099: How Do Leaders Effectively Deal with Senior-Level Bullies?

In this episode, we tackle the challenging issue of handling senior-level bullies in the workplace.

Whether it's a difficult boss or a toxic leader, navigating these situations can be tough. We'll explore practical strategies to manage the situation effectively, protect your mental health, and safeguard your professional reputation. Learn how to set boundaries, communicate assertively, and maintain your leadership integrity in the face of challenging power dynamics.

When you’re ready to become a top performing leader, book a leadership strategy session to see if executive coaching is right for you. You’ll learn to simplify your leadership style while amplifying your value inside my 1-1 coaching program.

Go to https://melsavage.com/chat to book your leadership strategy session now.

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Transcript

Hey, leaders, welcome back to the podcast. Today, we're talking about something that so many of my clients have dealt with, and I have one client in particular who has inspired this episode because she's dealing with a real bully of a boss. I want you to know that I have also dealt with a world-class bully of a boss. 

I want to start by saying, if you're listening to this episode because you're dealing with a bully of a boss, I just want to say that sucks. Officially, that sucks. I'm really sorry you're dealing with this. It's not fun to deal with this on top of everything else because we can let it impact our entire lives. I want you to know that no matter what you do, it's not likely you can change them. I really want you to let that sink in. You can't change who they are. You can't change who anyone is, but some people have more ability to be influenced than others. 

If you've got a bully boss, they're not interested in being influenced unless it's somehow existential for them, like they're going to get fired or something. What you would need to do to get them to that point is, I don't even know if it's worth your time, to be honest. If your company isn't recognizing their bullying behaviour, unless you have a ton of influence in your organization, it's going to be a lot of work for you to get your company to do anything about it as well. 

This episode is really about how you're managing it for your benefit and for your mental health. Because you know what? If we're honest, the problem isn't so much that you need to change them. Because you can't. The real problem that you're dealing with right now—and believe me, I know it doesn't feel this way—isn't that you need to change them. The real problem is the impact you're letting it have on your mental health and, potentially, the hours you spend at work, and the impact on your entire life and your team probably as well, but even more importantly, your family and the people who love you. You're allowing this person to have a lot of impact on you. 

The reason I'm saying this is that this podcast isn't going to be about how you change them. This podcast episode is about how you limit the impact you're allowing this person to have on your mental health because that's going to give you the best return on your investment. So if you're willing to do this work a little bit, then stay. If you're like, "No, I just need five tips to get my boss to shut the f*** up," this is not the podcast episode for you. 

I want you to have less stress, less hurt, less rejection, less anger, and less worry about every interaction with them—when you see them coming down the hallway, when you see their number on the screen as your phone starts to ring, or their Slack message comes up, or whatever it is. I want you to be able to manage that trauma response as it's coming up because all of that stress, rejection, hurt, and anger is exhausting you. Never mind the kind of work they're putting on you, but all of those negative emotions are exhausting you. 

I'm not saying you're going to go from all of it to zero, but if you could cut it in half, I think that could be worth your while. I think that's worth the effort for your life. Because this person is going to be unpredictable, and the more they see they're impacting you, the more they're going to do it. We want to make sure you're being the leader you can be in this situation. That's what we're going to talk about today. 

I really want to talk about how to effectively deal with a bully boss as the leader you are, so we can minimize the impact on your mental health and your reputation because that's the other thing we worry about. Not just our mental health, but the impact it has on our reputation. What this person is saying about us in the organization is one thing, but then how we're shrinking and reacting to this bully says something completely different about us. 

I want you to know that I shrank and let this person walk all over me, and I don't let hardly anybody walk all over me. I can't even think of anyone I let walk all over me as much as I let this person do that to me. I learned a lot from that experience about how I would do it differently next time. I have implemented those changes, even as I run a business now, where I'm the boss, effectively. It's changed the way I manage people. It's made me more empathetic as a leader. 

Just like when you have a parent or someone or a boss who's really crappy, you're like, "I learned a lot about who I don't want to be." I have to say, maybe I had some of those tendencies before I worked with this person. It's given me a lot of confidence. I am so much more confident. I have done the work on my mindset and my mental health, and people just don't walk all over me anymore. They just can't because I know how to not let them. I can be open-minded. I'm willing and open to taking feedback. I'm so much more secure as a person than I used to be, and really, this bully boss was the impetus for that. That is the kind of strength, learning, and strategy that I try to instil in my clients. I'm going to give you the bottom line up front on this. I want you to turn every problem you have with this boss into a strategy for yourself to become a stronger leader. 

