William Knight was an assistant provost at Miami University. According to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his widow, Adriene Knight, the final months of his life were marked by something painfully familiar to many targets of workplace abuse: attacks on his competence, questioning of his loyalty, an escalating paper trail, threats to his career, and the fear that he was about to lose his livelihood.

On April 7, 2021, Knight died by suicide.

His widow’s lawsuit alleges that his supervisors had subjected him to a pattern of harassment, bullying, and gaslighting that contributed to severe emotional distress. Miami University has disputed those allegations and described the lawsuit as unjustified, saying Knight’s colleagues responded with compassion when he disclosed mental health concerns.

The courts will determine questions of legal liability.

But the case raises a much larger question that workplaces across the country should already be confronting:

What happens when the workplace itself becomes a threat to a worker’s psychological health?

The pattern should sound familiar

According to the lawsuit, Knight’s difficulties intensified after a data project involving his office drew criticism. The complaint alleges that his supervisor, then-Provost Jason Osborne, subsequently subjected Knight’s department to extensive review and increased his workload.

The lawsuit further alleges that university officials created a damaging record about Knight and engaged in a pattern that included berating him, questioning his abilities and intelligence, and challenging his commitment to the university.

These allegations describe something targets of workplace abuse routinely report.

The harm is rarely one dramatic incident.

It is often cumulative.

A worker’s competence is questioned. Their reputation begins to change. Ordinary mistakes become evidence of deficiency. Their motives are scrutinized. Documentation accumulates. Meetings become threatening. Human resources processes that are supposed to provide protection may instead feel like part of the machinery being used against them.

Eventually, workers can begin to understand that their job, professional identity, financial security, health insurance, references, reputation, and future employability may all be at risk at the same time.

That is not an ordinary “personality conflict.”

It is a profound imbalance of power.

“They finally broke me”

Perhaps the most disturbing allegation in the complaint concerns the period immediately before Knight’s death.

According to his widow, Knight had sought medical leave as his condition deteriorated. The lawsuit alleges that the process was stalled. He was then told to attend a meeting concerning “personnel issues.”

He died the morning the meeting was scheduled.

His final note, as quoted in the lawsuit, reportedly said of the anticipated meeting: “they finally broke me.”

Those words deserve attention far beyond this individual case.

They challenge one of the most persistent assumptions surrounding workplace abuse: that employment practices belong in one category and health belongs in another.

Human beings do not experience their lives that way.

Threaten someone’s livelihood day after day. Destroy their professional standing. Strip them of control. Subject them to chronic fear and uncertainty. Make escape economically dangerous. Then require them to continue showing up to the environment producing that distress.

The consequences do not necessarily remain inside an office.

Our laws still leave a massive gap

There is another reason cases like this matter.

Many Americans assume that “harassment” at work is inherently illegal. It isn’t.

Under the federal employment discrimination laws enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, harassment generally must be connected to a legally protected characteristic — such as race, sex, disability, religion, national origin, or age — to fall under those statutes. The EEOC explicitly notes that workplace mistreatment or rude behavior does not violate federal equal employment opportunity laws simply because it is harmful.

That distinction creates an enormous blind spot.

A manager can allegedly humiliate an employee, isolate them, undermine their reputation, weaponize performance procedures, subject them to unreasonable scrutiny, or repeatedly threaten their livelihood — and the first legal question may still be:

Why were they targeted?

If the answer isn’t connected to membership in a protected class or another existing legal protection, the worker’s options can narrow dramatically.

But from a health and safety perspective, that is the wrong first question.

The better question is:

What did the employer allow to happen to this worker?

Policies are not the same as protection

Miami University currently states that members of its community have a right to an environment free from conduct that unreasonably interferes with a suitable working, living, or learning environment. Its policies also prohibit harassment and discrimination based on numerous protected characteristics.

Those commitments are important.

But virtually every major institution has policies promising dignity, respect, fairness, inclusion, or a safe workplace.

The harder question is what happens when someone with organizational power is accused of violating those values.

Who investigates?

Who controls the evidence?

Who decides whether the conduct is serious?

Who protects the worker’s job during the process?

Who examines whether performance management is legitimate or retaliatory?

Who has the power to stop the conduct before the worker’s health deteriorates?

And what happens when the people responsible for protecting the employee ultimately report to the same institution facing liability?

Psychological safety cannot exist only as language in an employee handbook.

It requires enforceable systems of accountability.

Workplace abuse is an occupational safety issue

For too long, workplace abuse has been trivialized through language like “toxic boss,” “office politics,” “difficult personality,” or “bad culture.”

