Dear Madeleine,

I’m dealing with a very weird situation. I’m on a large cross-functional team made up of leads and managers. Our leader is the new EVP of operational excellence. He seems to really like some of the members of the team and really dislike others. He regularly forgets to include the people he dislikes in critical meetings and decisions. He makes snarky remarks when someone he dislikes floats an idea, only to compliment the next person who says practically the same thing.

He has created a division between the liked people and the disliked people. It is subtle, and I’m not sure I would have noticed it if one of my best friends at work wasn’t on team reject. When she pointed it out, I couldn’t unsee it. I feel lucky to find myself in the in-group, but can also see how the situation is headed for disaster.

I lead teams myself and can’t understand what this new guy is up to, why he is doing this, or how he hopes to succeed. He also does other things that make no sense, but this particular thing is the worst of it.

What would you do in this situation? I am at a total loss.

So Confused

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Dear So Confused,

Getting operational excellence right is hard enough without shenanigans like this. One trait of a toxic leader is to play favorites. It destabilizes teams by destroying trust. There is a good chance your new EVP is totally unconscious of what he is doing and the effect it is having. In my opinion, this is the behavior of someone who needs to have power over others and achieves it by keeping people nervous and jumpy. If he bullies some people and not others, it automatically creates a reflex in the not-bullied group to stay on his good side, and slowly silences everyone.

 It sounds like this person is not your direct boss, nor the boss of your friend who has been relegated to the out-group, so it may not affect your performance review if this cross-functional team doesn’t accomplish anything. But that may not be true for your friend.

You have a few choices here, but none of them are attractive.

You can do nothing, which will inevitably impact the relationship with your friend.

You can get together with your friend and brainstorm what the two of you could do to change the situation. You might consider recruiting a few more team members from both the in-group and the out-group to engineer some kind of revolt. If you could manage to pull the whole team together, you could include HR to conduct an intervention of sorts. It would only work if the entire team was on board and unanimously demanded that everyone on the team be treated with respect.

You might consider going to the EVP and pointing out what you are observing—but that could be a career-ending move. People who need to have power over others usually aren’t keen to get feedback from anyone, especially not from someone they see as a subordinate. It depends on how much power he has and what kind of trust he has built with his peers and his superiors. Along those lines, you might practice standing up for people he is snarky with—but again, it’s possible all that will accomplish is to get yourself relegated to “team reject,” as you call it.

Look at the situation from all angles with as many of your team members as you trust. If a majority of the team agrees to stick together, you might have a chance to shift the ugly behavior. At the very least, you can probably ensure that nothing gets done, and let it reflect badly on the EVP. Does it appear that I’m condoning subversive behavior? I guess I am, because if people don’t stand up for themselves and each other, leaders like your EVP end up getting promoted and wreaking more havoc from an even stronger position.

Document every incident you remember and start keeping a running log of unacceptable behavior moving forward. This way, you will have a leg to stand on should the situation escalate. It would probably be up to your friend to take this whole mess to HR and to her boss. You might also mention the situation to your own boss, if you trust them.

The more you can get the team to stick together, the better chance you have of getting the EVP to change—or better yet, getting him removed.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services as well as a key facilitator of Blanchard’s Leadership Coach Certification course. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

My boss is just awful. He is the son of a friend of the owner, and the owner has no idea how he treats people. Although he comes from a company in our industry, where he was the operations manager, he really doesn’t understand how different things are here.

I love my job. I have been doing it for over twenty years, and I am acknowledged by everyone in the company (except my boss) as knowledgeable and masterful. I have also won several awards from peers in my industry. I speak at conferences, am regularly asked to contribute to panels, and many people have sought me out as a mentor.

And yet my boss treats me like an idiot—and regularly calls me one. He frequently questions my decisions, even though he has no idea what he is talking about. It wouldn’t matter as much if his antics didn’t waste enormous amounts of my time.

Some of my work does require me to make educated guesses—we are in the fashion industry—so trend intel is helpful but really only gets us so far. So I have to rely on my intuition and experience. More often than not, I nail it, which is why I have my job. Very occasionally, I miss the mark.

When that happens, my boss quite literally crows about it to everyone, boasting that he knew it all along. (I am sure he would say “I told you so,” except that he has never accurately predicted failure.) He seems hell-bent on trying to ruin my reputation—and I believe he would succeed, if everyone in town didn’t know me well and also see him as a complete loser.

I have read many books on dealing with difficult people, managing conflict, and having difficult conversations. Essentially, I have tried everything to no effect. In fact, the harder I try, the worse he seems to get.

I fantasize about something bad happening to him, which is not at all like me. I have put a great deal of study and effort into evolving myself to be a spiritual person but this whole situation is testing me beyond my limits. I have to control myself not to obsess about him and not to spend every social interaction complaining to my friends.

