How to Cope When Your Boss is Trying to Undermine You
Is your boss dropping comments that are veiled insults? Is your boss deliberately not inviting you to meetings, talking over you, answering questions that were directed to you, referring to you as young, or suggesting that you have a lack of confidence when you don’t? If your boss is toxic and insecure they may be trying to gaslight you, and in turn you may be starting to doubt yourself or feel anxious that someone who directly impacts your career is trying to sabotage it. Below are 4 ways to try and strengthen your confidence and standing within the company to try and defend yourself against a toxic boss.
1.) Strengthen your Mental Resilience
Write down a list of all your good feedback, appraisals, and examples of any good work you’ve done. This will help to remind yourself that you ARE an excellent employee. This will also encourage yourself to promote your good work to others, so that other stakeholders who may hold sway within the company see your value.
2.) Build Relationships with Other Stakeholders
Strengthen your relationship with other stakeholders in the business. Should your boss decide to make things difficult for you, you will at the very least have people you can ask for advice, and at best people who can vouch for your good performance and provide you formal positive feedback. If your boss is aware that you have support from strong stakeholders they will also be less likely to pick on you.
3.) Question and Open a Dialogue
If you feel your boss is being unfairly critical of you, challenge it in a friendly tone and from the angle that you want their feedback on how to improve. E.g. if they say the presentation was poor, ask for specific examples on how it was poor. They should be able to provide you not only with examples and explanations, but also with suggestion on how they would have preferred it.
4.) Be Prepared to Call them Out
If your boss is unable to back up their criticism with examples and suggestions on how to improve then they may be deliberately trying to undermine you and your confidence. You will need to document all the times you feel they have treated you unfairly, and raise it in a 1:1 discussion with them. Try to set up a meeting with them where you can calmly run through why you feel unhappy. Always talk from the point of how their actions or comments made you feel, that way you keep the tone away from being accusatory. Always bring a notepad and pen so you can record key points.
If they take your actions to try and improve a situation as an act of war and act threateningly towards you, then you may need to escalate this with HR. Therefore you need make sure you document examples of poor/ bullying behaviors with dates and key details.
5.) Look to Move Jobs
When one door closes, another door opens. Your boss being horrible to you may feel like the whole world is against you right now, but try to put things into perspective. There are other companies to work for, and the company you currently work for is unlikely to be the best company in the world, where you need to fight tooth and nail to stay and put up with someone awful. Always keep an eye out for your next move. And if the current climate is difficult to make a move likely, then continue to develop your skills (read here on how). Still write a CV and continue to update it to ensure that when the job market is more buoyant you’re as ready as possible.
YOU GOT THIS!
GOOD LUCK
The WoTL Team
xx
