Toxic bosses, my experience working for a narcissist
This has been an extremely popular blog post. Thank you to all readers and at the same time it says there is a lot more that needs to be done to make workplaces safer and healthier. The scenarios are from my past work experience spanning 25 + years.
Every Sunday I dreaded going to work and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Work made me feel tired, frustrated and depressed. I know we can feel this way for any number of reasons however it can also be caused by a difficult – read toxic – work environment.
For me it was a toxic boss. He would go from being disinterested and unavailable for days to multiple emails and requests in a few hours (even minutes), to the point it felt like harassment. He would schedule meetings on the days I didn’t work or call on those days to talk about non-urgent matters. He always seemed to have one employee that he felt the need to micro-manage, bombarding them with emails and adding to their never ending ‘to do’ list.
I would describe his moods as capricious, at one moment talking about how great the ‘team’ was only to be petulant and easy to anger, particularly if things weren’t going his way or his actions exposed him to criticism.
While he didn’t take credit for other people’s work, he certainly thought it was all due to his ‘excellent leadership’ – even if he had been on leave for the entire period the work was delivered! He called me his ‘closer’, ugh!, but I usually also opened the doors, joined the dots, did the work, then closed, securing the partnership.
He forgot his commitments and conversations to the point that I though he had early onset Alzheimer’s. I have since read this is a common tactic, called gaslighting. It seriously made me doubt my own sanity and question myself. I used to end up apologising to him and then later find emails where I discovered I was right and he was in the wrong.
And the clincher was that if something went wrong, it was never his fault. He always sought a scapegoat, looked around to assign blame, or denied knowledge. In one case there was a serious issue that staff had been attempting to get resolved for over a year. His response when it finally came to an intervention at Executive level was ‘well no-one raised it with me’. Now in fact a number of staff had. But worse was that he thought it was a reasonable defence not to be aware of something like that for so long.
He also over-shared on a personal level. We all had to hear about his decision to leave his marriage for another woman, and the (in my view) inevitable failure of the next relationship – it did last longer than you would think. Then back on the dating scene and a new girl in weeks, and late to work due to a booty call. It was all ‘cringe’.
There were also other signs that staff found him difficult and avoided him, like not wanting to share car rides, the empty chair next to and across from him at the office Christmas lunch, quiet chats in office corners where staff consoled each other and suggested strategies to manage or avoid him.
If you can relate to this then I do have some tips.
- Know your boundaries, what you will and won’t do, and communicate them politely and consistently.
- Don’t let your boss’s moods control yours. Practice self-care by taking short breaks, doing breathing exercises, or fun exercises or activities outside of work.
- Record everything, including dates, times, instructions and any other important details. If possible, use email so there is a record of communication, and cc other staff if appropriate so there are people who can corroborate.
- If others are noticing something is wrong, consider working together to find ways you can create a healthier and safer work environment.
- Finally, if you feel like enough is enough, it might be time to get another job. You might have enough examples of bad behaviour to raise it with senior management or HR but this option is always difficult and sadly the evidence shows that the staff member making the complaint often fares the worst.
Take care of you. L x