I’ll never forget the day I was asked by a CEO to meet with a member of the sales team about building more inclusive practices. He assured me the executive responsible for sales was aware, so I went straight to the sales manager. We had a great conversation, mapped out ideas, and developed a practical action plan.
A few days later, that same executive discovered our meeting and lodged a complaint with the CEO. Instead of backing me up, the CEO called me in and said, “You shouldn’t have gone behind their back.”
I calmly reminded him that he had directed me to do exactly that. His response? “That’s not true. I never said that.”
There it was. The gaslight.
In that moment, the ground shifted. What I knew had happened and what I remembered clearly was being denied outright. I walked out of that office not only carrying the weight of someone else’s complaint but questioning my own reality. What game was being played here?
That’s the brutal power of gaslighting at work. It’s not the Hollywood-type shouting, fist-slamming boss. It’s the quiet, calculated denial of truth that leaves you doubting yourself.
As quoted in Simply Psychology (January 2024) “Gaslighting at work is a manipulation tactic used by coworkers or bosses to make someone question their perception of reality, memory, or judgment.” It often comes wrapped in professional calm tones, polite smiles, and language that sounds perfectly reasonable on the surface.
That’s why it’s so dangerous. Without obvious outbursts or abuse, it corrodes your confidence quietly and slowly, until you don’t know up from down.
What Gaslighting Feels Like
If this has happened to you, you’ll know it doesn’t always feel dramatic. It feels confusing and disorienting. It’s subtle enough that you start wondering whether you’re the problem.
It often begins with a flicker of self-doubt. Did I mishear that? Maybe I misunderstood.
Over time with repeated behaviour, those flickers grow into constant second-guessing and inevitably lead to sleepless nights while replay conversations in your head. You may start apologising for things you didn’t do, working harder to prove yourself, or staying quiet rather than risk being told that you “got it wrong again.”
What it felt like to me was being out of step with reality, like everyone else was seeing the picture clearly while I was left wondering what I was missing. Most of all, I felt isolated. While my reality was repeatedly denied, I questioned my sanity and I stopped trusting my own voice.
That silence is exactly where toxic leaders want you to be.
If the feelings are disorienting, the words are even more revealing. Gaslighting rarely announces itself as abuse. Instead, it hides inside everyday language – phrases that sound harmless on the surface but are designed to make you question yourself. However, once you know what to listen for, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
What Gaslighting Sounds Like
“You’re overreacting.”
You raise a concern about being excluded from a project or left out of a key decision. Instead of addressing what you’ve said, the response is to dismiss your feelings as exaggerated. Over time, this trains you to doubt the validity of your emotions. You start to second-guess whether you have the right to feel frustrated, disappointed, or concerned. The problem of being excluded isn’t resolved; instead, your reaction has made the problem.
“I never said that.”
Delivered with calm confidence and a slight air of confusion, this simple denial is one of the most destabilising phrases. Agreements you know were made are suddenly denied. Directions you remember clearly are reframed as you being mistaken. The composure in which it is delivered makes it even harder and makes you wonder if perhaps you really did imagine it. This can cause a spiral of checking and rechecking your thoughts and forming a habit of writing things down obsessively.
“Everyone thinks you’re being difficult.”
This phrase epitomizes manipulation and is designed to isolate. It suggests that everyone sees you as the problem. You’ve likely never heard that feedback from anyone else and if you checked with them, they would be confused. However, the mere suggestion that the group is united against you makes you feel separate and unsafe. It creates the fear that speaking up or asking for clarification will make you even more alienated.
“You should’ve just known.”
This shifts responsibility for someone else’s lack of communication back onto you. You weren’t given the full context, you weren’t told the expectations, but somehow, you were supposed to know anyway. This kind of blame erodes confidence because it makes success feel impossible. You start working twice as hard, covering every possible base, trying to predict invisible expectations that are never clearly stated. You were set up to fail.
None of these phrases are minor. Each one is an erosion of confidence, a small cut to your sense of worth and credibility. On their own they sting, but when they are layered and repeated day after day, they form a pattern that is deeply destructive. The cumulative impact of living in an environment where your reality is constantly denied, minimised, or twisted is felt far beyond the individual. Gaslighting doesn’t only shape how you feel at work; it shapes the culture of the entire organisation.