I'm going to give you some ideas on things you can do and some things you can practice so you can feel more in control. I don't want you to worry and have a trauma response. I don't know if we can get rid of the trauma response because the trauma response is now baked into your body, but I want you to be able to recognize, breathe, and reset yourself if you're having a trauma response every time you see this person or see their number or their name come up on a text, whatever. 

We want you to be able to have a different type of grounding every time that happens. I want you to feel more in control like I said. I want you to let their comments roll off your back. They can be whoever they want to be. They can be a bully. They can point their finger. They can tell you how crappy you are at your job and get freaked out about the dumbest things. But I want you to just let it roll off your back because it's not about you. That's what's going to happen. You're not going to dread going to work. Let's keep it in perspective: you may never love going to work with this person because they're not going to change, but you're going to feel more empowered. Maybe it's going to go from dread to dislike. 

I don't recommend staying and working with a bully boss unless there's a really, really good reason. I think you probably need to find a different situation for yourself, but in the meantime, you need to be able to handle this situation. There are times when it’s important. You might make the decision to stay, and I can share a couple of those examples with you as well. Regardless of whether you stay or go, this is a great opportunity for you to learn to regulate yourself emotionally and manage your mental health.

We also want to stop making the problem with this boss existential. I don't want you to keep worrying if you're going to have a job tomorrow. Because that is the biggest thing—“Will I get fired? Will I lose my income? Will everyone think I’m an idiot because of this person?” We're going to stop making this existential. You're not going to lose your reputation. You're not going to lose your job tomorrow. I'm not saying they won’t fire you, but you need to take control of the situation. We need to figure out how you can take control versus just waiting around, putting your entire future in some bully boss's hands. 

Your bully boss will eventually see that bullying doesn't work on you. They may or may not change their ways They really may or may not change their ways, but the less it works on you, the more they're going to find someone else to bully. They may pull back, but that’s not the purpose of this. The purpose isn’t to get them to stop. The purpose is for you to find your own strength and manage your own mental health.

Before we get into the solutions, I just wanted to give some examples of what bullying looks like because sometimes it can range from them just speaking directly and not being very nice when they talk. I think that’s manageable. As a leader, we can see past someone who just doesn’t have any politeness and not take it personally. I think that’s "bully light," and everything I want to talk about today will help with that. But I think that’s overcomable, honestly, and you don’t need to leave your job for that.

I’m talking about things like full-on gaslighting, like making you believe things you never thought about yourself before—making you feel like you’re a loser, that you don’t have value, that everything you do is wrong, and that every judgment you make is wrong. They start making you doubt who you are. You start doubting your own decision-making ability. Usually, what happens in this situation is you stop relying on your own instincts and start trying to become the person your boss wants you to be, which isn’t natural to you at all. But you think, “I must be so bad that I need to be this other person they want me to be.”

The problem with that is, you don’t have instincts or practice being that person. So you’re going to question every decision you make and worry that they’ll think you’re an idiot or that you’ll fail to try to make decisions that will please them—but they’ll never be pleased because they’re not looking to be pleased. They’re looking to put you down.

So, I always say this when it comes to gaslighting and they’re trying to make you think that you’re not good, that you have no skillsets, and you suck; if they’re going to be negative to you anyway, you might as well be yourself. You might as well lean into yourself. That doesn’t mean you can’t take advice and feedback and work it into who you are if you think it’s valid. Not all the feedback they give is valid. But you have to see if you can what you actually want to take. And you have to rely on your own instincts because you only have the instincts to be who you are. You can develop new skillsets and new instincts, but you can’t just turn around and stop being who you are and become someone else because of their gaslighting.

My first piece of advice is that they’re going to judge you no matter what—you might as well be judged for who you are instead of who you’re pretending to be to please them.

These bosses might also embarrass you and throw you under the bus in public. I’ve had clients who’ve experienced their bosses saying things like, “You’re the worst at your job. You don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t even know why we have you here,” in front of their peers. This person is valuable and has a great reputation, so obviously, the boss has no leadership skills. But that’s bullying—someone doing that to you.

Another example of bullying is giving you unreasonable workloads and just saying you have to do it, no choice. Someone who goes around you constantly, freezing you out, like talking directly to your team or peer group and leaving you out of the loop—that's bullying, too. It’s like high school, where people pretend you don’t exist and ignore you in the hallway. And believe me, this happens in corporate environments too.

Those are just a few examples of bullying I’ve seen with my clients, and all those things happened to me with a terrible boss I had as well.

I have three strategies that I want to walk you through.