This experience makes me feel hateful. It is casting a shadow on my entire life now. I am hoping you have some ideas for me.

Feeling Hateful

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Dear Feeling Hateful,

I do have some ideas. But first let me share that you’re not alone: Here is a recent article reporting that a little over one-third of people say they work with a toxic boss. Respondents describe feeling dread about going to work, increased anxiety, recurrent nightmares, and the need to seek therapy as outcomes of having a toxic boss.

I can’t imagine how the knowledge that so many are suffering along with you will make you feel better, except to prove you are in good company. The term soul-crushing is no exaggeration, because, as you describe, feeling so disrespected can make a person feel that they are changing at their very core.

This is a classic situation where you have three choices.

1. Change yourself.
2. Change the situation.
3. Remove yourself from the situation.

So. You might as well take this opportunity to change yourself, no matter what else you choose to do. Since you have already done your homework about how to shift your communication style, the next step is to work on increasing your self-regulation. If there was ever a time to rise above and be the grownup, it is now.

You could practice distancing—a technique to reduce the emotional impact of events that generate outsized overwhelming feelings. To distance, relate the story of the latest outrage as if it happened to someone else. It might sound like this: “My friend Lucy has the worst boss; wait till you hear what he did. First, he called her at 11 PM, and then yelled at her the next day for not picking up. You know Lucy—she goes to bed at 10 and always puts her phone on silent. Then he dressed her down in front of her entire team. He literally called her a ‘moron’ and a ‘slacker,’ if you can believe it. Lucy! The hardest worker we know!” I know this sounds a little weird, but try it and see if it helps.

Another possibility is to look to your spiritual training and practice mindfulness, which means to observe your own thoughts and feelings with curiosity and without judgment. I might submit that some of your discomfort comes from your adding to the negative experience by piling on judgment of yourself about how defensive and irate it makes you feel. Instead of judging yourself for every hostile thought you have, just notice that you have a hostile thought. And let it just be. Let it not mean anything about you.

The hallmark of any sound spiritual practice is to treat every interaction with someone who makes you enraged as if the person is a spiritual teacher. You might ask yourself: What is there for me to learn here? How might this support my evolution as a spiritual person? I am laughing as I type this, because I know myself how devilishly difficult it is. When I try to do it, I mostly fail. But that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile. I mean, let’s face it, it’s easy to be our best selves when everything is going well. You know that’s true—and if you hate me right now, I can’t blame you.

Once you are feeling a little more self-control, here are a couple of other ideas.

Would it be too obvious to escalate the meanness and the demoralizing effect on you and your team to the owner? They obviously know your track record and must rely on the value you provide. Nobody wants to be accused of going over the boss’s head and being a tattle tale, but in this case, don’t you think the owner would want to know? You don’t mention anything about them, so maybe you already know they can’t be bothered—or they have made it clear that they would take his side no matter what. But it wouldn’t do at all if you finally decided to jump ship and the owner was surprised.

If bringing it to the owner’s attention is not an option, you might anonymously leave articles such as Leaders: This Is the Impact Trustworthiness Has on Your Success or The Five Biggest Red Flags of a Toxic Culture on your boss’s desk. There is no shortage of research on how terrible bosses are bad for the bottom line. You might just leave a new one every week or so, and see if it makes a dent. You never know when the penny might drop for your boss. If he is just a regular numb nut, he could come around. But if he is a power-hungry narcissist who is trying to make you quit so he can hire his girlfriend, you probably have no chance.

This leads us to your final option. You didn’t say you were thinking of quitting, but that is always an option. Some might encourage you to behave so badly that he has cause to fire you, but I think that is beneath you and so disingenuous as to be unsuited to who you strive to be. Not to mention the potential damage to your reputation, which will be important as you seek to create a new opportunity.

So there you have it, my friend. You either learn to let the nonsense roll off your back and play the long game while trying to influence subtly; try to get the owner’s support; or, if it seems like you have no other choice, be prepared to walk away and create the next chapter of your career.

I am awfully sorry for how upset you are. The problem with committing to your own spiritual growth is that tests are part of the program—although I’ll grant you that this one is a doozy. This one feels like a Master Class. But I suspect you are up to it.

Remember who you are.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I recently logged into a web conference meeting a few minutes early. Some of my direct reports were already on and they didn’t notice I had joined. I heard them talking about one of their colleagues who also reports to me, and I was shocked. They were talking about their political beliefs, which it seemed they all shared, and were trashing their colleague whose politics are different from theirs. They were calling her names, questioning her intelligence, and actually wishing violent things on her. They were brutal.

