Women at Work - Getting Along with an Insecure Tormentor

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

What do you do when a formerly supportive boss turns against you? Amy G advises a project manager who still believes in her team, just not the person leading it. Learn tactics for managing up, protecting your reputation, and preserving your sanity.

So tell me what right now do you want from this situation? Like what is it you want different? What's your goal ultimately here? So I do want to find a way to fix the relationship with him because the times where, you know, we were having a good trusting relationship and he was taking what I was saying and using it and acting on it, we worked really, really well. Then something happened and now he's out to prove

something to the world and he's trying to do it alone. Yeah. And so that brings upon a tremendous amount of stress and pressure, you know, that he's just passing along. To me, to the team, it's not healthy, it's not sustainable. And if we can't overcome that negative energy, I fear that this team won't exist in three to six months. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo, and this is our Getting Along series, where I teach you how to deal

with different types of difficult people. Here's how these episodes go. A listener guest tells me about the difficult person who's wearing them down. And I recommend tactics and phrases that, according to behavioral science, should counteract that bad behavior. The goal is that, through those small actions, the listener can build a more functional relationship for the sake of their sanity and their career. Today's guest is Maria, though

that's a pseudonym she's using so she can speak candidly about her situation. Maria is a project manager. She builds data models and visualizations for the finance and sales teams at her company. She's dealing with what I'd call a tormentor. Someone senior who should be a supportive figure at work, but instead is punching down. Maria's tormentor used to be an actual mentor and her boss. We can just call him Mike. Maria and Mike worked well together. She

admires his intelligence, his ability to read people and deescalate conflicts, and the good feedback that he's given her. He'd even helped her choose between two job offers when she'd briefly taken a break from the company. Then he gave her an opportunity. Come back and lead a software change within the department he was now head of. He knew of my work, he knew what I was capable of, and so he brought me onto his team to get that project done successfully. And he was very hands-off during that time, which worked out perfectly for me. He let her decide how to do the work, intervened only when she asked him to. He didn't micromanage. The relationship, though, started to change when the company did a reorg and put Mike as the head of a different department. He was essentially demoted. So that impacted him, I think, mentally and also his ego. And so I moved over with

him because he was my mentor, because I valued working with him directly. And so I came over to that new team with him. Then one day, Mike turned on her. Here's what happened. The guy who'd replaced Mike, we'll call him John, invited Maria to meet one on one. To kind of get to know me, get to know some of the projects that I was working on. When she realized they'd been talking so long that she was going to be late for her one on one with Mike, she texted him and said so. Mike's reply, okay, that's fine. Clearly it wasn't though,

because when Maria showed up to their meeting, he launched in with, why did you take that meeting? So you have time to meet with John, but you don't have time to do all these other things that I've asked you to do. And he went on a really weird tangent where he talked about not being able to trust me and I am pleasing this other guy, John, and not worrying about what I need to do on this team. And I was really caught off guard because I made him aware that John put this on my calendar. I made him aware that I was going into a meeting with him. So it's not like I was doing things behind his back, but yet he was acting that way. That was the first time I really felt like, wow, this is not the relationship.

This is not the person I thought it was. Does this sound oddly familiar? Are you dealing with someone who's weirdly hostile and excessively controlling and a senior person in your organization? Then I think my conversation with Maria will help. We get into how to push back professionally without jeopardizing your own credibility and how, if possible, to get the relationship back on track.

Maria, thank you for chatting with me about your challenging coworker. So it sounds like you enjoyed work with him for the first part of your working relationship. Yeah. He then moved over to this division and what sounded like a demotion. You moved over with him. It was this meeting with John that seemed to sort of really spark tension between you and change. I mean, would you say change the way he thought of you, treated you?

What would you say really shifted in that meeting? I think that he raised his expectations. Whatever I was doing before was maybe fine and okay, but afterwards he came at a thousand percent, just more expectations, more urgency to everything. And I could tell he was getting a lot of pressure from his old colleague, John, as well as other colleagues to deliver results, right? And he was constantly trying to prove the value of this team, still to this day. So at a certain point, I came to him and I said, Mike, I really need your help.