The first one is that you need to take away their authority over you. And what I mean by that is you need to value yourself. Right now, you’ve given them the authority over your value. If they don’t think you’re valuable, all of a sudden, you don’t think you’re valuable. So, you need to work on your own belief in your value, no matter what anyone says about you. That doesn’t mean you’re perfect, but just because you’re not perfect doesn’t mean you’re not valuable. This isn’t a zero-sum game—you always have value. You got this job, and you just happen to work for someone who doesn’t know how to see or grow your value in the organization. You have to do it yourself. They’re not going to do it for you, and they might even create barriers. But you have to value yourself.

There’s a difference between their authority to tell you what to do and telling you who you are. They can say, “You must get this done,” but telling you that you’re not good at your job, stupid, or incompetent is just an opinion. And the opinion that matters most is your own. If you don’t believe what they’re saying, they can’t hurt you.

For example, if someone said to me, “You’re not a very nice person,” it wouldn’t hurt me at all because I know I’m a good person. I know I’m kind, and I care about people. I might get curious and ask some questions, but I wouldn’t be hurt because I don’t believe it.

On the other hand, if someone made a comment about my weight, it might hurt because I’ve struggled with my perception of it. So if someone said, “You’re fat,” I might feel hurt because I believe it, even if others don’t think it’s true. So, ask yourself, “What is my boss saying that I’m buying into?” They can’t hurt you unless you’re buying into it.

Similarly, let's say you're just angry because your boss is being a bully. You're not hurt by them, but you're just angry at the situation. Basically, you're angry because you think it's not supposed to be the way that it is. You're angry that it is this way, it's not fair, or something like that. Again, your perception is, “What's happening here is wrong. It's not supposed to be this way,” and you're so caught up in that that you're not just dealing with what's in front of you. It may not supposed to be this way, but guess what? It is this way. So let's deal with what is and show up with solutions for what is, versus spending our time getting angry for how it isn't. 

Again, you're creating the situation of your anger. You're creating the situation of your hurt. I'm not saying that your boss isn't serving it up like, “Hey, you want to get hurt? You want to be angry?” They're creating the circumstance, but you're giving it extra power. So even if you could cut back on some of those things and just ground yourself in the valuable person that you are, that would be helpful.

The second thing I want to say about this whole idea of taking away their authority over you is that you need to remember that you are a leader. Act like one! You’re not just a director of whatever your title is—you’re a leader. Define yourself as a leader, not a director, or VP, or whatever. You’re a leader, and leaders assess situations. They stand back; they understand that if someone is acting out of insecurity, they almost look at it dispassionately and decide what the right strategy is for handling the situation. They don't crawl into a ball, and I want you to just tap into your leader self. 

Look, you are a leader in lots of places in your job. You're just not being a leader with this bully, maybe. So because you're letting them get to you, you're letting them get to you. And so I want you to just sort of say, "What is it that makes me a leader over in this area? I'm going to be that person with this bully boss. I'm going to tap into who I am when I'm being my best leader. My best leader would not give value to what this person is saying. My best leader would watch this person and understand that they have a problem, not me and that my job is to help them through their problem, not make their problem my problem."

I know what I'm saying to you is easier said than done. I'm not discounting that, but I'm saying it to you because it needs to be said. And so now, what you need to do is take what I'm saying to you and see if you can apply that to what you're doing. You need to create and ground yourself in your own values. You need to remember that you are a leader and bring your best leader to this situation with your bully. 

And I'll say it again, I want you to turn every problem into a strategy. If they're putting you down and calling you incompetent in a room full of people, don't make it a problem. What are you going to do about it? How will you use this to make you mentally a stronger person, a stronger leader, to learn how to practice not making it about you and just letting it be about you, which is what it is? Nobody in that room thinks you're incompetent. Everybody in that room feels bad for you. Everybody in that room is judging your bully boss at that moment. So you hold your head up high and you know that even if you did something wrong, you didn’t deserve that. Just deal with what went wrong, not with all the rest of the stuff. You don't have to address it with them. 

I'm not saying let’s let it go either—that's a whole other podcast. You can lodge a complaint. You can talk to HR. Every country has different rules about what you should say. Every company has different politics. Every company’s HR department is more or less trustworthy, depending on how they've been set up. So you have to work your own politics to know if it's worth your time to lodge complaints. 

I personally would probably keep a record of some kind of the things that are happening, and depending on the outburst and the laws in my country and the politics of my company, I may let HR know what happened. Just as an FYI, this happened. Not so cool. Not asking you to do anything, just want you to know. And if your country—like I know the US is tougher to do this in—but as a Canadian, push comes to shove, you can sue. If they are going to dismiss you, you've got a really great record of stuff that can help you build a case to get more money out of the organization. 

