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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.
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