I'm finding that I'm not really enjoying my job anymore. I am stressed. I'm overwhelmed. And his response to me was, welcome to the club. Oh, I'm overwhelmed. And his response to me was, welcome to the club. Oh, I'm miserable. You should be miserable too. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Yep. Yep. And I found that profoundly telling. At that point, I was just like, okay, this is definitely not the relationship I thought it was. If someone comes to me and is like, hey, I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed, I, this is definitely not the relationship I thought it was. If someone comes to me and is like, hey, I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed, I need this, I need that, I'm going to say, okay, let's figure out what is actually a priority. You know, I'm going to help them through, I'm going to support them.

I'm not going to go, oh, guess what, me too. You know? What? And I would argue the job of a manager is to do exactly as you describe, right? To say, okay, let's figure it out. And to buffer, like to protect you from my own stress, right, not to say, yeah, we're all stressed out, whatever.

Yeah. Get over it. So not only was he being a bad manager, I think he was just not doing one of the critical jobs of a manager. Yeah, and I, you know, Amy, I think he was just not doing one of the critical jobs of a manager. Yeah. And I, you know, Amy, I have really learned probably in the last year by working for him that there's a difference between a manager and a leader.

And he's a manager. I mean, he can do that well, but he's not a leader. And that is really sad for this team. Well, I'm not hearing leadership qualities. I'm not sure I'm hearing good management either. Yeah. And I know you had told our producer about an incident around parental leave.

Can you explain what happened with that? Yeah, yeah, of course. So we got licensed as foster parents last January. So we've been licensed about a year and a month now. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. And really it came about from my own upbringing.

I grew up very lower middle class and we always, my family had to rely on the kindness of others. So as my own kids got older, we kind of just took the leap. And so I told him very early on, like, hey, we're starting this process. Once we get licensed, it will probably get a foster placement relatively soon. So I found that in FMLA-

Family Medical Leave Act. Exactly. Foster parents are included in that. And so I found that in FMLA, family medical leave, exactly. Foster parents are included in that. And so I reached out to him and I said, hey, I'm going to take advantage of it. And he was like, that sounds great. You know, just keep me informed, etc. So come the summer, we received placement of a ten-day-old baby girl. That is young.

That is little. And so I reached out to him and I said, hey, can we talk about this parental leave? I haven't really slept in a couple of days. You know, I sent him a message. I sent him an email as well, and he was traveling for a team workshop. He replied to me and he said, yeah, we'll talk about it later. So we had a one-on-one that was scheduled on Monday and then he moves our one-on-one. And then he canceled the one-on-one that was scheduled on Monday and then he moves our one-on-one and then he canceled the one-on-one he was like hey I'll just give you a call on like Thursday. Thursday comes and I received a message from my co-worker

teammate and one of my best friends here at work and she says to me that during the workshop, Mike had told the team that he was going to try and negotiate with me so that I wouldn't take parental leave or I wouldn't take it for a couple of weeks or something. So I was already in a very like heightened mindset because I got this information. And so I'm waiting all day Thursday for his call, and it doesn't happen. So I just went ahead and put in my parental leave. I took two weeks, baby girl was with us a total of three weeks, and I'm glad that I did it. I know that when I came back, he was not happy that I just took it so abruptly. I assume you had to interact with HR about the FMLA, right?

It's not like you just didn't show up to work. You were following a process. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So with the Baby Girl, I took two weeks. And then roughly two weeks later, we got a 12-day-old little boy. Another young one. Exactly. And my partner and I actually kind of traded off parental leaves for him because we knew

it was going to be a much longer term placement. So he took four weeks off and I used those four weeks to set the team up for my leave and there was a lot of tension during those four weeks because that was also during the performance reviews. And I got no helpful feedback from that at all. And at one point he was saying that I am not good at project management, that the way that I do it is not correct. So I asked what I felt like was a very neutral toned question and I said well can you give me an example

