/4 academic year figures from half of Britain’s universities have revealed. The figures, disclosed under the FOI Act, show that 707 students at Westminster University were found to have copied original work, the highest incidence of plagiarism of the 64 institutions surveyed. No incidents were reported at Oxford or Cambridge.
2.8.05 The Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk

Mental health alert for students
The number of university students seeking counselling has risen by more than 20% to 60,000 in five years. The figures were obtained from 18 universities under the FOI Act. Minutes from Bristol University, where the number of students seeking counselling has risen by 29%, state “The waiting list for the counselling service is of great concern. Some students have to wait four weeks to see a counsellor.” British universities spend £30m a year providing counselling for students with mental health problems.
20.9.05 Bristol Evening Post

Pesticide probe into death of farm worker hit by lab error
Three samples sent to the forensic science laboratories at the University of Glasgow have been accidentally disposed of since 2002. One sample belonged to Graham Stephen a young farm worker who died after applying a highly toxic pesticide to a potato crop. The official investigation into his death was abandoned following the error. Details of the mistake were unearthed using the FOI Act.
28.8.05 The Sunday Herald

University scam lets in illegal migrants
Illegal immigrants may be entering Britain by enrolling on university courses, obtaining student visas and then disappearing. Under the present arrangements overseas students do not have to pay their fees in advance, they only have only to show they have the means to pay. Figures for 37 universities, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that more than 17,000 non- European Union students accepted undergraduate or graduate places last year but never arrived at their colleges. However, not all of these are abusing their visas - many go to other institutions or never enter the country.
4.9.05 The Sunday Times http://www.timesonline.co.uk

MRSA rises despite new hospital routine
The number of patients contracting MRSA at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge increased after new cleaning procedures were introduced to combat the bug. Alcohol gel handwash was introduced in July 2004 and more rigorous cleaning was introduced that autumn. But MRSA bloodstream infections only fell by 3 cases, from 126 in 2003-4 to 123 in 2004-5 and the number of MRSA-positive patients - not all of whom had bloodstream infections – actually increased the month after the new procedures. In September, when cleaning was improved, there were 86 new MRSA-positive patients, which rose to 104 in October.
24.6.05 Cambridge Evening News

N&N staff act to stamp out blunders
Staff at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital reported 64 medical mishaps in the two years from October 2003 to September 2005. The mistakes, revealed for the first time in response to a FOI request, include 45 drug mix-ups, patients being mistaken for someone else, a patient accidentally burned during surgery, an incorrect breast biopsy diagnosis and an undetected fracture. The Hospital’s chief executive said "What we have tried to encourage at the hospital is an environment of openness, where people don't think they are going to get hammered for admitting a mistake.”
15.11.05 East Anglian Daily Times

Endless laughter...

DEMANDS: ARE YOU DOING ENOUGH? Management Standards for Tackling Work Related Stress - Health and Safety Executive (HSE), U.K.

How much work is there?

• Ensure there are sufficient resources to do the work allocated:
• If there are insufficient resources seek guidance from management about priorities.
• Support your staff by helping them prioritise or renegotiate deadlines.
• Cover workloads during staff absences.
• Adjust work patterns to cope with peaks (needs to be fair and agreed with employees).
• If people are underloaded, think about giving them more responsibility, but make sure that they have been adequately trained.
• Strike a balance between ensuring that employees are interested and busy, but not underloaded, overloaded, or confused about the job.
• Develop personal work plans to ensure staff know what their job involves.

Are staff able to do the job? Training and development

• Train staff so they are able to do their jobs.
• Implement personal development/training plans which require individuals to identify development/training opportunities which can then be discussed with management.
• Devise systems to keep training records up to date to ensure employees are competent and comfortable in undertaking the core functions of their job.