I was so upset that I clicked out of the meeting and logged back in as if I hadn’t been there. Now I feel like a coward. What they were saying was completely inappropriate. It was 100% hate speech—racist, sexist, and ugly. I don’t know if they know that I had joined and heard them. I feel like I need to report them to HR. I am confused and upset. Even though I disagree with them politically, I don’t hold that against them. I simply had no idea these three men were so angry and mean. They have hidden it very well.

I wish I had never heard what I heard. I will never see any of them the same way again. But based on what I heard, I am literally afraid to bring up this matter with them.

What should I do now? I have talked to a couple of friends and none of their advice was useful. One actually suggested keying their cars! You see the problem.

Confused and Afraid

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Dear Confused and Afraid,

Wow. This is really hard. I am so sorry you stumbled into learning things about your direct reports you wish you hadn’t. You can’t pretend it never happened, much as you may want to.

You must get input from your HR business partner; I am sure there are company policies about acceptable/unacceptable behaviors at work. The men were, in fact, talking on a company web conferencing platform and could have been overheard by anyone. If you had heard them talking on a private channel or gathering, you would not be responsible—but since it was a company platform, on company time, as a leader in the organization you are duty-bound to address the situation.

If the employee who was being talked about is a member of a protected minority, you may have a separate problem to address as well, since it would potentially involve legal repercussions. Some states have zero tolerance for hate speech against or harassment of a protected class. The company could be held liable and it could be grounds for dismissal. If, in addition to laws, the behavior you witnessed is explicitly prohibited in published company values, that may also be grounds for sanction or dismissal.

Either way, I suggest you enroll your HR representative to provide you with guidelines on what to say and to attend the meetings with you. I also suggest you speak with each person individually, not as a group—and schedule the conversations one right after the other to reduce the possibility of offline cross talk among the group.

I understand how hearing talk of violence against a fellow worker might make you afraid. No one wants to attract that kind of attention. If it turns out that there are real consequences to be enforced—for example, that the incident will be written up and kept as part of each employee’s file, or that you must actually fire all of them—you may have valid reason to be concerned for your own safety. Again, this is something you will have to discuss with HR. Your boss also will need to be told.

I know you wish you hadn’t heard what you heard. So do I. And you probably feel like you could ignore it and get on with things. But you did hear it, even if the nasty guys didn’t know you were there. They will accuse you of spying on them—but, again, they were on the company platform, so they left themselves open to being overheard. You may also be tempted to convince them of the error of their ways. But let that one go—you have no obligation for their moral development. And of course you are right that it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to engage in retaliation. Keying cars is out of the question. Nastiness begets nastiness and eventually catches up to people.

Your job as a leader is to call out bad behavior when you see or hear it. Period. So get step-by-step instructions, then stand up and do what needs to be done firmly, clearly, and kindly. Bullies with big mouths often back down quickly when they are called out on unacceptable behavior.

On second thought (actually, I have thought about this so much it is more like 37^th thought) you really could pretend it never happened. Only you will know, ultimately. It wouldn’t be for anyone else to judge. Only you can decide what your personal standards are and assess whether or not you have the mettle to rise to the higher ones. Not everyone is signed up to be a warrior. However, it is my experience that it is the secrets we keep that erode the spirit. This may be a crossroads moment for you. It is a choice you have to make. What I want for you is to have no regrets down the road.

I am sorry you are in this bind. Truly, I am. I wish you strength and courage, either way.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I am a 31-year-old female attorney who was recently promoted to manager of an in-house legal team for a giant global not-for-profit organization. One of my direct reports is a man who came to us after having been a partner at a highly respected firm. This is to be his last job, as he is nearing retirement.

We all thought he would bring enormous expertise to the job and add value; but, in fact, he has caused nothing but trouble. His work is shoddy on his best days—I spend far too much time reviewing and correcting it before it goes out. He makes errors that make no sense in light of his experience. He is clearly not paying attention. He leaves work early on a regular basis, which would be OK if his work was done; but he misses deadlines, which ends up as a crisis on my desk at the end of the day.

All of this would be simply annoying, but it is compounded by the fact that he is downright rude to me. He makes no effort to disguise his contempt for my age and gender.

I have made tremendous efforts to be a good manager, making tasks and standards clear, providing ample time for one-on-one meetings to review workload, etc. I would fire him—I have an entire page of documented incidents in which he failed at his task or was disrespectful or hostile to me personally—but, because of the economic squeeze of the pandemic, we are in a hiring freeze. We just don’t have the manpower to cover his work, cruddy as it is. I have gone to HR, but they are overwhelmed with layoffs and furloughs in other parts of the organization. I am at my wits’ end with this situation.

