Signs Your Boss Is Subtly Gaslighting You
1.) They talk to you in a nice tone, but the words are deliberately undermining
“They’ve invited me to a meeting, really you should go, but I’m not sure you’re at the right level for it, I’ll go instead and assess” - The message here is to let you know you’re not good enough to go to the meeting. The fact that they don’t follow up with how the meeting went or take you along to the meeting for practice, means that they have no desire to really help you, instead they want to keep you down.
“You’ve come so far for someone your age” even though you’re at a normal stage of your career in comparison with your colleagues.
2.) You get the feeling they aren’t really listening to what’s being said and can easily misconstrue the true message
You come away from conversations not convinced that your boss has taken away the key message, but will misconstrue what you have said or will misquote you.
3.) Although you outperform and add value to 99% tasks, they focus on the 1% you haven’t spent as much time on.
You’ve produced a great report, and you’ve not seen any other examples of something as good, but your boss will pick on something minor that doesn’t really impact anything.
4.) They’ll thank you and sometimes praise you, but their actions don’t match their words
They’ll say you’re good at your job but then they’ll try to give your work to others to dilute your standing or influence in the business. They thank you for your work but won’t invite you to meetings and will present your work instead of allowing you to take the stage. By praising you they try to lull you into a false sense of security, and that they couldn’t be as scheming as to take restrict as many opportunities away from you as possible.
5.) They try to find out your insecurity and try to exacerbate it
“You were a bit nervous in that presentation”.
“I think we need to work on your confidence”
6.) They’ll praise you to others but caveat it with other impressions that hamper your career progression e.g. that you’re young/ need a bit more experience/ could be more confident.
If you excel in your job they won’t be able to say you’re doing a bad job, but they can try to hamper your progression and try to undermine your standing in the company. Often they’ll praise you to their boss with backhand compliments, so that it looks like they are nice boss, but are actually undermining you at the same time.
7.) You realise they can tell an outright lie with no problem.
Most people at some point will exaggerate/ twist/ misconstrue subconsciously or consciously, however your boss has no problem telling an outright lie or completely making something up. They can also completely deny they ever said something.
9.) Become very aggressive when criticized
Their nicey nicey facade falls away when you try to communicate why they are making you feel uncomfortable because they realise you’ve found them out and they want to threaten you back into your place.
10.) Try to make out they are the victim
They make out that they are the victim for example they will complain that they are overworked, had a very difficult team to manage or even have a chronic illness.
If you report on their behaviour, and call them out, they reverse engineer the story where they accuse you of being the gaslighter and they are the one being bullied, despite them holding the power of being the boss.
11.) They are incompetent
The boss didn’t wake up one day and decide to become a gaslighter, this behaviour builds up over time due to a deep internal conflict and insecurity of being found out that they are not very good at their job. Instead of working to improve their competency by listening to criticism or not being afraid to admit a lack of understanding, they are in a constant conflict of insecurity and denial and will, gaslight and manipulate upwards and downwards to prevent others from finding out.
12.) They appear confident at times, but is often incredibly insecure
They can easily put up a confident and easy going front or facade in front of their managers, but is incredibly anxious about coming across perfect to their boss.
“Gaslighting are lies with a purpose to confuse and control.”
― Tracy Malone
The point of this article is to reaffirm that you are not going crazy! You’re not imagining or being oversensitive and your gut feeling is correct. This is the first step to regaining control, by identifying that it is you boss that is insecure and not yourself, you will begin to regain some confidence and clarity.
For what to do, read How to Survive A Gaslighting Boss as well as How to Copy with a Boss that Undermines you.
Quick Tips:
1.) Document and date all underhand comments and tactics e.g. undermining comments, promises that never came about, their encouragement that you give up a piece of work.
2.) Confide to a friend or a professional. Your work will often offer an employee assistance programme and phoneline you can call to talk things through.
3.) Spend sometime to analyse and reassess what happened with your boss, BUT THEN SWITCH OFF. You need time and space away from your boss to see the bigger picture and to ensure you don’t build yourself up into a frenzy.
4.) Document all the times you’ve done good work and gone over and above. This will help confirm to yourself your value and stability in your company and your self confidence.Continue to do a good job, but don’t feel you have to overwork to prove yourself, you will never be able to do enough for a narcissist and sociopath.
5.) Try to build relationships with other senior leaders in the business, you may eventually be able to confide to someone senior you can trust who can support you and help you stop doubting yourself.
STAY STRONG
GOOD LUCK
xx
