Signs that a coworker/colleague is trying to undermine you and reasons why
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What is undermining behaviour?
Undermining behaviour is where an individual or individuals exhibit behaviour that attempts to make another individual or individuals feel inferior and less valuable than they are.
What are signs that a coworker or colleague is trying to undermine you at work?
There are so many ways undermining behaviour can take place at work. However, here 15 common signs. They:
- Intentionally look for opportunities to share any mistakes you may have made, large or small, with others at your workplace, rather than discussing these with you privately.
- Contradict you in a public forum trying to get others to question your competence. This isn’t done in a constructive way – it’s downright mean. This can be done either in an obvious or backhanded way.
- Shut down your ideas whenever you put them forward, often interrupting you when you’re speaking.
- Make you feel different in how they treat you compared to your peers, leaving you feeling excluded.
- Downplay your contributions and achievements, instead of recognizing these.
- Make you the butt of a joke, and pass these off as light hearted humour.
- Are dismissive of your authority in the workplace, over a team, often trying to show you up and look incompetent.
- Are downright challenging being more of a nuisance, often just for the sake of it.
- Make things personal with you, often gossiping behind your back, trying to plant seeds of doubt with your other coworkers.
- Claim credit for the work you’ve done, by passing this off as their own, with zero or very little acknowledgement of your contributions and effort.
- Keep important information from you.
- Act more superior than they actually are towards you.
- If they’re superior to you in terms of authority, they really show this by pulling rank for the sake of it and offer up unsolicited suggestions, advice, unconstructive feedback or backhanded insults.
- Gaslight you.
- Are aggressive or passive aggressive with you.
Why is a coworker or colleague trying to undermine you?
It’s so easy to spend a large proportion of your non-working time trying to understand why your colleague/coworker is trying to undermine you. We have this saying at Job Honesty: “don’t let anyone live rent-free in your head”. Sometimes, it’s as simple as they’re just not a nice person and there’s little you can do to change a nasty person’s behaviour and mentality.
However, not all cases of coworkers/colleagues trying to undermine you may be due to this. We list out 6 common reasons below to help you to determine why they might be behaving this way towards you.
1. They’re threatened by you
Your colleague/coworker may feel threatened about your status, position, performance, success within the company. If you’re competing for the attention, praise or general recognition by your boss especially if you’re vying for a promotion, your colleague/coworker may want you out of the running.
2. You’re competing for the same thing(s)
It’s not only a promotion that your undermining coworker/colleague could be competing with you on. It could be aggressive competition on being selected for the next high profile project by your boss, their feedback, opportunity for getting your name out there within the company, or even a bonus. They may want you to appear to be inferior to them, so they can discredit you and appear better and more competent.
3. They’re jealous of you
Jealousy is a common reason when it comes to workplace conflict. If your coworker/colleague feels as though you’re receiving more recognition, attention, praise or better work, they might be trying to sabotage you to “move you out of the way”. Unfortunately, jealousy can drive some people to cross boundaries and do whatever it takes to remove you as competition.
4. They don’t trust you
A coworker/colleague may not trust you. If you haven’t done anything to warrant this, this says more about the coworker/colleague than you. If you’re new, they may simply be taking their time in getting to know you and whether they can trust you. Or, if you not new to the company, they could generally be an untrusting person. Regardless of the reason, they might try to undermine you so they feel like they have the upper hand and are more in control.
5. They’re insecure about their job
If your coworker/colleague is worried their job security, in that they could be made redundant, they might attempt to discredit you in front of others. This is so that they appear better than you, therefore thinking that they’re protecting their own position. Fear is at the root if this issue.
6. It’s personal
Sometimes the reasoning behind the colleague/coworker attempting to undermine you is not due to a work-related matter. The issue is personal. If you know this coworker/colleague outside of work in a personal capacity, then it should be somewhat easier to try and identify what might have triggered your colleague.
If you don’t know them outside of work, then it could be due to a multitude of reasons, due to, but not limited to, sexism, racism, or any other discriminatory reason that could potentially apply. Really observe how your colleague acts around and towards you and document this to see if there is a pattern.