Communication

• Encourage staff to talk to you at an early stage if they feel as though they cannot cope.
• Develop a system to notify employees of unplanned tight deadlines and any exceptional need to work long hours.
• Talk to your team regularly about what needs to be done. This can:
• help you understand the challenges the team are currently facing and any pressures they are under;
• find ways of sharing the work sensibly and agreeing the way forward with the team;
• gain team cohesion and commitment to the work you have planned – the team is likely to be more responsive if it understands what needs to happen and by when. Allocating more work to an already stretched team without explanation is unhelpful;
• ensure shift work systems are agreed with employees and their representatives and that the shifts are fair in terms of workload;
• gain understanding and commitment to unplanned tight deadlines and any exceptional need for long hours;
• help you manage any unexpected absences or losses to the team – everyone knows the key stages of the project and what each other’s role is.
• Lead by example. [Endless laughter...]

How good is the work environment?

• Have a suitable and sufficient risk assessment to control physical hazards. Further information is available from HSE Infoline: 08701 545500.
• Assess the risk of physical violence and verbal abuse. Take steps to deal with this in consultation with employees and others who can help (eg the police, charities).
• Change start and finish times to help employees cope with pressures external to the organisation (eg child care, poor commuting routes).
• Ensure your risk assessments for physical hazards and risks are up to date.
• Provide training to help staff deal with and defuse difficult situations (eg difficult phone calls, aggressive members of the public).

Are you enabling staff to have their say? [Endless laughter...]

Give more control to staff by enabling them to plan their own work, make decisions about how that work should be completed and how problems should be tackled (eg through project meetings, one-to-ones, performance reviews etc).

Allocate responsibility to teams to take projects forward...

Are you making full use of employees’ skills and abilities?

• Enrich jobs by ensuring that staff are able to use various skills to get tasks completed, and that staff can understand how their work fits into the wider aims of the unit.
• Talk about the skills people have and if they believe they are able to use them to good effect. How else would they like to use their skills?

...A supportive environment is crucial. Staff need to know that managers will support them, even if things go wrong or if they find that they are unable to cope with added pressures. [More endless laughter...]

How supportive are you?

• Give support and encouragement to staff, even when things go wrong. [More endless laughter...]
• Encourage staff to share their concerns about work-related stress at an early stage.
• Hold regular liaison/team meetings to discuss unit pressures.
• Hold regular one-to-ones to talk about any emerging issues or pressures.
• Value diversity – don’t discriminate against people on grounds of race, sex or disability or other irrelevant reasons.
• Seek examples of how the team would like to, or have, received good support from managers or colleagues – can these be adopted across the unit?
• Ask how employees would like to access managerial support – ‘open-door’ policies, agreed times when managers are able to discuss emerging pressures etc...

How well do you listen? [So much fun...]

• Listen to your staff and agree a course of action for tackling any problems – it is important for staff to feel that the contribution they make at work is valued.
• Involve your staff – they need to do their bit to identify problems and work towards agreed solutions.
• Talk about ways the organisation could provide support if someone is experiencing problems outside work.
• Disseminate information on other areas of support (human resources department, occupational health, trained counsellors, charities)...

How well do you deal with unacceptable behaviours? [We are on the floor with tears in our eyes...]

• Work in partnership with staff to ensure that bullying and harassment never emerge as an issue. One way of doing this is by having procedures in place, such as disciplinary and grievance procedures, to deal with instances of unacceptable behaviour.
• In consultation with staff and their representatives, draw up effective policies to reduce or eliminate harassment and bullying.
• Agree and implement procedures to prevent, or quickly resolve, conflict at work – communicate these to employees.
• Agree and implement a confidential reporting system to enable the reporting of unacceptable behaviour.
• Communicate the policies and make it clear that senior management fully support them.
• Communicate the consequences of breaching the policies.

Do you work for a caring organisation?

• Create a culture where members of the team trust each other and can be themselves while they are at work.
• Encourage your staff to recognise the individual contributions of other team members and the benefits of the whole team pulling together... [The building is shaking...]
  

