Professional coach explains mobbing, other social dysfunctions that cause workplace trauma

Coach Heffernan analogizes workplace mobbing
to William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954).

Cry of the Hunters (2011) by Eljiasan,
via DeviantArt, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Personal and executive coach Lynda Heffernan, architect of "A Kaizen Mind," has posted a brilliant video explainer of workplace mobbing.

I admit, I can be a person who rolls the eyes upon hearing words such as "cognitive behavioral hypnotherapy," or just "coach" when not attached to a sport team. But after spending some time with Heffernan's substantive content and video channel, I've concluded that this coach is worth listening to. She's the real deal, clinically trained in cognitive neuroscience.

"Kaizen" refers to a Japanese philosophy of continuous, incremental betterment (Forbes, Medium). Lausanne, Switzerland-based Heffernan has adapted the concept to a strategic mindset for self-improvement. In plain English, she does leadership and development training for organizations and executives.

The video on workplace mobbing (Oct. 19, 2026, embedded below) is the fourth in a series about related, trauma-inducing social dynamics, including workplace bullying, gaslighting, and ostracism. Here is the description of the video on mobbing:

In this video, I introduce you to the Island, and to workplace mobbing. If you read Lord of the Flies at school, you'll remember how a group of perfectly ordinary boys, stranded together, gradually turned on one of their own. Nobody set out to be cruel. But once the group had chosen its target, each small act made the next one easier. Mobbing is closely related to bullying, but with one important difference. It isn't one person. It's a whole island. 

Gratifyingly, Heffernan is well versed in the sociological origins and research of workplace mobbing, so she recognizes its discrete nature, especially thanks to the work of my friend and colleague, Dr. Kenneth Westhues. Somewhat jealously defining that distinctiveness is a key part of the mission of the World Association for Research on Workplace Mobbing (WARWM), which I have served as a co-founder and officer, and of WARWM's annual Conference on Workplace Mobbing at Niagara University (at The Savory Tort), ably led by Dr. Qingli Meng.

Incidentally, the fifth entry in the video series also might be of especial interest to the legal community, as Heffernan speaks on the bystander effect. She references the classic film 12 Angry Men (1957), and the 1964 Kitty Genovese case, eye-openingly explored in the James Solomon documentary, The Witness (2015) (YouTube). Bystander effect and "Kitty Genovese syndrome" are discussed in connection with tort law in my Tortz, volume 2 (pp. 400-02, 2026 ed.) (SSRN, Lulu).

Understanding workplace mobbing, especially as distinct from its close relative, bullying, literally can save lives. As Heffernan observes in the video, "[B]eing targeted by a group is not proof that the group is right. Very often it's proof that you were willing to see something that they weren't."

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