04/01/2025

When Another Senior Leader Threatens Your Reputation

Don't allow yourself to be "gaslit"

Anyone can experience adversarial behavior at work, but when adversarial behavior occurs between members of the leadership team, it can have severe consequences. Initially, these behaviors may manifest as attempts to suppress or obstruct an executive’s actions. However, they can escalate to more serious levels resulting in serious personal and professional consequences for the targeted executive.

Adversarial behaviors can take various forms. We interviewed a group of retired and transitioning S&P 500 executives who identified three common types of adversarial behavior: 1) One retired C-level executive explained how they faced public intimidation through humiliation from the head of a business unit because they were implementing corporate initiatives that had a negative impact on the unit. 2) Another C-level executive faced a boycott. The executive was being ignored and left off meeting invites where critical decisions were made. Their contributions were actively undermined, dismissed and even silenced. 3) One executive encountered sabotage. Someone within their organization reported them to the ethics hotline wrongly accusing them of giving cash to a vendor. During the investigation, it became clear to the executive that someone was trying to distance them from the project and discredit them in the eyes of the decision-making executive.

Each of these scenarios is only a facet of adversarial behavior. In fact, when facing adversarial behavior something much worse could be happening in the shadows—corporate gaslighting. Corporate gaslighting is a tactic used to sow doubt and undermine an executive's credibility among their peers and influential stakeholders, masking adversarial behavior.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Harvard Business Review.