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From HEFCE: '... The section on leadership, governance and management looks at how establishing the Leadership Foundation for HE has been an important first step in addressing leadership development [code for leadership incompetence] and succession planning, with strong support across the sector. The Committee of University Chairmen (CUC) is increasingly proactive – for example, in the development of the new Governance Code – [The building is about to collapse...] and the profile of governance is rising. There is also evidence that HEIs are directing more funds towards leadership and management development...' [Put your helmets on!!!]

Anyone for a short course in Leadership? The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

'...Senior management teams face the challenge of creating and maintaining a positive working environment in their institutions. Sustaining a positive working environment and culture is a key objective of university policies, and many feel that the best way to achieve this is through emotional intelligence. Many factors may work against this including:

• poor performance management systems
• harassment
• bullying
• unmanageable stress levels
• [bully managers?]

The Leadership Foundation recognises that these factors may have a negative impact upon the performance of the institution and have a detrimental effect upon working relationships. The quality of leadership can play a key role in creating the climate and conducive to a positive working environment... Fee: £280 [We can't take it anymore...]

Abolish the General Medical Council (GMC) - UK

An ethical blog for those who publicly feel that the General Medical Council (GMC) should be Statutorily Abolished in favour of a Medical Licensing Commission (MLC) to solely register and revalidate Doctors who practise Conventional Medicine in the UK.

The Blog also recommends that the GMC/MLC hands all disciplinary functions over to an Independent Clinical Tribunal (ICT) in keeping with the EU Convention on Human Rights ; to avoid (both) Institutional Bias and Multiple Jeopardy.

From: http://abolishthegmc.blogspot.com/

General Medical Council Protest Date Set For March 17th 2007

Misery of Dysfunctional Meetings

Are meetings at your company a useless, frustrating waste of time? Do they provide a bully a forum to rant, rave and manipulate? Are reasonable people intimidated into silence? If so, welcome to the living hell of dysfunctional meetings.

The Three Pillars of Dysfunctional Meetings

1. Objectives are meaningless

- Discuss vague platitudes instead of underlying problems
- Ignore causes of low morale and low productivity
- Ignore negative environment created by bully

2. Committees are powerless

- Creates impression that issues are being addressed
- No authority to investigate bully's behavior problems
- No power to take actions to resolve issues

3. Bully is allowed to dominate meetings

- Stifles healthy progress in meetings
- Dominates meetings by aggressive conversational style
- Attacks anyone who threatens his dominance of meetings
- Prevents clear identification of himself as the problem
- Shifts blame for problems he has created
- Provides misleading information
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From: http://www.kickbully.com

Time for a golden oldie - Political Psychology - Are they claiming you are emotionally unstable?

PsychologistEthics.net is designed to help inform the public about political psychology; that is, psychologists violating established codes of ethics to carry out the political agendas of others, especially employers. Political psychology is often used to facilitate workplace mobbing...

When one imagines using mental health professionals to target undesirable individuals, one almost always thinks of totalitarian governments such as the former USSR, China, and Cuba. There is a long and ugly precedent of using mental health professionals in those societies to target politically undesirable people and have them placed in mental institutions involuntarily.

Human rights groups refer to this practice as "political psychiatry." Victims of political psychiatry are usually people who have filed grievances or complaints against employers or officials, or are union organizers, people who have publicly criticized officials, members of minority religions, and whistle-blowers. Because of reports of the former Soviet Union and China committing political dissidents to mental institutions, the World Psychiatric Association passed the Madrid Declaration in 1996 declaring that "all forms of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on the basis of the political needs of governments are forbidden." Unfortunately, no such declarations have been made for or by psychologists to condemn political psychology...

In this case, an SIUC faculty member was mobbed by the university administration with the help of some of her departmental colleagues because they disliked her opinions, which were expressed through grievances, guest columns and letters to the editor, speeches, union activism, and by joining in a suit with other faculty members against the board of trustees to protest the firing of a popular chancellor.