But that's just an aside; I don't want to kind of go down that rabbit hole right now. This is really about valuing yourself and taking away their authority over you. I don’t want you to mix up authority with responsibilities to get certain things done. That's fine. But they don't have authority over your value. They don't have authority over you valuing yourself. I want to keep that in mind. 

The second thing I want to share with you is you need to create your own safety. You feel unsafe with them. It’s an unsafe environment with them because you don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next. You don't know what they're going to say, you don't know what they're going to do or who they're going to do it in front of. Again, you have to take a leadership role in your safety. So you're going to create a leadership role with your value. You're going to create a leadership role with your safety. 

Your brain is freaking out because it feels unsafe. So what is it that you feel unsafe about? And like I've said before, losing your job, losing your reputation—those are fundamental things that feel existential. They're sort of at the foundation, or they have an impact on the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is essentially food, shelter, and belonging. Those are the things that your brain is freaking out about. Again, if you have a problem there, like "I'm afraid of losing my job. I'm afraid of losing my reputation," don’t look at it like a problem. Turn it into a strategy. So you have to manage your job loss. 

If I had a bully boss, I would definitely—if I had to do it over again—be starting right away with networking. Just checking in. "How’s everyone doing, all my old colleagues?" I'd be networking inside the organization and outside the organization, touching base, having coffee chats, seeing what's out there, talking, being clear about where my career goals are, and just sort of dropping it into conversations here and there. Because you might need to leave, or you might need to be able to find another job inside your organization, depending on how big it is. But what you need to be able to do, especially if it's inside your organization, is not complain about your boss, not demonstrate that their behaviour is negatively impacting you. You need to be a leader in the situation. 

Someone might say to you, "Yeah, so-and-so was really tough on you." You could say, "Yeah, it wasn’t a great meeting," and then leave it. You want to be able to leave the person with the feeling like, "Wow, they are really handling this like a freaking leader. It’s amazing They are a role model for how someone could handle a difficult boss." That's what you want to be like. Even if you gave yourself that as an objective—"I want to role model how to deal with a difficult boss." And define what that looks like for you. 

That could be really exciting, just to write that down and then say, "Here's who I want to be. Here's how I want to handle it." And then use these things I'm talking about: ground yourself in your own values, don’t give away your authority, and create your own safety by taking control of your job opportunities. Start getting your name out there, start meeting with people, and start planting seeds all over the place.

This is what I do with a lot of my clients. We work on this and get your resume ready. And FYI on the side, I am launching my brand-new "Promotions on Demand" program. It opens for enrollment in December. I'll be talking more and more about that over the next few weeks, but if you are thinking about either getting promoted or getting a new job, that’s kind of the place where we can talk about doing some of these things. So you want to just take control of the job search, and you can manage your reputation loss by just being the leader like I said. Show up. Don’t let them faze you. Don’t talk about it—I wouldn’t talk about it with anyone at work, by the way—but really work on that "I'm going to be a leader in this situation and not let them faze me." 

If you don't let it faze you, your reputation cannot be lost. People will see. Believe me, you're not the only person this person is bullying. People see; they just don't always do something about it immediately. If this person is doing it with you, they're doing it with a lot of other people. So don’t worry about your reputation. You just show up as your best leader, and that will come through.

Sometimes you're going to have a trauma response, meaning it's not just in your head—it's your body responding before your head can even kick in. Your body responds with fear. Your body responds with worry. Your body wants to flee the situation. It's like it's sort of in your cells, this trauma response. And in those moments, you need to regulate your nervous system. And all you need to do to do that, a very easy way to do that, is just relax and breathe. 

By relax, what I mean is, if you are sitting there around a boardroom table or at your desk, and your legs are going crazy, you're all tensed up, you're tapping your pen, or you're just clenched, I want you to sit back, relax your shoulders, relax your body, and just take some deep breaths through your nose. You can even subtly exhale hard if that's possible. But if you're not in a position to do that because you're in a room full of people or someone is watching you on Zoom, just breathe in and out through your nose, soothe your nervous system, and ground yourself in the thinking that you want to have. 

You can't stop a trauma response, but you can limit your reactiveness from the trauma response. Even if the trauma response makes you want to flee, that doesn’t mean you have to flee. You just need to recognize the trauma response, soothe your nervous system, and then decide, "What do I want to do? I am safe. I know I want to flee, but I don’t need to, because this guy or this woman or this person in front of me is just performing right now, and I just need to focus on what I need to do." That's it. 

