Originally Posted by
Sunfish
Having personally been bullied by a senior female manager, I can attest that the activity is no laughing matter. Women managers do it very subtly through “social bullying” -something they learn, I think, as teenage girls.
‘’Virgins defence sounds plausible on the surface unless you have actually experienced social bullying. It includes a whole series of actions, each in itself apparently trivial, but in totality they produce a devastating result. I do not know if Virgin did any of the things I list below.
‘Examples of tactics:
- whispering campaigns about a persons personal life. (eg: rumors about alcohol use, domestic violence, sexual behaviour , etc)
- “accidental” (not) omission from invitation lists for work related social functions. ( wait till you see your boss take several of your subordinates to lunch without inviting you, etc)
- curtailment of your company representation role at industry seminars, meetings, etc.
- Gaslighting.
- deliberate sabotage of your operational role. (eg/; delays in accessing reports, budgets and other necessary documents)
- “accidental” omission from meeting invitations, distribution lists, etc., followed by blaming you for being “out of touch” with operations.
- unreasonable work related demands, such as impossible reporting deadlines.
…….Those are just a few “mean girl” tactics I and others, have experienced in another industry. They all sound trivial and plausibly deniable by the company if they are taken individually. However humans are very good at discerning patterns of behavior. Your subordinates will know you are marked for removal before you do.
‘’It’s not hard to end up with PTSD from this behaviour.
Sunfish, I too have been a recipient but from an all male show. In my case, I demonstrably in any objective manner, outperformed every other manager and arguably had more support and respect of my subordinates than any of the others that did the bullying and gas-lighting. The senior manager even interviewed my staff in groups to gain 'intelligence' so he could 'help me' - he ended up with egg on his face as there was absolutely nothing that was shared by my people other than general frustrations which they indicated were not down to me, but him and the rest of management.
This person also ambushed several of my direct reports and tried to get some sort of dirt on me. It netted him nothing but he painted it to me as they had come to him of their own volition without any encouragement. When I was confronted with this I asked him "Such as what??". He couldn't come up with one single problem they allegedly highlighted. So I threw a subject in that I knew they didn't blame me for but was a corporate failure and he grabbed it with both hands and said "Oh, Yes, That's right, that was one thing".
When I confronted him months later with this little escapade (as none of the URGENT followup he indicated ever took place, he just quietly dropped the whole thing) he said "I was trying to help" and I said "No, you were trying to set me up".
There's so much more but I think I had reached the point where I wanted out anyway so I used the exercise to completely and utterly dismantle him and any points he raised. As for my peers, one of them accused me of stopping him from 'achieving greatness' to which I replied that this attitude was pretty rich coming from someone, I reminded him who my department had not only met all of its targets but had spent time preparing a training session for his staff to expand their understanding to which he had dismissively replied "It's a waste of time, they can't understand it". (yes, denigrating the intelligence of his own people).
Add to this, constantly talking over me at meetings, interrupting, undermining, doing nothing then trying to shift blame. Using every weasel word management-speak BS expression to try and gaslight me into doubting myself.
Unfortunately I'd been around too long and run into and put in their place, the full range of narcissists, sociopaths and no-hopers in my career.
I won't say it wasn't stressful, but my response to it was to channel that stress into smart, cutting and confronting responses that exposed their bastardry.
Imagine my surprise when I was invited to a meeting with 5 minutes notice to discuss a restructure. When I was handed the proposed structure I had to bite my lip not to laugh when it - surprise surprise - excluded my position.
When the final decision was made, they tried to sit and run through how great the new structure was going to be and I just looked at my manager and said "With all due respect, my reading of the situation is that I am now out of a job and redundant, so the structure is not in my immediate field of view nor in any way relevant to my future, therefore, I'd just as soon ask that you keep it to yourself (then, turning to the HR Rep I continued) How much and when does it get paid??". She explained the numbers and I said "OK, thanks. I'll get back to work".
I then proceeded to conduct myself in a thoroughly professional manner for my last 4 weeks. This, despite the pretenders and frankly, MBA-type 'nappy rashes' they were pretending had sufficient knowledge and could easily fill the gap, spending all of their time in my department 'learning the ropes' (an admission they had ZERO idea) with some of my direct reports saying to me "Do these people have no shame, it's like you just died and their arguing over which part of your grave they want".
There was one enjoyable part in all this and it was patiently waiting and observing how long it took my so-called 'colleagues' to crawl out of their snake pit and summon enough guts to talk to me. One of them said "I'm sorry" to which I replied "Sorry for what". Response was "Oh, I just worry about your kids". I then looked him in the eye and said "My kids are fine. They have two parents who love them. Please, do NOT waste a nano-second of emotional energy worrying about me, I am absolutely fine. I used to bill $2000 per day as a consultant (bravado I admit) and I am perfectly fine." Don't waste your time on me.
I was so cool and calculated in my tone and body language they didn't know where to look. One by one it was enjoyable to watch them squirm.
I've been in the industry 40 years and that was the most disgusting, disrespectful, infantile and incompetent act I've ever seen by a manager who talked the good show but when it came down to it was influenced by the mob and utterly incapable of separating genuine intent from manipulation. He didn't last long afterward which is really funny because if he'd acted differently, the entire organisation would have been better for it.
Many of the staff in my department left the company, a number stating in their exit interview that it was because they didn't want to work for a company that treated people the way they treated me.
I walked out with my head held high. I never bagged anyone behind their backs but told some of them to their face what the reality was.
The worst of them got promoted after I left and still pathetically clings on to any way to keep a job to this day - he reminds me of the old Keating line of "dragging and scraping his carcass around and fusing it to whomever can keep him from having to join the unemployed" because the person I'm talking about knows that trolley pusher is about what they'd get in the open market.
It's only because I come from a line of strong leaders in my ancestry, including a father who had more integrity and guts than anyone I've ever known and a GF and Great GF who were both in law enforcement that I was able to weather the anxiety and stress.
I walked away with more of their money than had I resigned and I walked away with my reputation intact and the ability to sleep at night because I also looked after and entrenched the good people that I know 'they' would have destroyed after I exited.