because it would be really helpful for me to draw on an experience and almost offended he said do you imagine what my boss would tell me if I asked him to give me an example? I mean I wish people could see my face because I'm just like shocked right now. Of course you asked for examples that's like we encourage people ask for examples. Yes. Sorry, I'm getting too excited. But yes. Exactly. It's a very normal question. I mean, I have a feeling we could talk, Maria, for a long time listing all of the things he's done, but I do want to just, he is such a sort of perfect example, I don't know, unfortunate example of the tormentor, like someone who you expect to be a mentor or as

in your case has been a mentor in the past, but actually does the opposite. So it feels like they're undermining you as opposed to supporting you now, right? Like they accuse you directly or indirectly of not being committed to work. They set near impossible standards. They assign you needless or inappropriate work. They call that in the academic literature, like illegitimate tasks, like things that don't really matter to the work.

They put down your accomplishments. They deny time off or flexibility for non-work commitments. They proudly like talk about the sacrifices they made. I mean, he literally is the sort of quintessential tormentor. And they often claim that this mistreatment of you is an exercise in character building, right? That they're trying to actually toughen you up is often a phrase we hear or like show you the ropes. But it often can feel like hazing.

Like it can feel like fraternity hazing. Like, this is what it took for me to get in here and now you have to do it. What's interesting about him is I also have mentioned, I think he fits into that insecure manager archetype or insecure boss archetype, because he wasn't always like this. And it sounds like that demotion, his ego took a hit from that. And that moment where things changed, where you took that meeting with John, there was something that just seems like he all of a sudden was deeply insecure about his position

in the organization and your loyalty to him. And I think that sometimes we see that with the insecure manager too, is that we see them try to test your loyalty and try to hoard resources, right? That comment he said of, how do you have time to meet with John? Well, you're supposed to be doing all these things for me. Right. Of course, that's just, again, classic insecure boss behavior. I want to get to present day because I, if I understand correctly, you don't actually

report directly to Mike anymore. That's correct. That's correct. So tell me what your reporting relationship is now. Yes. So now I actually report indirectly to him. There's a person who's now my manager and that person reports to him.

But I don't have any direct one-on-one interaction with Mike anymore. And I only have interaction with him in sort of a team setting. Okay. And it's actually kind of made things worse, to be honest with you, because I and my coworker the other day told me this.

She said, I feel like you're not Maria anymore and we need that on the team. And she said that because we were having a meeting about how we're going to organize and how we're going to structure around Scrum. Scrum being an agile project methodology. But I haven't really been giving my feedback because if I were to do that, he would find a way to undermine me. So yeah, so I've kind of retreated in a sense because I don't want to be undermined in front of 10 other colleagues. I don't want to be berated in front of 10 other colleagues and if that's going to be the case why even give my feedback, right?

Right. Okay, so you want this team to be successful. It also sounds, and tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but it sounds like you also want to be able to contribute in the way you always have been, to take your colleagues comment of like, to be the Maria that you've always been, who's bringing your knowledge and expertise. There is interesting research, and we've published some of this in in HBR about insecure bosses and how when you move up in the organization, we expect that people in those more senior positions to have more leadership ability, knowledge, access to information and data

that they'll be more competent when they fear they are not up to those standards. And maybe they've been shown they aren't by getting demotion in this case, the discrepancy between how confident, when capable they actually feel and the high expectations results in what the researchers call ego defensiveness, where they engage in actions to protect their self-esteem.

So it seems like Mike has sort of gotten in this spin of I'm not up to the task, but I have to prove I'm up to the task. Yes. And anyone who's at all going to make me look bad in any way is just collateral damage, right? I just have to sort of get rid of them, undermine them, make sure that others don't trust them. Yeah, that's a hundred percent his them. Yeah, that's 100% his personality, yeah.

