Shannon G. Taylor

Notes leaders are supposed to take reports of mistreatment seriously, get the facts, and punish offenders accordingly. Shows that leaders blame victims for their mistreatment, even when they’ve done nothing wrong.

Notes that research shows that bad behavior “trickles down” to affect the behavior of employees at lower organizational levels. Finds that supervisors can “break the cycle” of abuse by seeing themselves as different from their manager and being proud to be nothing like them. Finds when they do, abused supervisors engage in more ethical and less abusive behavior with their own subordinates than supervisors who aren’t abused.

Notes that employees who are mistreated by their bosses at work are more likely to mistreat family members at home. Finds that this happens because experiencing mistreatment reduces sleep quality, and that this “mistreatment spillover” doesn’t happen when employees exercise—specifically when they walk 10,000 steps or burn 2,000 calories per day.

Shows that people are affected not just by the amount of rudeness they experience at work, but also by the extent to which rudeness levels change from week to week; even if two employees experience the same amount of mistreatment at a given moment, the one who sees the trajectory getting worse will be more likely to burnout and quit.