Those phrases obscure the central issue.

Power can be used in ways that cause harm.

And when an employer controls the conditions under which that power is exercised, preventing foreseeable psychological harm should be part of the employer’s responsibility.

That principle is at the heart of the Workplace Psychological Safety Act: workers should not have to prove that abuse was motivated by race, sex, age, disability, or another protected characteristic before serious abusive conduct at work matters.

Workers deserve protection based on the conduct and the harm itself.

Because psychological safety should not depend on why someone decided to abuse their power.

We cannot keep treating the aftermath

The Knight lawsuit continued in the Ohio Court of Claims after claims against individual university officials and the Board of Trustees were dismissed. Reporting in April 2024 said the remaining claims against Miami University included wrongful death and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, with a trial then scheduled for October 2025. I was unable to locate reliable public reporting establishing the final disposition of those claims.

Whatever the eventual legal outcome, William Knight’s story presents a warning.

Waiting until a worker develops severe anxiety or depression is too late.

Waiting until someone needs medical leave is too late.

Waiting until someone’s career has been systematically dismantled is too late.

And sometimes, waiting until lawyers are arguing about causation in a courtroom is tragically too late.

The goal must be prevention.

Employers need systems capable of identifying patterns of psychological abuse early, examining power rather than merely interpersonal conflict, protecting workers from retaliation, independently investigating allegations against those with authority, and intervening before harm becomes catastrophic.

Work should never have this much power to destroy a human being.

And workers should not have to reach a breaking point before the system decides that what happened to them matters.

If you or someone you know is in immediate emotional distress or considering suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Sources: Reporting from the Dayton Daily News/Yahoo News, the Oxford Observer, The Miami Student, Miami University’s published employment policies, the underlying complaint, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Amazon has spent years responding to criticism about its workplace culture.

The company has announced investments in employee safety.
It has introduced new ergonomics programs.
Expanded mental health resources.
Revised performance processes.
Publicly committed to becoming the safest place to work.

Those efforts may represent meaningful progress.

But they raise a question we rarely ask of any organization:

How do we know whether employees actually experience the workplace differently?

Not because a company made a promise.

Because the evidence says so.

Public Commitments Are Easy

Every organization knows what to say after criticism.

“We’re listening.”
“We’re committed.”
“We’re investing.”
“We’re making changes.”

Those statements aren’t necessarily false.

They’re simply incomplete.

The real measure of culture isn’t what organizations promise.

It’s what employees experience when the cameras leave.

Can they speak honestly with their manager?
Can they report concerns without fear?
Do they believe the organization values their well-being as much as productivity?

Those are questions no press release can answer.

Culture Isn’t a Communications Strategy

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is assuming that announcing change is the same as creating it.

It isn’t.

Culture changes when employees experience work differently.

When they trust leadership more than they did before.
When they believe reporting concerns will lead to action.
When managers are rewarded for creating psychologically safe teams—not simply productive ones.

Until those experiences change, culture hasn’t changed.

The messaging has.

What Should We Measure?

Imagine Amazon announced tomorrow that it had built one of the healthiest workplace cultures in the world.

What evidence would actually convince you?

Not another corporate video.

Not another leadership letter.

I’d want answers to questions like these:

• Do employees report higher levels of psychological safety than they did five years ago?

• Do workers believe they can raise concerns without risking their jobs or future opportunities?

• Has trust in management increased?

• Are retaliation complaints decreasing?

• Are managers evaluated on employee well-being alongside operational performance?

• Does the board regularly review psychological safety metrics?

• Are the findings independently assessed and publicly reported?

Those are measurable outcomes.

Everything else is intention.

Productivity and Psychological Safety Are Not Opposites

There’s a common assumption that organizations must choose between high performance and employee well-being.

It’s a false choice.

The healthiest organizations understand that psychological safety improves performance.

Employees identify problems earlier.
Teams collaborate more effectively.
Innovation increases because people are willing to challenge assumptions.
Mistakes are corrected before they become crises.

Fear may produce compliance.

Trust produces learning.

The organizations that understand that distinction gain a competitive advantage.

Every Organization Faces the Same Question

Amazon isn’t unique.

Every employer today is making public commitments about culture.

Banks.
Hospitals.
Universities.
Technology companies.
Government agencies.
Nonprofits.

The question isn’t whether organizations say they care.

Most do.

The question is whether they can demonstrate that employees experience work differently because of the systems they’ve built.

That’s a much higher standard.

And it’s the standard employees deserve.