Yeah. And it's hard to deal with. Now, I'm about to say something I really don't like to say because I don't think it's a tactic that anyone wants to do, but it has been shown in research to work. And that is that sometimes the way to reduce that ego defensiveness, or sometimes it's called ego sensitivity, is to actually get them in a more positive frame of mind about themselves. And that calls for flattery. And again, I do not like to say, oh, like,

let's go in and tell Mike all these wonderful things about him so he can just calm down. But I do wonder if you have become a repeated target of this behavior because you haven't engaged in that and you've stood up for yourself. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

So one of the tactics, and feel free to say no way, I will never do this, I don't want to do this, that's totally fine. But one of the ways, one of the things that you could try out, right, is just again to experiment with is, is there a way to place some well-timed, honest, not disingenuous, but honest compliments about what he does well? If there's something you could find that he does well, that just would sort of calm that ego a little. I don't know, what's your response to that? I would like to, Amy.

And I'm not above flattery or anything like that. So I'm totally for, if we're in a group meeting and just saying like, hey, the way you handle that was awesome. If you genuinely believe that. Yeah. And I think it'd be interesting to experiment to see what happens, to just try a few of those moments out.

The other thing, I wonder if you can try to, two things. One, can you try to restore that sense by asking him for advice when you genuinely want it? And keep it really simple, not big advice. But is there like, I'm deciding between A and B, what would you do in this case? So there's this idea that in relationships, there's this reciprocity, right? Give and take, you know, it's sort of classic Adam Grant research on we give and take and there's this law of reciprocity. And that's just gotten completely out of whack with you all. And so if there's a way to say, hey, can you give me this advice? And can you offer to help with him? Because that's the other

thing about the tormentor, what the research shows, and the academic term is abusive supervision, which it's basically what we've been talking about. Yeah. And he doesn't have to be your supervisor, direct supervisor to engage in that, but is that if you can show them that you have something they need, often you can change that balance of power. And you have to be careful with him because he cares a lot about loyalty, right? So what I would encourage you to do as much as possible is we have a shared goal. We care about the existence of this team.

I want to make you look successful. Right. How can I do that? How can I help? And I, I wonder if it's even worth a conversation with him. And again, I'm not only if you feel safe doing this, but is it worth having a conversation with him where you can ask, I'm concerned about the team. I know you are too. And I know you are under a tremendous amount of pressure. So how can I help? And just leave it as open as possible, not, oh, you need

me because of this. But again, just trying to show that you have something he needs, that you're invested in his success. You know, Amy, with that, when I tried that with Mike, it became an exercise of blame. This was before any of the parental leaves. I said, I can really see that you're struggling to champion this team. And I want to be there to help you and support you. I just need to know how to do that. How can I help you champion this team?

And his simple response was, well, I don't need your help right now. So let me just reflect for a moment because the ego defensive mode often makes them not able to hear feedback. And we call it employee voice, right? They're not open to employee voice. And so what he said is, I just don't want to hear from you.

He was really just sort of shutting you down. And that's where I think rather than have the sort of a bigger conversation of we're invested in this, we want this to, is that you just find subtle ways to use the words we. You find subtle ways to say, I love how you did that. That's it. You don't have to go into it. Like I just, I love how you did that. That was super helpful.

Do you have some advice for me on this? Let me know what I can do to help. Luckily you're not having one-on-ones with him. So you're not set up for failure. But are there small ways and I would just watch what happens and I'm not guaranteeing it will work. In fact, you may get the same reaction that you've gotten from him in the past. But I'd like to see you experiment a little with just trying, even though I'm hearing you loud and clear that this did not work in the past, I'm wondering now with the different dynamics with him not having many allies,

if you show yourself to be an ally, even in the tiniest way, will it shift things? There's two other things I want to make sure I encourage you to do that don't relate directly to Mike. But one is to continue to invest in your relationships with the others on the team. Bring Maria to those relationships, even if you don't feel comfortable putting yourself out there in front of Mike. Are there ways in more direct conversations with people and emails that you can make sure you're building those relationships? So if things do go sideways, you actually have those connections for whoever might take Mike's place or for whatever the team might look like in the future. And then the other thing I would just really strongly encourage, and I think you're already doing this to some degree, is just to set emotional boundaries.

