There are some people who are pretty awful and intentionally try to hold you down.
In general, I am forgiving of people who are unaware of their own conditioning and therefore make mistakes about someone based on their beliefs of how things are “supposed” to be and what is “normal.”
We all run into this a lot, for example, when you answer the phone in your office and someone assumes you’re the executive’s assistant (not actually the executive). Or when your name is Robin so the people who are supposed to pick you up at the airport in the U.K., Latin America and China are confused because you’re not a man. Most of this is benign and I can look past it because there’s not an evil motive in the background; it’s usually a lack of awareness of one’s own implicit assumptions and biases that leads to awkward behaviors.
But there are some people who are pretty awful and intentionally try to hold you down. This article is about them.
Two years ago, I was asked to mentor a woman who was struggling in her organization. She was capable and competent and recognized as a valuable person in her business, but she kept getting tripped up when trying to navigate the executive table in her country, which was comprised of leaders of all the different parts of the business: sales, marketing, human resources, finance, etc. She sat at that table, and she belonged at that table, but she was struggling. So I was asked by one of her biggest supporters to coach her.
In our first conversation, she poured her heart out with information about how mistreated she was by the men in her company—especially the country manager. It turns out that every time she walked into their weekly executive staff meeting, with everyone else around the table, the country manager would say something to the effect of, “Here comes Little Laura. How are you today, Little Laura? Aren’t we happy that Little Laura is here with us today?” He would smile, and those around the table would chuckle.
Every time.
Every week.
Obviously, she was livid about this. And obviously this is incredibly unacceptable behavior by the country manager. And obviously it was incredibly unacceptable that those around the table not only laughed at the comments but did nothing to discourage or stop them. The whole situation was unacceptable a million ways to Sunday, as they say.
And what did Laura do? Well of course, she was stressed before she walked into the meeting each week because she knew what was coming, and she was so angry - huffing and puffing and fuming and playing out revenge fantasies in her mind and thinking about what to put in her resignation letter - that she wasn’t even able to pay attention or contribute.
She was totally thrown off her game.
Which was exactly what the country manager was trying to do.
You see, the country manager knew how to get her riled up, and he knew that if he did that, she would be off her game and not participate. And if she wasn’t participating, he knew that she wouldn’t call his bluff or challenge him on things about the business. His intentional strategy was to throw her off her game so that she wouldn’t throw him off of his.
I encouraged her to think about why he chose her to attack in this way, and after some prodding, she admitted that she was a strong contributor with support in other parts of the organization. She realized that he was choosing to attack her because he saw her as powerful — powerful enough even to take him down — so he wanted to make sure he took her down first. Once she realized this, she was able to see those weekly interactions that he initiated for what they were —- little fencing matches where he was attempting (and succeeding at) throwing her off her game.
I encouraged her the next week to try a different approach. When she walked into the meeting and he said, “Little Laura,” I told her to say, “Yes yes yes. Here comes Little Laura who is driving $75 million in revenue for us this year.” Then - making sure he saw - kind of roll her eyes and sit down, open her notebook, and look up and smile knowingly at him and at the others at the table. She was basically saying, “Yes yes yes I know you’ve been screwing with me but I’m not gonna have it anymore. Let’s just get to work.”
She called me after the meeting, and she was laughing and laughing as she recounted what had happened. She told me about the expressions on different people’s faces. And she told me that the meeting proceeded, she was able to contribute, and nobody ever said a word about it again.
When you realize that they’re trying to attack you not because you’re weak but because you’re strong, it flips your thinking and leads you to take a different approach - not of defense but of offense. Try it out if this is your situation.
And how did I learn all of this? Well at one point in my life, I was the Little Laura in the meeting who was being attacked and bullied by a Paul and a Martin. They were brutal and retaliatory and spread rumors about me and did everything possible to try to make me quit. But I’m stubborn and didn’t quit. And one day a colleague named James came into my office, explained to me that “To Psychopath” is a verb—an activity—something that people were doing on purpose to throw me off my game—and that what I needed to do what recognize that and not get defensive but play on offense so that their tactics were rendered ineffective.
It wasn’t going to be an effective strategy to try to force them to change their behavior. In fact, taking that approach would have made it worse because they would have known their comments and actions were bothering me. Instead, I had to change my approach, realize that they saw me as powerful, and neutralize their efforts in order to move forward and get past that ugly situation.
So what’s my advice? If you’re in this kind of position, try out different approaches until you figure out what will effectively neutralize the situation. Don’t add fuel to the fire. Don’t let them throw you off your game. Recognize your own power and use it to render useless their efforts to sideline you.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent. And the not-so-innocent.
