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What Amber Sherlock's dressing down teaches us about how to talk with our colleagues

Jenna Price

 A former boss of mine threw his keys at me.

It was the final action in a series of acts of bullying, final only because not long after that incident, he was no longer my boss. And it wasn't just me he picked on, although I was a focus. He'd also lined up some colleagues to work with him.

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Nine News presenters wardrobe spat

Off air footage leaked to Mumbrella shows Nine journalists Amber Sherlock and Julie Snook have an awkward exchange over their choice of wardrobe.

It was the perfect example of what happens when someone can't manage or hasn't been taught to manage. Managing others isn't a skill you are born with and few of us are taught. And it's very tough when that absence, your failure to manage, is magnified in triplicate by a leaked video, the public imagination and international attention.

But not all terrible human interaction at work is bullying.

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Now there is no question. Amber Sherlock was absolutely wrong to do what she did to Julie Snook. Dressing down a colleague in front of others is completely inappropriate; and I certainly won't be giving her a leave pass because of either her gender or her industry. Nor should you. Give Sherlock the licence to behave this way and you give everyone permission to behave badly.

John Shields, professor of human resources, management and organisational studies at University of Sydney Business School, makes it perfectly clear. That's not how you manage people. If you want to give someone negative feedback, you do it in private.

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"There is always a cost to pay if you intentionally or unwittingly cause offence to a work colleague. Sometimes that cost is unavoidable and you have no choice."

"But you should never ever give [negative feedback] in public and in certain cultures, that would cause enormous offence," says Shields.

What if there's an instant problem? Shields says that any decent organisation and its managers should be able to tell employees what the roles and rules are well in advance.

"You can't just invent rules along the way and then criticise staff for not complying with these fabricated rules. The issue here is not just interpersonal, it's an organisational responsibility through managers and those expectations should only apply to work performance. Usually dress codes are irrelevant to job performance and that's why legal decisions about such matters almost always go with the employee.

"It isn't related to the job."

Ask yourself if Snook did a better job because she wore a jacket. Ask yourself if it was Sherlock's role to be monitoring what her colleague wore. If you don't know the answer, let me help. Sherlock is not Snook's boss in any formal sense. That would be Simon Hobbs, the Sydney news director, whose own boss is Darren Wicks. Or perhaps the daytime executive producer, whoever that was on the day. Insiders report there is never a massive amount of oversight of Nine News Now and unfortunately for Nine, that was quite apparent in the way Sherlock and Snook dealt with each other. In public and now very public.

So let's return to the problem of criticising in public. I don't know who else was watching this display of bad temper by Sherlock. But maybe three others, and that might include a line-up producer, a studio director, maybe an audio person, a vision switcher.

We don't have video of their responses nor any interviews telling us how they felt at the time although at least one colleague says Sherlock has form for being prickly so her behaviour was unsurprising. We do, however, have video of the response of psychologist Sandy Rea, a guest on the program that day. Her response says it all – excruciating embarrassment and a desire to fix the situation by suggesting she herself get a jacket. No bystander should ever have to put up with this rubbish.

But was this interaction bullying?

The Australian Human Rights Commission has a clear set of guidelines on what bullying looks like - a long list of which some examples are repeated attacks about sexuality, gender, race; sexual harassment; exclusion; and intimidation.

We don't know from the evidence. We have all only seen one episode where this happened. We don't know if Sherlock is a repeat offender or even if Snook is repeatedly intransigent. If they've been in dispute before, then management needs to step up.

When I started writing this story, I asked for people to let me know if they'd ever been bullied at work. More than 40 people contacted me and the incidents range from difficult to truly horrific.

Kris Howard, 39, an experienced technology manager, told me a story about a senior male tech specialist who developed a huge crush on her and would not leave her alone. When she made it – even more – plain that she was very happily married, he went on the attack. She managed it all herself.

"It became very negative, endless snide comments and by this time I realised how toxic it had become." Instead of making a formal complaint, she moved on.

Her colleagues had made jokes about the weird behaviour but she could no longer deal with it.

"We have all worked with that guy, the one who is a jerk or who is so strong technically, that management puts up with him."

Her story was among the least horrific, although undoubtedly awful for her being monstered in a workplace she otherwise loved.

Unlike others, she didn't have an erect penis thrust into her buttock while using the photocopier. She wasn't constantly hauled in from home with no notice even though there was an agreement that work could be done from home. She wasn't constantly berated in staff meetings after 20 years of brilliant work for the same bank. She wasn't forced to drive eight hours for a meeting with a boss who then said she'd only called the meeting to see how the employee would respond.

"In recent years, I make it a point to seek out companies which don't reward or tolerate such behaviour," says Howard. "We had a hero culture in tech for a long time but now we tend to reward teamwork and collaboration more."

And Diane Smith-Gander, chair of Safe Work Australia, agrees we have reasons to be optimistic. She says that SWA's figures show that Australian workplaces do understand what she describes as "psychosocial" work issues better than anywhere else in the world because they report on these issues.

"And I'm encouraged by that fact but there is a piece that needs to follow – how do you give people the skills and the tools to avoid what are very easy traps to fall into.

"That's the piece we need to work on more."

Excellent advice for the management at Channel Nine.

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