And if they want to try to make me look stupid, I just have to say, "Yeah, I heard you. That's great, and we'll do that. No problem. Great." But don’t let their attempt to cut you down actually make you feel cut down. You don't have to hang your head. You might turn red because that’s your trauma response—but you can breathe, and you’ll be fine. When people come up to you after and ask, "Are you okay?" you can say, "You know what? It took me a second—just being vulnerable—it took me a second, but I’m fine. I can handle this. It's not about me," and just keep walking. Just keep walking. It’s fine, it’s totally fine. People will respect that you are able to handle the situation, and you will role model it for others.

Own your authority by owning your value, and create your own safety. The last thing I want to say to you—and I know I’m running long today, I’m sorry about that—is don’t own their insecurity. I’m going to tell you a story: one of my coach pals was telling me the other day about her three-year-old kid having a tantrum. I don’t know if I’ve shared this on a podcast or not. Anyway, I’m going to tell it again; I can’t remember. Her three-year-old kid had just started school for the first time, and she was having a tantrum in the morning, saying she wanted to change her name. 

She was freaking out, yelling, and screaming. My friend basically said, "Let's change your name. What do you want to change it to?" They had that conversation for a bit, but really, no name was good enough because the little girl didn’t really want her name changed. She wasn’t acting out because she didn’t like her name; she was acting out because she didn’t want to go to school. That’s where the insecurity was. My friend, as her mother, didn’t get sucked into the drama of the name change. She was totally calm and said, "What do you want to change your name to? What about this? What about that?" Of course, the little girl didn’t like any of the names, but it calmed her down enough that my friend was able to demonstrate compassion and love for her daughter, helping her through the moment.

I’m not saying you have to show compassion and love for your boss—though if you could get there, amazing—but at the end of the day, you could show compassion and love for yourself. That would be awesome, and recognize that this person, who is a grown adult, is having a tantrum about something else that has nothing to do with you. It has to do with their own fear and insecurity about something their boss said to them, and they’re afraid of failing or whatever it is—their inability to manage their own emotions, which is not a great sign of leadership. I don’t know that their particular judgment is one you want to take on yourself because I’m not sure that their judgment is all that valuable, to be honest.

Anyway, I’ll leave that with you. Don’t own their insecurity. Don’t make their tantrum your tantrum. And then, the last thing I want to add here is to give yourself some space. Working with a bully boss is going to make you less efficient because you're going to have to give time to process these emotions, soothing your nervous system, and getting yourself grounded in the role model you want to be in this situation. Your body is going to keep wanting to fight, fight, or freeze constantly whenever you see this person or have any interaction with this person. You just have to give yourself some space to recognize that. 

It’s normal for your body to want to fight, fight, or freeze—this person attacks everyone—and you just have to remind yourself that you’re not under attack. They’re just acting out, and you get to be the valuable leader who is great at their job, always open to growing, and who isn’t going to let their problem become your problem, their tantrum becomes your tantrum.

That requires space and time, so you will be less efficient. You will get fewer things done in a day. You won’t be able to load up on everything. You will be more exhausted at the end of the day if you try to load up on everything and do this work. But I think giving yourself the space to do this work is going to help you maintain your mental well-being so that you can continue to do good work and show up at your best, whatever that looks like on a day-to-day basis, while you decide what your next career move will be. 

The thing to remember is you can handle this—it’s just going to take more emotional intelligence from you, more intentionality from you, and more resilience from you than you probably expected. But surprise, here it is. So you need to readjust, stop wishing you didn’t have to, and start saying, "I’ve got my emotional intelligence, my intentionality, and my resilience." That’s going to reduce my efficacy in other areas, and I need to put my mental health first, or I’m not going to win. I’ll definitely burn out. I’ll definitely not be functioning a couple of months from now. 

It’s going to take a lot of work to manage your mind and emotions. And I will say to you, if you have access to a coach, use them. If you need to go and get your own coach, get one. I have a client who had to deal with a bully boss for three years. She stayed in the situation because she was building her career in an organization that was going to lead to a great job she wanted to get—which ultimately she did. It took a lot of mental work for her to survive and not completely blow up her career in the meantime. She worked with a coach—it wasn’t me—and she got through it. Then she found me when she got to her new job, and we started working on how to set herself up as a leader in this new role. But I always respected her so much for staying in that job for three years, managing her mental health, and showing up as the best leader she could be, even though her boss was against her every step of the way.

I’m not suggesting you stay for three years in this situation. I’m just saying it’s possible. You can buy yourself as much time as you want. Don’t panic. You’re going to be fine. You might just have to leave this job sooner than you thought, and that’s okay. Strategies change. Shit happens. Let’s deal with it. We are leaders.

That’s what I have for you this week, my friends. Sorry, it was a bit longer than normal—twice as long—but it is what it is. We’re moving forward. Talk to you soon. Bye for now.