Like, this is not a Maria problem. I just want to be clear. This is a Mike problem. And I think the evidence is clear on that. And I want you to feel like no matter what happens, whether these small tactics of shifting things with him work or don't, I want you to feel like you've done your best and that you can sleep at night. I'm assuming you don't have a 12 day old with you at the current moment. There he's seven months at this point. There you go. Okay. So, so you're maybe hopefully sleeping a little bit better, but I don't want this to be the thing that keeps you up.

I want you to feel like you've acted according to your values. That's really important. And it sounds like you have friends at work. It sounds like you have positive relationships. And while Mike may take up a huge amount of mental space for you, he's one of many relationships that you have. So I'd like to see you invest in those other relationships and remind yourself, you're not telling me I've never had, you know, like I've never had a good relationship with a

boss. You're not telling, which I do hear sometimes, right? Or you're not telling me like, I just can't seem to get along with any of my coworkers. Like you sound like you're a valued teammate and I don't want you to take this interaction to heart. Is that something you do is sort of see? Oh, a hundred percent. You know, I struggle with anxiety and OCD.

And so this relationship has been on replay for months and months. I also know in certain scenarios, I lose a little bit of that emotional intelligence and just simply say the first thing that like comes to my mind. You and everyone else, Bray. You and everyone else. Yeah. And it's like you reach a certain point where you can only take so much negative feedback. And so I remember him saying at one point that, I need to learn to manage up. And I had not heard that word before.

And I did a lot of Googling after. But, you know, he said, you need to learn to manage up. It's your responsibility to fix this relationship. And I said, well, Mike, I'm not sure this relationship is fixable. And he simply said, well, that's a different conversation that we're going to have to have then. And that was the end of it. Yeah.

Yeah. And we actually, we're actually working on an episode about managing up that we will definitely share with you when it comes out. And that struggle you're talking about, whose job is it to fix this? Right? Whose job is it to make sure Maria doesn't have too much work? Whose job is it to make sure Maria can take the family leave that she's entitled to? I have empathy for managers these days around how much they have to do for employees. So I understand Mike's reaction of like, no, this is you. You have to do this. But it's not right. What it is, it's a conversation.

It's a collaboration. It's a, here's what I'm doing. Here's what I hope you can do. I do want to empathize. Like, for example, the family leave situation, it's stressful as a manager to have someone take a two week, three week, six week leave without planning. I totally have empathy

for that. Absolutely. But his reaction is not appropriate. Absolutely. Even though he's under that stress. I do have a quick question on that though. Yeah. Can I actually, because, well, okay, we'll come back actually because I want to talk about you losing your voice for a moment, but go ahead.

Yeah. That's the question. So when I came back from my six week parental leave, you know, it was a week straight of him berating me and saying, I don't know how yet, but we'll find a way to reintegrate you into the team. Or your six week leave was a was a huge disruption on the team, but we figured out a way. So after about a week of that, he said to me that he didn't feel that the team needed a project manager

and that my role was going to be changing, et cetera. I found this really disturbing and I actually sent a note to HR and said to HR, you know, I just got back from leave. My manager has said that he does not need a project manager on the team. However, there is a current role open on the team and the job description matches perfectly to what I do.

I fear this may be retaliation and would like to have it addressed and documented. And she went and talked to him and would like to have it addressed and documented. And she went and talked to him. And this was where I essentially demoted myself because I used to report directly to him. And I said to HR, this is not a sustainable position for me, both for my mental and emotional well-being, I would like to report to someone different.

