The higher you rise in your career as a business leader, the higher the stakes and stress. You’re not in Kansas anymore. The skills that got you from “there” to “here” might not work as well as they used to. The world of the C-suite can be chaotic and challenging, with big personalities and egos. As you rise to a C-level role, you might feel like you’re too often surrounded by sharks, snakes and snipers.
But that doesn’t mean you should give up. Top-ranking executives with difficult personalities often mask their own fears and insecurities. Flawed organizational cultures can be fixed. Even if the culture of your workplace is hostile, you deserve to take your seat at the table. Emerging leaders, especially women and individuals from underrepresented groups, need to know how to understand and navigate sophisticated workplace manipulation and unwelcoming cultures.
Let’s examine how leaders like you can maintain your power when navigating hostile environments and dealing with difficult personalities – and set yourself up for success.
3 difficult Environments: Fear-based, cutthroat, gaslighting
I want to focus on three common types of difficult environments that leaders often encounter at an organization’s highest levels: a fear-based workplace, a cutthroat competitive culture and an environment where you are being actively gaslit. Here’s a breakdown of how each of these places looks and feels – and how you can adapt, take action and succeed.
- Fear-based workplace
Fear-based cultures are often run by bullies and petty tyrants. In a fear-based environment, there’s no space to be vulnerable and no room to make mistakes. People are discouraged from asking questions, raising issues or identifying product flaws or process improvements. In a fear-based culture, leaders stifle individual voices and fundamentally compromise business outcomes. These organizations and their bullying bosses lose the valuable perspectives of their diverse talent, which has a negative impact on innovation, productivity and the bottom line. If your company has a fear-based culture, you will drive top talent away and intimidate people into staying silent and holding back. This prevents innovative ideas from coming forward and stops solutions from being surfaced.
How to adapt: Do your best to promote a “speak-up culture,” where people feel psychologically safe. People need to feel comfortable being their authentic selves. People need to know that their questions won’t be ridiculed, and their ideas won’t be dismissed. And it sounds hard, but: try not to take the bullies’ behavior personally. Bullies’ behavior is about them, not about you. Many executive bullies behave in this manner due to their own deep-rooted feelings of fear, insecurity, doubt and shame (FIDS). The bullies are using their own flawed coping mechanisms because they feel inadequate and they’re afraid of losing control. Try to be a voice of compassion within your company, even toward those who are bullies or jerks.
- Cutthroat competitive culture
A bit of healthy competition is beneficial for companies – striving to do your best every day and challenging your colleagues to continually raise their standards is part of what makes organizations succeed. But some company cultures go too far and become brutally competitive. If your company has a winner-takes-all culture, people live in fear of being the one who loses. Colleagues no longer feel like teammates; instead, they see each other as opponents to be defeated.
At your company, does every board meeting feel like a battle? In a company with an unhealthy level of competitiveness in its culture, people often feel pitted against each other, characterized by rivalry and ruthlessness rather than collaboration. Ultimately, this kind of toxic competitiveness is counterproductive. It drives away talent and undermines the spirit of open communication and teamwork that makes a company work.
How to adapt: If you find yourself in a cutthroat environment at work, start by working on your own mindset and finding calm and peace amidst the chaos. Center yourself and hold on to your values. Then start looking for opportunities to reshape the culture of your team and organization. Shift the culture from one of competitiveness to one of collaboration. Address challenges and conflicts from a place of calm and centeredness. Encourage other people to show care and kindness to their colleagues. You can’t heal every toxic culture, but you can try.
- Culture of gaslighting
Gaslighting is when someone deliberately manipulates you over time, making you question your own reality. It’s a dangerous, insidious form of emotional abuse and control. If you’re a recipient of gaslighting, you might start second-guessing yourself and losing confidence in your ability to interpret events correctly.
In the workplace, this type of active gaslighting can range from malicious gossip to subtle sabotage or career-altering betrayal. Gaslighters might make big promises that they fail to keep, such as promising you a promotion and a pay raise that never come. They might deny everything and evade accountability – “I never said that, that’s not what we agreed.” This makes gaslighting one of the most difficult environments to navigate.
How to adapt: Environments with active gaslighting also often include other negative cultural characteristics and behaviors, such as cutthroat competition and fear-based leadership. Use this simple four-step approach to help navigate these toxic environments:
- Recognize reality: Find clarity and be honest with yourself about what you’re up against. Are you being treated fairly? Do you feel safe and supported at work, or do you dread going to work every day? What change do you want to see happen at your company and in your own role?
- Gather support: Find emotional backup among an inner circle of trusted peers and colleagues. Build your own personal “board of directors” who can be sounding boards and a support network for you. They can bring a valuable outside perspective to help you understand your situation and chart a path forward.
- Make your move: Gather evidence. Make a list of specific dates when promises were made to you, examples of responsibilities you already handle and positive feedback or performance outcomes. If you’re being strung along or gaslit about a long-overdue promised pay raise, research the latest industry standards for compensation in similar roles. Next, request a formal meeting to discuss your role, expectations and your future with the company. Focus on solutions rather than blame. In that formal meeting, use clear, factual statements and request concrete next steps and a timeline to get the changes you want.
- Safeguard your well-being along the way: Maintain firm boundaries between work and personal life. Take care of your mental and physical health. Build resilience by engaging in structured activities outside of work that keep you grounded – such as community service, physical exercise, creative pursuits and other activities that remind you of your fundamental worth as a multidimensional human being.
As you move into positions of leadership, you’ll be dealing with more powerful – and potentially more difficult – personalities, and a more complex and competitive political landscape. Many new leaders feel shocked or disillusioned when they reach the higher levels of the organization, and first encounter the toxic competitiveness, fear-driven leadership and outright emotional manipulation that often occur at the top. But this doesn’t mean you have to quit your job or give up on a high-level leadership career. The world needs you to be in the C-suite in your well-deserved seat at the table. There are ways to enhance your ability to understand and respond to challenging situations, thereby improving your company culture for the better.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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