One of my LIG members asked a very interesting question. And because this situation is very
common at work environment, I thought you can benefit from it as well. So, here s the
message;
Deniz, I am in trouble. I joined XXXXX 2 months ago and I am miserable. The cause of my misery
is my manager. He s bullying me in every sense. Apparently, he wanted his friend to be hired
for my role and he s not taking it well that I was hired instead of his friend. At first
I thought, it d be temporary but now even after 2 months, he s making my life miserable.
He is manipulative, he never gives me credit for my own projects, he doesn t support me
at work and hides key information, and worse he even spreads rumors about me. He is double
faced. He can be seen as very charming from outside but he s a total dictator to me. He
plays so many tricks to make me look responsible for failures. One day I couldn t control my
nerves and started crying in the office. Then I saw that he was laughing at my face and
calling others to see me like that. It s a miserable environment. I am not happy and
I am thinking about quitting but I don t want to be unemployed again. I have financial responsibilities.
It s not what I expected from such a prestigious organization. I even approached HR and they
didn t seem to care much at all. Do you think I should still file a complaint with HR? What
can I do?
Ok&
I have seen this situation 100s of times in my consulting career. I was never in that
situation at PwC. PricewaterhouseCoopers. But I ve seen it happening in my client organizations
many times. So, I do have a very practical advise for you. Just be patient so I can walk
you through my thinking process.
But first, let s start with what doesn t work.
Going to HR doesn t work.
It doesn t work for a few reasons.
You see, HR s only obligation is to their employer. To the company. HR is no judge.
There s no such HR code that binds them to be fair. They are employees themselves. In
fact, they have very very limited power. The best they can do is take your written complaint
and pass it on the person who is actually bullying you. But in your case, your manager
is the one who is bullying you so it s not going to work out very good for you.
Ok, so I hope this was clear. Going to HR will very unlikely work. Very unlikely.
Another advice that won t work is confrontation. Now, the popular advice in this case is that
you should confront.
And I would agree that confrontation should ideally be your first course of action in
most situations. Confrontation is great. You iron out miscommunication, you adjust to different
styles of working. It s great.
But your case is different. IN your case, you are dealing with a psychopath. You are
dealing with a corporate psychopath. They make up around
1% of the population. So, you just hit the lottery. These guys, you know they are double
faced, he gets pleasure out of seeing you cry, he spreads false rumors, and he does
everything he can to make you fail.
I mean I don t care if he has a Golden Retriever at home. He is a psychopath.
So, get that right in your mind. This human being is a psychopath and most often these
kind of people are very good in manipulating,
They mastered the art of manipulations and that s usually the reason why you see them
in such high places in the corporate world. Because they can be very charming and they
can manipulate their way into success.
So, that s why if you confront him nothing will happen. This is not about miscommunication.
This is about pure evil intentions. He lacks empathy, he lacks compassion. And it s not
your job nor within your power to fix him.
OK. Enough of what doesn t work.
Let s talk about what will work.
Now, first understand that these kind of corporate psychopaths, the bullies, they prey on the
weak, the isolated, and the powerless.
Like certain bacteria. They can only continue to exist if your immune system is down and
that you are weak. So, you need to change that environment.
What you need is power. The power in the corporate world obviously doesn t come from your muscles
but it comes from your role, your decision making authority, and your influence.
Now, I am not going to suggest go get more power. Or get a promotion . In your case,
it won t work. Because you are working for the bully. He is your manager. He makes you
look like the fall guy for all the failures so you are not get promoted. You are not get
more authority. He ll just block those opportunities.
But what you can do, is you can get close proximity to power.
Let me explain. There are 2 ways to do this.
First and the most effective one is that you start working on projects that involve other
departments, other managers, directors, or VPs. The higher the better.
Even if it s a project that takes just 1 hour of your time in a month, that s still access
to power.
The point here is that; the bully will see that you are no longer isolated. Fine, you
may not have power but you have access to power.
You are now in an environment with other managers that you can also spread rumors if you wish
to, and cause him damage. And all you need to do is make that bully aware of that fact.
You don t need to rub it on his face or threaten him. Be very subtle. Just make sure he knows
it. You don t even have to say it to him. Just make sure he finds out. That s it.
Now, this was the first way.
But it just so happens that sometimes you have no opportunity to work on a joint project
with other departments. In that case, what you can do is instead of developing professional
relationships with other departments, you can develop personal relationships. This works
too.
You can socially hang out with those who have power. Go join them in their lunch break,
go hang out with them after working hours.
You ll realize that the bully will very quickly start changing.
By the way, this is a proven advice. I recommended this about 3 times in the past and in all
3 times the results were amazing. The bully completely stopped after a while.
For example last time I recommended this, it was part of a project on
post merger strategy development for a very large investment bank. They were our clients.
And there was a junior employee in our client who was very feminine and very soft spoken.
And the environment was actually quite tough. It was an Alpha Male dominant environment.
So, the guy was bullied ruthlessly. He was miserable and he mentioned this at a lunch
break. So, what I did is, I immediately signed him to be a member of the joint task force.
The task force for this project was chaired by a Senior Vice President. So, he had immediate
access to power - overnight. He became a lot more visible. He had access to power. And
within a week or two, all his problems vanished.
So, it works.
See, sometimes we unnecessarily complicate things, don t we? We coin terms; organizational
behavior, organizational psychology, enablers, motivators, triggers, right? But it just so
happens that the solutions are incredibly obvious.
For example this situation is no different than looking for an alliance if you were to
get jailed. Right? You go to jail, bad people are going to pick on you if they feel you
are powerless and isolated, they want to beat you up just for no reason. Your situation
is exactly the same one. It maybe a FTSE 100 company, but bad people still exist even in
those environments. Rare, really really rare, but they do exist. They are still going to
pick on you if you are powerless and isolated. Instead of beating you up like in a jail,
they ll spread rumors, they ll withhold key information to make you fail.
So, what you do is, if you don t have power, then you look for alliances with those who
have power. I hope it makes sense to you.
This topic is done.
I hope you found value in it.
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Cool? I Love you guys.
See you later.