And when I look back at it now, this is actually, I think this is a segue into that feeling that my voice has been muted. And I partially did that to myself by requesting this sort of demotion. Okay. But I did not know of any other way to escape that negativity. Yeah. I mean, you were setting a boundary understandably when it feels like you want to offer something. You're just like, what is he going to say? How is he going to undermine it? I understand being quiet, but I wonder if instead of focusing on how he's going to react and actually

even accepting he's going to react negatively. I know that's the case, but what I need to do for myself and the rest of my team is to offer Maria's insights because that's My value that's what I want to offer to the team and then knowing he's going to react negatively That's on him. I don't think anyone's sitting there going. Oh Maria's incompetent. Do you see how Mike reacts? I think they're like, oh god Mike is reacting this way. That's terrible And I I could understand if you're like, I just can't, I can't handle the negativity comes back, but it sounds like you're gonna get the negativity

no matter what. You're either gonna be quiet and hear you're not doing the right thing, or you're gonna speak up and you're still gonna hear you're not doing the right thing. And I actually wonder if you finding your voice again, will actually change the dynamic. And what you may find is that you continue to speak up and it's not received well and

that this just isn't a sustainable situation, but not contributing to the team is not good for you either. And so I'd rather you contribute and deal with some of the consequences and see if it actually shifts things. Is that something you could try out? Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing that makes me fearful is hearing from other colleagues, oh, I can't believe he said that to you.

Or that was so disrespectful. But in the meeting or in that group setting, no one really says anything because in certain corporate scenarios, there's this unspoken rule of we don't stand up for ourselves in a public environment. We don't, you know? Yeah, I do know. And I find that really discouraging, as I imagine you do, that there's not anyone who would stand up. I think one of the things you can start doing is when someone comes to you and says, that was so messed up, I can't believe he said that to you, say, thanks for noticing. What do you think I should do next time? So not asking them to do anything, but asking them to be constructive.

And they might say, Oh, I have nothing. You shouldn't say anything. Or they might say, I don't know what they're going to say, but I think it starts to change the tone and the culture around, do we speak up for ourselves? And this is a longer term process to shift that culture. And you're right, exists in so many organizations. But I think just asking that question might change it a little bit so that now you all

are in this constructive what can we do rather than we're victims of this behavior and we can't say anything. Just keep your head down kind of attitude. But saying what would you have done if you were me? Yeah. Because it just starts to change the way you talk about it. Yeah.

Before we unfortunately need to wrap up, I just want to before we wrap up, I'd love to hear what are you taking away? What do you want to try? What's been helpful? There's a lot of things that I will say are extremely helpful. And I didn't come on the podcast to feel reassured. But it is reassuring to know that an impartial, unbiased person does feel that this is a very

difficult situation. That is reassuring. But having that helpful feedback of, hey, why don't you try these acts of flattery or why don't you try and build up relationships around you because that makes you feel supported, that makes you feel a little less alone, which is what it has felt like. So I do appreciate everything that you've said, and I listened to your podcast, and I've heard you say, do these things before.

But it's different when you're actually saying them to me. And even investing in those relationships, showing up, unmuting yourself, Mike might see that others respect you, and that might change the dynamic as well. Exactly. Yeah. And I do appreciate also the insight into the mindset

of the tormentor. Having that insight into maybe what's driving those emotions in general does help me empathize with him and the situation. At the same time, I also always encourage someone who's in a tricky situation with their boss, because as you said, he has a lot of power over your job, when you take leave, what kind of role you have,

all of that, is that I just also encourage you to build up your network Project managers are hugely valuable right now I mean, it's a just such an in-demand field and I'm not I never like to give the advice of like get out unless it's Really really talk to but I think just see what else is out there not you don't even have to apply me Just making sure your resumes up-to date, making sure you're having conversations, maybe going to some networking events, whatever, so that if things do turn really sideways, you have an alternative.

Yeah. Maria, thank you so much for sharing your experience and story and I really wish you luck. I'm really hopeful that some things will shift, at least in small ways that feel more positive for you. Yeah, thank you so much Amy. If you want to learn more about how to deal with a tormentor, there's a chapter in my book, Getting Along, all about this particular type of badly behaving colleague.

There are also chapters about insecure bosses, pessimists, political operators, and know-it-alls. In each one, I explain why someone might act like that, and then I give advice for counteracting the behavior so that it doesn't wear you down. Women at Work's editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Tina Toby-Mack, Hannah Bates, Rob Eckhart, and Ian Fox. I'm Amy Gallo. Thanks for watching.