As a result, her office was moved out of the department and her mail was stolen. Frequent whispering campaigns were held in the hallways by colleagues who quickly scattered behind slammed doors when she was sighted. She was unjustly blamed for negative tenure votes and missing department materials. The nameplate on her door was vandalized and she learned that she was referred to as "the little twerp" by some.

The university administration then hired a licensed psychologist who, the faculty member was told, would conduct counseling and conflict resolution for her deeply divided department, but who instead wrote a report for the administration indicating that the faculty member was destructive and in need of discipline and professional help.

The administration disseminated the psychologist's report to over 20 people on the campus. In this case, the psychologist made an unsubstantiated assessment of the faculty member based solely on what the faculty member's "enemies" had said about her...
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Political Psychiatry

The political use of psychiatry came to the world�s attention during the days of the Soviet Union, when the profession of psychiatry was used to suppress dissent. This practice represented a systematic use of a healing profession to incarcerate healthy individuals into Special Psychiatric Hospitals, administered by the USSR Ministry of the Interior, or the police, and not the USSR Ministry of Health. There were psychiatrists and others who fought against this practice, such as Drs. Semyon Gluzman and Anatoly Koryagin, who were imprisoned themselves for their moral and ethical work. There were also psychiatrists who adhered to, and, in some cases, furthered the practice. Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry has, as part of its mission, to fight the political use of psychiatry wherever it may occur. While devoting most of its time and resources on reform of outdated mental health systems, GIP will continue to work against these human rights abuses.

From: http://www.gip-global.org/
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This week's competition: We are looking for adjectives, descriptions, short sentences - How did they describe or portray you?

Our submission to the competition: 'Has threatened suicide', 'I listened to him for one hour but he made no sense', 'emotional', 'aggressive', 'unbalanced', 'bullying', 'uncooperative', 'unmanageable', 'confused'...

Also read: A statement from Lisa Blakemore Brown

Inquiry clears ex-UCC head of corruption - Ireland

An inquiry into allegations levelled against the former University College Cork (UCC) president Gerry Wrixon has found no evidence of corruption or breaches of the law.

The 20-page report says there has been "no material breach of law, statutes or ordinances either financially or corporately there is no evidence of corruption".

John Malone, the former secretary general of the Department of Agriculture and Food, who conducted the inquiry, said the allegations made against Prof Wrixon did not merit the appointment of a visitor or senior investigator by the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin.

The report is critical of Prof Wrixon's management style and his poor personal relations with some key personnel. There was a very strong focus on results and implementing change but much less on people affected by these changes, it says.

Mr Malone is critical of UCC's governing authority which, he says, failed to act as an effective counterweight to a powerful president like Prof Wrixon. The report criticises Prof Wrixon's tendency to bypass some structures - including the academic council - in his decision-making.

There is some evidence, it says, of some "hasty decision-making in a highly ambitious change agenda" environment. But overall, it says, these deficiencies do not amount to mismanagement. But the report also says the success of UCC in recent years is a tribute to the "energy and vision" of Prof Wrixon.

The inquiry examined over 50 allegations made by Prof Des Clarke of UCC in a letter to Ms Hanafin. But the Malone report rejects his allegation that UCC is an academic Enron waiting to happen because it is financially unstable. Prof Clarke did not co-operate with the inquiry.

The Malone inquiry concludes that UCC's debt will need to be carefully managed by the new president, Prof Michael Murphy, but it says the debt is not a threat to the college.

The report praises the "energy and vision" of Prof Wrixon which has helped transform UCC into one of the most successful third-level colleges in the State. But poor personal relations on the campus between key decision makers created tension and animosity, it notes. Prof Wrixon retired as president this week; Prof Michael Murphy took office yesterday.

Mr Malone was assisted in his inquiry by two international experts, Prof Michael Shattock of the OECD, and Dr Jim Port, an independent consultant on higher education issues.

Prof Shattock was a member of the OECD team which prepared the landmark 2004 report on third-level education in the Republic. Dr Port was recently appointed by Ms Hanafin to examine the merits of a university in Waterford.