Shoddy Work Making Me Nuts

Dear SWMMN,

This sounds tough. I definitely used to be automatically dismissed by older men—it is a consolation of age that that kind of thing tends to fade. But that doesn’t help you right now. Right now you have a couple of separate issues, so it might help to tease them out and address them one at a time.

The first thing to tackle is the idea that, because of a hiring freeze, you are not allowed to replace an employee who can’t—or won’t—perform. That just makes no sense at all. You might think about taking the case to both your boss and HR. This is serious and will affect your team’s ability to generate required results—so I can’t believe that with enough evidence and a well-prepared argument, you wouldn’t be able to get some support to make a change.

If you absolutely cannot make that happen, you will have to get ready for a hard conversation—probably a couple of them. Start by laying out all three issues at once and setting up times to work through all three separately. My new favorite tool for hard conversations comes from Craig Weber’s work on Conversational Capacity. Craig says that to find the sweet spot in a conversation, you have to start with candor—be ready to state your position and the thinking behind it. Then, you need to practice curiosity by testing your thinking and asking questions.

You will have to decide which issue is most important and start with that. I might suggest the order of priority as competence, commitment, and attitude. The thinking behind this order is the general principle that when people do not feel equipped to do their job, they tend to lose motivation and start lashing out at others. You may see a change if you can help your employee be more successful at his job.

Competence. It seems your supposed experienced expert might be out of practice. It is fairly normal that, as people rise to executive positions, they can forget the myriad details of the job or not stay abreast of changes. That might be the case here. However, that doesn’t excuse the lack of attention to detail he is demonstrating.

Be prepared to point out several examples of errors, and then ask some questions like:

• What is your perspective on this?
• Can you help me understand what might be going on?
• How do you think this situation might be addressed?
• Is there something I can do to help?

(Questions adapted from the book Conversational Capacity by Craig Weber, pg. 97)

Be prepared to continue being curious if your employee takes a position that is different from yours. You can say something like: “I admit my perspective is different from yours; perhaps you can share what you have seen or heard that leads you to see things this way.” The more you are curious and keep him talking, the more likely you are to get to a place where he might be interested in hearing your viewpoint. But you may not be able to get a dialogue going. And if you just can’t, that’s OK. You can always default to making a simple request, such as: “please catch up on proper legal terms and double-check your documents before submitting them.”

Commitment. You can observe to your employee that he often stops work before the agreed-upon time. Make sure you have a couple of examples. If you decide to go the way of curiosity, you can ask: “is there anything in particular that is undermining your motivation or ability to hit agreed-upon deadlines?” It will be interesting to hear what he has to say. At least from that jumping off point, you might be able to renegotiate deadlines moving forward. You can also share how critical it is that he follow through with his commitments—because you also have commitments and need to be able to plan your time. The more you can stay curious and neutral, the better off you will be. Which brings us to the third issue …

Attitude. This one is tricky—and it will color the other two issues. The more you feel attacked, the harder it will be for you to stay curious and open. So anything you can do to not take your employee’s behavior personally will strengthen your position. Remember: this is not about you, no matter how cruddy it may make you feel. I suggest you ask yourself if it is truly personal. There is a good chance he is a jerk to everyone. If you find it is only you, or only women in your office, it is an example of harassment or bullying against a specific class and you really do need to take it to HR. If you are forced to keep an employee who is creating a hostile work environment, you could actually sue the organization.

Obviously you don’t want it to come to that—so start again with your observations. Then ask: “Is there something I am doing that is causing you to treat me with such contempt?” He may claim that he isn’t doing it; he may claim to be unaware of it; or he may actually be unaware of it. You can continue to practice curiosity: “Clearly we don’t agree. Let’s see what our different perspectives have to teach us about this. Can you explain in more detail how you are seeing this?”

Ultimately, if he continues to be rude and hostile, it is your right to set a boundary. But that means you have to give him specific direction on how he needs to address you. You may want to create a list of never and always statements. For example (I am making these up based on my own experience):

• Never: smirk at me, mimic my voice, swear under your breath, or roll your eyes when I speak in meetings.
• Always: keep to commitments you have made, be civil toward me, and tell me when I do or say something you disagree with.

In the future, you will know to start with tight supervision with new people, point out errors or inappropriate behavior the first time you see it, and then, as the new person settles in, you can loosen up. It is almost impossible to go the other direction.

It can be hard to stand up for yourself, but no one can do it for you. There is a good chance your employee is just waiting for you to draw the line and will continue to push to see just how much nonsense you are willing to put up with. Once you call him out on his bad behavior he may straighten up.

This won’t be your last problem employee. Get ready for many more to come. It gets easier. Not much easier, because you will always expect people to do their best and strive to get along with others, in other words, to be like you. Don’t let it make you bitter or cynical that many people aren’t at all like you. But do get comfortable with drawing the line.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 16,000 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.