Accountability Is Evidence

One of the biggest lessons from the past decade is that workplace culture cannot be evaluated through mission statements, leadership speeches, or corporate values.

It has to be evaluated through outcomes.

What do employees say?
What has changed?
What evidence supports those claims?

Organizations already measure productivity.
Customer satisfaction.
Revenue.
Quality.
Efficiency.

Psychological safety deserves the same level of rigor.

Not because it’s fashionable.

Because it’s foundational.

The Question That Matters

Amazon’s story isn’t ultimately about Amazon.

It’s about how we evaluate every organization’s claims of cultural improvement.

The next time a company announces that it’s investing in workplace culture, don’t ask whether the leaders seem sincere.

Ask a better question.

What evidence shows employees are actually safer, healthier, and more willing to speak up than they were before?

Because accountability isn’t measured by the size of the investment.

It’s measured by whether the people doing the work can feel the difference.

Until organizations are expected to prove cultural improvement with evidence—not simply announce it—we’ll continue rewarding intentions while overlooking outcomes.

And employees deserve better than promises.

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Almost everyone has encountered them.

The coworker who acts like they run the company when they don’t.
The middle manager who constantly reminds everyone of their title.
The employee who polices tone, monitors behavior, inserts themselves into decisions, or speaks with outsized certainty despite limited expertise or actual authority.

Workplace posturers are everywhere.

And while they can appear confident, experienced, or “leadership oriented” on the surface, many are operating from something much less stable underneath: insecurity, status anxiety, fear of irrelevance, or an unmet need for validation and control.

What Is a Workplace Posturer?

A workplace posturer is someone who performs authority rather than embodying it.

Real leadership does not require constant signaling.
Posturing does.

Posturers often:

• Overstate their importance

• Inflate their expertise

• Speak for leadership without authorization

• Micromanage peers

• Insert themselves into conflicts unnecessarily

• Police optics more than outcomes

• Seek status over contribution

• Treat proximity to power as power itself

• Expect deference they haven’t earned

They often confuse intimidation with competence.

And importantly: they are not always in management roles.

Some are coworkers who become self-appointed enforcers of workplace culture. Some are senior employees who derive identity from hierarchy. Some are people who feel powerless elsewhere and compensate by trying to exert control in low-risk environments.

Where Does It Come From?

Posturing is usually less about confidence and more about fragility.

1. Insecurity and Identity Dependence

Some people build their entire self-worth around being perceived as important.

If their authority is questioned — even mildly — they experience it as a threat to their identity.

This is why some posturers react disproportionately to:

• Boundaries

• Feedback

• Independent thinking

• Being ignored

• Loss of social influence

• Not being consulted

They are not simply managing workflow. They are managing ego stability.

2. Organizational Dysfunction

Toxic workplaces often reward performance over substance.

In unhealthy environments:

• Visibility matters more than competence

• Politics matter more than collaboration

• Aggression is mistaken for leadership

• Certainty is rewarded over curiosity

• Dominance gets promoted

In these cultures, posturers can thrive because organizations mistake confidence theater for capability.

Some companies unknowingly create entire ecosystems of posturing by failing to define authority clearly or by rewarding people who create fear and dependency.

3. Learned Survival Strategies

Some posturers developed these behaviors in highly competitive or psychologically unsafe environments.

They may have learned:

• “If I don’t dominate, I’ll disappear.”

• “Authority means controlling people.”

• “Respect must be forced.”

• “Vulnerability is weakness.”

In some cases, posturing is simply chronic overcompensation.

The problem is that survival adaptations that may have helped someone navigate instability can become destructive when imposed onto others.

4. Status Anxiety

Modern workplaces often create constant pressure to appear valuable.

When layoffs, restructuring, and unstable leadership dominate workplace culture, some employees begin performing indispensability rather than building actual trust and competence.

This can show up as:

• Constant busyness theater

• Gatekeeping information

• Overcomplicating tasks

• Acting territorial

• Creating dependency

• Inflating minor responsibilities into power positions

The goal becomes preserving status — not serving the mission.

Why Posturers Are So Exhausting

Because they consume psychological energy.

Healthy authority creates clarity and stability.

Posturing creates tension.

People around posturers often feel:

• Hypervigilant

• Second-guessed

• Patronized

• Controlled

• Emotionally drained

• Forced into unnecessary power dynamics

Teams become less collaborative because people spend more time navigating personalities than solving problems.

In severe cases, workplace posturing can evolve into:

• Bullying

• Gatekeeping

• Mobbing behavior

• Reputation management campaigns

• Social exclusion

• Chronic undermining

Especially when leadership tolerates it.