The Impact of Gaslighting
On a personal level, gaslighting creates self-doubt, anxiety, and a constant need to check yourself. Replaying conversations in your head, keeping exhaustive notes, and hesitating to speak up for fear of being contradicted become habitual and perpetuate the anxiety. Over time, talented staff burn out or leave an organisation altogether.
What do the statistics tell us?
- The Workplace Bullying Survey found that 30% of U.S. adults reported directly experiencing abusive conduct at work, with a further 19% reporting witnessing it. This means that nearly half of American workers were affected in some way. (Source: U.S. Workplace Bullying Institute)
- According to a 2025 survey by the non-profit organisation Everyone Matters, over 50% of professionals in financial and professional services reported experiencing or witnessing coercive behaviour (including manipulation and gaslighting) within their workplaces.
- A Gallup survey (via Silverman Leadership blog) found that as of August 2023, only 23% of employees agreed with the statement, “I trust the leadership of this organisation.” Another Gallup-sourced summary notes that less than one-quarter of U.S. employees strongly agree that they trust their organisation’s leadership.
What does this mean? The numbers make one thing clear – gaslighting and coercive behaviours are not rare, isolated incidents; they are systemic. When nearly half of workers are touched by abuse, when over half of professionals see manipulation firsthand, and when three-quarters of employees don’t trust their leaders, the message is undeniable. This isn’t only about the bad behaviour of individuals, it’s about cultures that enable. Unless organisations confront it, they will continue to lose trust, talent, and the very innovation on which they depend.
What Can be Done?
Gaslighting thrives in silence. Here are a few things that you can do to reclaim your ground:
- Keep notes. Write down key points that confirm your memory, but don’t let it consume you. If recording every word becomes an obsession, the gaslighter has already stolen more of your headspace than they deserve.
- Check in with others. Share your experience with a trusted friend outside of work. Validation matters – but choose carefully to avoid gossip or retaliation.
- Follow up in writing. After meetings, send a short email confirming agreements so you have a record of what was said. This can trigger backlash; manipulators don’t like being cornered. Keep your tone neutral and professional so you don’t hand them ammunition.
- Know your boundaries. Decide what is non-negotiable for you and protect your energy. The warning here is that boundaries will be tested. Manipulators may frame them as you being difficult. Hold firm – boundaries are not resistance, they’re survival.
These steps won’t change a gaslighter’s behaviour, but they will help you in those moments of questioning your reality and your sanity. Let’s be clear – protecting yourself is only half the picture. The real change comes when organisations stop treating gaslighting as an interpersonal problem and start recognising it as a cultural one and culture is the responsibility of leadership. Organisations that want to eliminate it need to:
- Create safe reporting channels where employees can raise concerns without fear of retaliation.
- Train leaders to spot and stop manipulative behaviours.
- Measure psychological safety as regularly as they measure financial performance.
- Hold leaders accountable because ignoring subtle abuse is as damaging as condoning overt bullying.
A workplace that values inclusion, trust, and transparency has no room for gaslighting.
What does this mean for leaders? Culture is built in everyday behaviours. When leaders allow gaslighting to go unchecked, they send a message that silence, fear, and manipulation are acceptable. But when they confront it by naming the behaviour, protecting employees, and modelling transparency they create cultures where people can think, speak, and contribute without fear.
Conclusion
That day in the CEO’s office has stayed with me. It wasn’t about a single meeting or a misunderstanding; it was about the kind of culture that allows truth to be denied and people to be diminished. On a personal level, it shook my confidence and made me question myself. On a cultural level, it sent a clear signal that silence and fear were more valuable than honesty and inclusion.
Gaslighting flourishes when individuals doubt themselves and when organisations look the other way. That’s why the response has to be twofold. For individuals, it’s about trusting your memory, setting boundaries, and refusing to be silenced. For leaders and organisations, it’s about owning the culture you create every single day.
In the end, gaslighting isn’t merely one person’s behaviour, it’s a symptom of what a workplace chooses to tolerate. When we refuse to tolerate it, when we call it out and replace manipulation with transparency, we create cultures where people are safe to think, speak, and lead with confidence.
