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Ask Slashdot: How Would You Deal With A 'Gaslighting' Colleague?
An anonymous reader writes:
What's the best unofficial way to deal with a gaslighting colleague? For those not familiar, I mean "bullies unscheduling things you've scheduled, misplacing files and other items that you are working on and co-workers micro-managing you and being particularly critical of what you do and keeping it under their surveillance. They are watching you too much, implying or blatantly saying that you are doing things wrong when, in fact, you are not...a competitive maneuver, a way of making you look bad so that they look good." I'd add poring over every source-code commit, and then criticizing it even if the criticism is contradictory to what he previously said.
The submission adds that "Raising things through the official channels is out of the question, as is confronting the colleague in question directly as he is considered something of a superstar engineer who has been in the company for decades and has much more influence than any ordinary engineer." So leave your best suggestions in the comments. How would you deal with a gaslighting colleague?
The submission adds that "Raising things through the official channels is out of the question, as is confronting the colleague in question directly as he is considered something of a superstar engineer who has been in the company for decades and has much more influence than any ordinary engineer." So leave your best suggestions in the comments. How would you deal with a gaslighting colleague?
Write every. single. thing. down.
This.
People might not see paper as the end-all documentation that it used to be but it can be very helpful. This is especially true for something difficult to fake, like many lines of code that were written but "lost", as opposed to something easier to fake, like a date or name on a file.
If policy allows then store electronic files in a way that cannot be easily accessed by even this "rock star". A SVN store where files are checked in could be manipulated by someone with the right access. A USB drive that you copy your files to, and kept in a locked drawer at your desk, is not so easily manipulated. Check your files in twice, once to the company store and again to your own SVN store on your USB drive.
If possible put things in e-mail. If the "gaslighter" tells you something by phone or face to face that you believe will be contradicted later then put it in an e-mail to him and/or another coworker that is on the project, just do an "I'm following up on our earlier conversation" e-mail. If the "rock star" is going so far as to manipulate the e-mail servers then save the e-mails to a disk somewhere and/or print them out.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
and if not, leave. The check is to first talk to your manager and if that fails to take it if with HR. If that still fails, hand in your notice as soon as you economically can. That may mean staying on a few more months, or may mean leaving immediately. It is neither your expertise nor your responsibility to solve that kind of problem. It is your responsibility to escalate it though, as it harms the organization.
Do not get your hopes up too much for the organization to be able to resolve this, unless you are essential and the piece-of-shit doing this is not, it is pretty likely that they will not resolve the issue and you will have to leave.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Exactly right. It's time to go. Gaslighting makes the victim depressed and stupid, so you won't be able to perform at your best. Eventually you will be fired for cause, and it's because you really will have failed to do a good job.
Now that you're aware of being gaslighting, it's absolutely critical for you to take care of your on your mental health and decision making as you plan and execute exit strategy. Establish, nurture, and rely on relationships outside of work; preferably with people you know and trust to give you honest feedback.
To quote a neuroscientist:
"The effects of gaslighting on normal individuals can be extraordinarily unsettling and can contribute to confused behavior and scattered thinking patterns in those who have been subjected to the phenomenon. [....] Could it be that, by sending conflicting signals as with the difference between reality and what [the gaslighter] falsely insists is reality, desynchronization might occur in neural structures that normally work together? Such desynchronization might account for the confused short-term reaction and the depressed long-term reaction to gaslighting behavior."
Source: Barbara Oakley, Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and Why My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend
I wouldn't recommend that unless your country has no laws against libel.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You're trying to be a team player with an Antagonist; DO NOT TRUST ANYTHING THIS PERSON DOES OR SAYS! STOP! Communicate everything using eMail, Twitter, what ever. Create a communications trail. When someone asks what's going on, simply state, "I think X is having a bad day." Always be freindly, SMILE, ask how that person's day is going. If that person pops off, then pop off with that status on their part of the project. Make communications public. After awhile, and some well documented failures that will occur because the bully can't be both a bully and good at their job. Personal will contact the bully. Your problem is solved.
Agreed. You can't save the world. The company deserves him and vice-versa. Let them stew together in their self-realized creeping miasma of putrid decay.
After you've gone elsewhere, send your manager a webpage detailing gaslighting, Perhaps something like this. The downside is that that page is written by a blogger; not a lawyer or mental health specialist.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I did and they were stolen from my locked desk draw. Stupid. I should have kept them at home.
In general, actionable defamation (of which libel and slander are particular examples) only requires that you express untrue, damaging things to someone other than the party you are referring to. There is NO specific requirement that it be public.
And "damage" is used loosely here. Damage could mean damage to their career, or damage to their public reputation, or even just damage to a single friend's opinion of them.
If you wrote untrue, damaging things in a document to your HR department, that could definitely be considered libel, and would likely be actionable. Specific cases vary, but again in general.
Of course, truth is (again in general... most U.S. states) an absolute defense. So if what you wrote is true and you can demonstrate that it is, by a preponderance of evidence, then you're probably safe. But you'd better have that evidence.
In addition, most corporations have as part of their employment conditions that you can't sue the company or other employees as a result of negative opinions expressed as part of "official" company communications, such as an employee review or exit interview.
Again in the U.S., that is simply not true. "Most" corporations do NOT have such a clause in their contract, and there is a very strong push to stop that practice in those states where it is still allowed. Because in some states such clauses are specifically prohibited by law, and the list of those states is growing.