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Countering the master workplace manipulator

Whether the situation involves a manager, co-worker, or your own staff, many of us have at some point or another had to deal with someone who simply made our working lives a nightmare.

Conflict at work will occur from time to time. But if there is an ongoing conflict with one person, and when you walk away from every interaction feeling the above, it is highly likely you are being manipulated.

Having had manipulators in my company over the years, I often felt sick, angry and constantly frustrated simply because I was not aware that I was being manipulated.

Although I am an independent, strong and intelligent person, I lacked personal boundaries. As a result, I allowed people to make decisions and make changes – basically doing what they wanted. I did this because I thought that they were great workers and motivated to grow the business. The truth was that they were intimidated by anyone who was smart or assertive. As a result, such staff members were unfairly shafted and underhandedly discredited until they left the company.

Researching the motives

Once I had it pointed out to me by the new human resources manager, I was motivated to study and research the motives behind manipulative behaviour and the tactics they used. We then developed strategies to deal with them.

The goal of a manipulator is to control and influence the behaviours and action of others. Because it's about control, manipulation is prevalent in the workplace, which usually has a hierarchical structure. To control others, manipulators can abuse their positions, authority, or responsibilities. They will do whatever it takes to get their way.

The control gestures manipulators use include: emotional blackmail, dishonest yet persuasive language, discrediting others around them, deflecting the issue at hand when confronted, concealed threats, and lies or distortion of the facts. What is interesting is that most manipulators do not realise they are doing this because their behaviour is fed by their own insecurities or a view of life as a struggle for survival; a series of battles

So how do you deal with manipulation when the manipulator is one of your staff or a co-worker? People do what they do because they can, and so firstly it is important to define our limits and set boundaries. Once you have done that, it is important to always be assertive and maintain the boundaries you have set.

Manipulators are masters at emotional games and will use your emotional reaction as evidence that you are an abuser. It is therefore very important that you always deal with the behaviour, not the person. This will ensure you disengage emotionally and think rationally – unemotional assertiveness is an attitude a manipulator cannot match and therefore cannot deal with.

Creating a positive culture

A company's human resources department is key to dealing with manipulation in the workplace. HR creates the behavioural policies and procedures and when they are enforced consistently, they soon create a positive culture. It is important to set company values and create policies and procedures for: Conflict Management, Access, Abuse, Sexual Harassment and Bullying, Attitude and Behaviour, Employee Grievances and Disciplinary Actions.

Depending on the size of your company, I would even recommend creating a policy exclusively for middle management with guidelines on how to deal with frustrating situations, people's attitude, and other behavioural situations.

The idea of having such policies in place is to make manipulation (covert or open aggression) very difficult. While it would be difficult to set procedures directly for manipulation, you can set them for the behaviours used by manipulators. One of the interesting things about negativity or gossiping, for instance, is that these manipulative tactics cannot exist if no one agrees to listen.

Naturally, company rules have to be flexible. Dealing effectively with manipulation is, at its core, about thinking differently, which is very easy on a rational level, but daunting on an emotional level, especially if you lack good boundaries.

How to spot a manipulator

In my own company – which has 200 employees – I worked closely with our HR department to develop policies and procedures that focused on the company culture and on assertive communication. All employees were also required to attend communication courses that focused on dealing with conflict and manipulation.

When you want to avoid hiring a manipulator, the first difficulty is spotting it when someone is in front of you for just a half an hour. I would suggest allowing your chosen candidate to start working – however monitor their trial period very closely for any sign of negative behaviour. Another idea is to also get feedback from other staff and make sure you take all feedback seriously.