The Malone report will be presented to the UCC governing authority next week. Prof Clarke, who is due to retire shortly, has been sceptical of the Malone inquiry which was commissioned by the UCC governing authority two months ago.

At the time, Prof Clarke said: "I think it's completely unacceptable because the governing body is effectively appointing the person to investigate concerns about the governing body itself . I'm not assuming that anyone is going to find in my favour or anyone else's favour but you can't have people picking their own jury."

From: Indymedia Ireland

A real story - The real story

Nature of complaint

1. Details not recorded
2. Details not recorded
3. XXX
4. Terms & conditions
5. Terms & conditions
   
6. Terms & conditions
   
7. Working relationships
8. Working relationships
   

Length of Service - completed years

1. Over 25 years
2. 1-5 years
3. 6-10 years
4. 6-10 yeas
5. Over 25 years
6. Over 25 years
7. Less than 1 year
8. Less than 1 year
   

Ethnic Origin

1. White - British
2. Other White Background
3. Black or Black British - Caribbean
4. White - British
5. White - British
6. Not Known
7. Black or Black British - Caribbean
8. Other Ethnic Background

Stage at which complaint was completed

1. Grievance investigation
2. Informal Grievance
3. Formal Grievance - Stage 2
4. Formal Grievance - Stage 1
5. Formal Grievance - Stage 1
6. Formal Grievance - Stage 1
7. Formal Grievance - Stage 1
8. Informal Grievance
   

Outcome of complaint

1. Ongoing
2. No formal action
3. Complaint not upheld
4. Complaint withdrawn
5. Complaint upheld
6. Complaint upheld
7. Complaint not upheld
8. Complaint not upheld
   

Did complainant remain in College for 6 months following outcome?

1. N/a
2. Yes
3. No
4. No
5. Yes
6. Yes
7. No
8. Yes

At last an acknowledgement from one of the candidates for General Secretary of UCU - Roger Kline mentions the 'B' word

Saturday 27th January 2007

Question: Big Brother, bullying and post 16 education

“Bullying appears to be an acceptable form of management in our college. What would you do about it if you became general secretary?”

Lynne, Manchester FE lecturer
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Answer by Roger Kline:

The Health and Safety Executive estimates that bullying costs UK employers 80 million lost working days and £2 billions in lost revenue.

Bullying is widespread in post 16 education. Numerous surveys including the most recent UCU stress at work survey (Link to press release) have demonstrated how widespread it is. Bullying is incompatible with a collegial management or a learning environment.

Some managers seem to think that Rambo style management is effective. The growing climate of fear amongst senior management, especially in further education, makes it likely that such practices will increase unless challenged. [So will they be challenged?]

As head of equality and employment rights I have ensured we have developed a range of work around bullying.

Firstly, your employer should have a Bullying and Harassment Policy or Dignity at Work Policy. UCU’s web site at www.natfhe.org.uk/?entityType=Document&id=150 has a model policy. We want every employer to agree such a policy with UCU. [Agreeing is one thing, implementing and monitoring is another.]

Secondly, a bullying culture is a breach of the Health and Safety Executive Management Standards for Stress (www.hse.gov.uk). A survey – jointly with management if possible - using the HSE model survey will confirm the scale of bullying and which departments are especially bad. [Good idea, do we have any volunteers?]

Thirdly when individuals feel they are being bullied they must start to record what is happening and alert their local representative. It is very unlikely that such individuals are the only ones being bullied. [True, but what happens after one alerts the local rep can be an issue.]

Finally, bullying often has discriminatory overtones linked to gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and so on. Whilst it remains very difficult to pursue bullying cases through the courts, the link with discrimination may make it easier to force your employer to act in case legal action is taken. However it is much, much better to take these issues up collectively if possible rather than assume there is easy legal redress. [So what happens to individual cases?]

