Dealing with a narcissistic boss is one of the worst work situations you can find yourself in. Unfortunately, narcissists do not meet only in relationships but, very often, also in other areas. What to do when your boss has a narcissistic attitude towards you?
What if your boss is a pathological narcissist?
Very often the narcissists who are in charge are people who have made few scruples from the beginning, it is not surprising, for example, that a coworker narcissist quickly made a career becoming a boss. Initially, they can show themselves as friendly people, with great charisma. They can make you believe that they want to help you, that they have seen potential in you, and that they are a mentor who can guide you on a path of improvement.
The pathological narcissist is characterized by a great desire to appear. It is possible that he spends hours and hours talking to you about his successes. To try to appear as some sort of idol, a person from whom to take inspiration to succeed… But that will not allow you: its purpose is to keep you subjugated, at his mercy and therefore will deny you any chance of career.
Another very common behavior is to blame his every mistake on his scapegoat. You could be accused of every misstep he makes in front of other co-workers. He might even go so far as to taunt you publicly or bully you. Of course, when you take care of something, which maybe it is, with good results will not recognize you any merit. In his eyes, you’ll never be enough compared to him.
What makes a Female Narcissist Boss different?
If the narcissist boss is a woman, it can be more complex to flush out. Generally we are less accustomed to seeing women of power, and we tend to give the reason for their strong charisma or their great confidence that they probably had to work much harder to get to their position.
Typically, a female narcissist boss tends to choose another woman as her victim. It is likely that he has a different attitude than the man narcissist, which may confuse you further. She tends to calibrate her behavior based on your reactions. One day she can be friendly and well-disposed towards you, while the next day you recriminate every little shortcoming in an attempt to belittle you.
She can use personal confidence against you. So the advice for her to have less power is to give her as little information as possible about your personal life, your dreams or your emotions.
How to Defend Yourself from a Narcissistic Boss?
To defend yourself against a narcissistic boss, it’s important not to challenge him. Otherwise, he would tend to torture you even more to prove he has an influence on you.
You pretend to believe his words, to be fascinated by his successes and ideas. You can try to adopt the famous “grey stone” technique: making yourself boring and not at all interesting to his eyes could make him loosen his grip to focus on some other victim.
Its mission is to make the person feel totally deprived of self-esteem and if with you he thinks he has reached the goal he could go in search of a new prey to start with his vicious circle.
How to manipulate a narcissistic boss?
The only way to manipulate a narcissist boss is to show you exactly how he wants to do what he asks. But this is very risky because, being an excellent manipulator, it can lead you to believe that this is really your task, to comply with his every choice.
Your goal should be to understand its weaknesses. Usually at the base, there is only a strong envy for someone or something that pushes him to behave in such a deplorable way. All just to get some kind of personal bonus.
Once you understand that, you can show him that you think exactly like him, that you hate as much as he does a certain group of people. This could lead to him being seen more as an ally than a potential victim.
How do you respond to a boss like that?
A narcissist boss should never be accused of having made a mistake: he would not be able to admit his mistake and would try in every possible way to make everything fall on you.
Try to find yourself always prepared on what he asked you to do or that he expects you: this will minimize his reasons for to annoy you, at least working.
Don’t let them enter your personal life and set them limits: a technique often used is to isolate their victims by forcing them to exhausting shifts and moving them away from friends to family.
Is it worth it to put up with this?
Working as an employee for a narcissist is really difficult: his constant abuses and his constant work to undermine your self-esteem will eventually succeed in hitting you.
As strong as you can be, an unhealthy work environment leads to stress that pours not only into your work, but also into your personal life. In more severe cases psychosomatic diseases can also develop due to these situations such as vomiting, anxiety, rashes or other.
The advice, if possible, is to look for another job or try to change a job to get as far away as possible from the toxic person in question. Better to take a job, even with a different or less remunerated job, than to risk seeing your life become a hell!
Resources:
- https://www.intrepidmentalhealth.com/blog/seven-ways-of-detecting-and-dealing-with-narcissistic-bosses#:~:text=Narcissistic%20bosses%20can%20often%20take,you%20do%20not%20outshine%20them.
- https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-boss/
- https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-to-work-for-a-narcissistic-boss
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2021/05/31/here-are-5-warning-signs-your-boss-is-a-narcissist/?sh=4291d1fce244
