Unfortunate. Work Place Harassment is a dark and painful organisation reality.
Accidentally, met a professional who I had Coached several years ago. Had become a pale shadow of the high energy bubbling professional that he was in those days. Over coffee at Starbucks we met. I realised...he had unfortunately become a silent victim of bullying & work place harassment (WPH).
Without as much as realising, successful professionals become silent victims of WPH. Interpersonal dynamics, competitive succession, jealousies, envy , internal politics, conflicting views on critical strategies or extra attention from the top boss..any of these could become a cause for an otherwise successful professional to be targeted for WPH by power backed bullies. They ridicule your work, they attack your personality, they run down your character and make you the butt of their jokes. Idea is to make the organisation look down at you and not view you seriously as a professional leader.
Managements get the wind of it but do not do much to stop it. The department of dirty-tricks thus gets to works overtime and repetitive 'WPH' attacks, make you lose your positioning edge.
Often such bullying is connived and at times even actively supported by cronies who see political advantage for themselves in such sadistic alignment. This is called 'mobbing'.
Organisations lose efficient talent to such unhealthy work-place practices. Bullying and Mobbing are prevalent, abusive and preventable. If progressive leadership is blind to this reality and does not adopt mechanisms to positively intervene at the first trace of it, there will be a talent exodus. Such a Co is bound to be set for its disastrous results and failure.