An excellent guide to tackling bullying at work, co-sponsored by UCU has just been published by the Equality challenge Unit, on whose board I sit. It can be downloaded at www.ecu.ac.uk. [Thank you for the guide.]
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From: http://roger4gs.blogspot.com/

Did he answer the question?

The other candidate for the position of General Secretary (Sally Hunt) has not mentioned the 'B' word yet.

What Makes Narcissists Tick - "All con artists are thus protected by the pride of those they con..."

...Many, if not most, narcissists get away with bullying, slander, calumny, and abuse (even as prosecutable offenses) their whole lives. How? It's easy:

• make the abuse so outrageous people cannot see why anybody would do such a thing
• destroy the victim's credibility in advance.

No one does the things a narcissist does without thinking about the possible consequences. So, they are going to think up ways to avoid those consequences, too.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you want to get away with abusing someone, you first launch a pre-emptive attack on their character, so that nobody will believe them when they soon complain about what you are doing to them…

Everybody knows that when somebody defends himself from accusations with accusations, the crowd always believes the one who accused first and views the defendant as the attacker. This is irrational, because the initial accuser is the attacker and there is no more reason to believe one party than the other.

So, people don't do this in good faith. Indeed, the more preposterous the initial accuser's accusations, the more firmly people believe them! They do this out of self interest, because the return allegations make them look bad for eagerly swallowing the first accuser's preposterous and juicy lies whole. All con artists are thus protected by the pride of those they con.

The narcissist commits moral mayhem by destroying the victim's reputation and credibility, so that nobody will believe her about him. His description of her is projection, a perfect description of himself... Nobody will even listen to her. Thus, the narcissist reduces her to a hapless and helpless state.

Narcissistic bullies in the workplace, especially as administrators in nonprofit institutions, are notorious for doing this. Their total destruction of the victim's life is so willful and wanton that it can sometimes only be viewed as a deliberate attempt to drive him or her to suicide. And all too often it does…

Attention is a value judgment. We pay it only to things we deem worthy of it. So, by treating others as unworthy of any regard, Narcissus is acting as though they are beneath notice, insignificant and infinitely less important than all-important him. He pays no more regard to them in what he does than you pay to bug you step on while crossing the street. They are nothing; he is everything.

This is how he compensates for that demeaning value judgment his narcissistic parent imprinted on his soul. This is how he edits the shameful image of himself he saw reflected in that parent's contemptuous eye. In other words, he does to others what that parent did to him. Since that's what made that parent a god, that's what makes him a god.

How does he enact this fiction? By treating you like dirt. And by maligning you behind your back. You could define a narcissist as someone who likes to treat others like dirt and ruin their reputations.

This is the game a narcissist plays, in a nutshell. Because he is an emotional imbecile (i.e., mentally of pre-school-age maturity).

The only people he doesn't abuse this way are those he doesn't dare abuse. Or those he can aggrandize himself by association with. Or those he can con and is setting up for a con job. Like psychopaths, narcissists view others as but objects, material to exploit for their own aggrandizement…

Narcissists are predators, but many people fail appreciate the meaning of that term, letting it in one ear and out the other...

Being predators puts narcissists in a special class with psychopaths, that class of people who don't wish you well, no matter how friendly their facade — that class from which sexual predators and all other kinds of predators come…

They're regulating, manipulating your reactions. But you aren't like them. Your reactions come from within. So, what are they ultimately regulating and manipulating? Your thoughts. Manipulation is mind control.

Manipulation is a subtle thing. So subtle that we are usually unaware of being manipulated, unless the manipulator blows it and breaks the spell. So, manipulators are putting thoughts into our heads that we think are ours. A very dangerous thing.

Since a narcissist isn't acting on normal human premises, since all he is doing is playing you for the reaction he wants, truth is irrelevant. Truth or lies — it's all the same to him. Whichever works. Usually that's lies.

It would be more correct to say that there is no such thing as truth to a narcissist. Because there is no such thing as truth when playing Pretend. That's why narcissists and psychopaths beat lie detector tests...

Psychopaths are known to get so good at manipulating people that, by the time they're teenagers, they routinely fool and manipulate mental healthcare professionals, judges, prison officials, parole boards, and social workers who know they are psychopaths, are on the lookout for attempts to manipulate them, and should be immune to manipulation.

It isn't a matter of intelligence: it's a matter of practice, experience. This is because most of what transpires in interaction happens too quickly to think it through…

Don't trust an institution or organization to filter out the personality disordered on the road to the top. Indeed, narcissists have great climbing skills!

Narcissists are expert at tearing down whoever is above them on the ladder of success. That's what narcissists do, nonstop, all their lives, because that's what narcissism is. They get very good at it, because it's an aspect of the disease, an aspect that is more a benefit than a curse in society. In fact, they get so good at climbing over those they throw down that they come out smelling like a rose, because nobody even knows who instigated the talk that destroyed that person…

What's more, narcissists have no compunctions about exploiting and tearing down their betters, because they have no empathy, no conscience. Another big advantage over normal people.

Nor do they have any compunctions about "getting tough" with their subordinates and firing people. They love doing that, because that's what narcissists do — vaunt themselves on others by bullying whomever they can. It's an aspect of the disease. And it's an asset, because it makes them look like good "tough" managers of personnel.

Narcissists are shameless but subtle self-promoters, expert at carving out the perfect (false) image for themselves. Yet another big advantage.

In fact, being for looks only, they see no reason to work for credit or credentials, so they just fake it whenever possible. They may cheat their way through college or buy a degree from a diploma mill or fake their credentials altogether. On the job they steal the credit that belongs to others…

I should think that a narcissist would not be at home in a smart and sophisticated big business with competent personnel managers, one that measures job performance accurately by objective metrics. Most of the narcissists I have known were in the "helping professions," particularly education. Little real accountability and abundant means to fake it.

Among those who were teachers that I have known or heard about, I noticed a peculiar similarity. They avoided accepting any position that would set them up as the responsible party and a target for criticism. For example, they would come up with excuses for why they could not fill a vacant head-coaching position. They preferred to call the shots from behind the scenes as a "humble" assistant coach, who manipulated the head coach.

…This is why narcissistic bullies in the workplace are a particular problem in private nonprofit institutions.

…In fact, the "helping professions" in general attract more than their share of narcissists: little real accountability and plenty of ways to fake it. All you have to do is fool people: you never have to prove that you are doing a good job.

…No one wants others to see them as bad. Moreover, that's the kiss of death to a predator, because it's like a repellant that warns potential prey to mistrust and stay away from him. Indeed, if you were a malignant narcissist, what would be your biggest fear?

Exposure, right? You're like a vampire to whom the light of day is lethal. Your greatest fear would be the same as that of any hungry, stalking predator — exposure.

You'd live in constant fear of people finding out that you're a wolf beneath your sheep's clothing, that you just use people, that you want to take away anything they have that you don't have, and that you will vandalize their image to improve your own. You'd live in constant fear of them learning the shocking truth about your past exploits, about the many you've used and trashed in your wake. You'd live in constant fear of people discovering, not just what you do for a moral living, but whom you do it to.

Since narcissists are such expert con artists, how do you spot them? …Here are eight red flags:

• puts on a conspicuous display of goodness and kindness
• damages the images of most others
• has a history of past upheavals
• hated for mysterious reasons by people close to them
• exhibits unnatural and perplexing behavior — backwards reactions to things
• is a control freak, trampling privacy/boundaries
• is extremely self-absorbed
• has a hostile reaction to attention and credit given others

…If you know a narcissist's history, you will usually see a track record of mysterious upheavals in his life. He suddenly up and moves to a different school or job in a different town every few years. That is, every time the good angels in his Pathological Space start comparing notes, get his number, and become enraged.
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From: What Makes Narcissists Tick - Understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)