The Difference Between Leadership and Posturing

Real leaders:

• Do not need constant validation

• Can tolerate disagreement

• Share credit

• Create psychological safety

• Clarify rather than confuse

• Reduce fear rather than manufacture it

• Do not treat respect as obedience

Posturers often do the opposite.

One of the clearest signs of insecure authority is an obsession with hierarchy, control, or “knowing your place.”

Secure leaders rarely need to remind others they are leaders.

How to Deal With Workplace Posturers

1. Do Not Automatically Submit to Artificial Authority

Some posturers rely on social intimidation and assumption.

People comply simply because the individual acts authoritative.

Calmly asking:

• “Can you clarify your role in this?”

• “Who made that decision?”

• “Can we loop in the appropriate person?”
  can sometimes expose how much of the authority was performative.

2. Avoid Emotional Escalation

Posturers often want emotional reactions because reactions reinforce their sense of power.

Staying calm, factual, and grounded is often more effective than direct confrontation.

3. Document Patterns

If the behavior becomes obstructive, manipulative, or retaliatory, document it.

Especially:

• Misrepresentation of authority

• Undermining

• Exclusion

• Boundary violations

• Public humiliation

• Interference with work responsibilities

Patterns matter more than isolated incidents.

4. Do Not Internalize Their Narrative

Posturers often create confusion and self-doubt in others.

You may begin questioning:

• “Am I difficult?”

• “Am I overreacting?”

• “Should I just comply?”

But sometimes what you are sensing is simply inflated ego wrapped in organizational dysfunction.

Not every dominant personality is a competent one.

Healthy Workplaces Don’t Need Performative Power

Psychologically safe workplaces do not depend on intimidation theater.

In healthy systems:

• Authority is clear

• Leadership is accountable

• Respect flows both directions

• Competence matters more than dominance

• Employees are not forced into constant status negotiations

The healthiest leaders are often the least interested in performing power.

And the healthiest workplaces are the ones where people do not have to spend half their energy managing someone else’s fragile ego.

Something important happened in Nevada last week.

It wasn’t a bill signing. It wasn’t even a floor vote. But for anyone who has spent years being told that workplace abuse is unfortunate but largely outside the reach of the law, it matters.

Nevada’s Joint Interim Standing Committee on Commerce and Labor approved a proposal to draft legislation addressing workplace abuse for the state’s 2027 legislative session, which begins February 1. The proposal calls for defining unlawful workplace abuse and developing employer requirements, anti-retaliation protections, and civil remedies.

That means Nevada lawmakers will now have an opportunity to confront a basic gap in worker protection: you can be subjected to serious psychological abuse at work without necessarily having a legal claim against the people allowing it to happen.

Current anti-discrimination law protects workers from harassment tied to characteristics such as race, sex, religion, disability, age, and other protected statuses. Those protections are essential.

But abusive conduct does not always announce itself as discrimination.

A worker can be systematically undermined. Gaslighted. Humiliated. Isolated. Buried in retaliatory discipline. Stripped of responsibilities. Set up to fail. Targeted by a group of managers. Pressured until leaving seems like the only viable option.

And the question under much of our existing employment law is still not simply, Did this employer allow serious abusive conduct?

It is often, Can you connect what happened to a legally protected reason?

That is the hole Nevada workers asked lawmakers to look at.

Workers put the issue in the room

The committee began examining protections against hostile work environments after workers came forward during public comment earlier this year and described their experiences with harassment and abuse as described by the Nevada Current on August 26, 2026.

Among them was Terry Chi, Nevada State Director for End Workplace Abuse.

Chi, formerly a marketing director at Vegas PBS, has alleged racism, retaliation and workplace mobbing in complaints involving her former employer. She told lawmakers that the stress she experienced became physical, including high blood pressure and heart palpitations that led her to take medical leave.

Her argument to legislators was straightforward: a worker should not have to belong to the right protected class—or be able to prove that protected status motivated the abuse—for severe workplace mistreatment to matter.

Other Nevada workers brought their own experiences to lawmakers.

At an April committee hearing, Las Vegas resident Freddy Godinez described what he characterized as psychological abuse following an effort to unionize performers at Chippendales. Godinez told legislators that after he and his husband helped organize workers, they were removed from the schedule and ultimately were not rehired when the show changed venues. His broader point was about power: many workers cannot afford the consequences of speaking up.

That is exactly why relying on individual workers to negotiate their own protection is not enough.

One committee member who opposed moving the proposal forward suggested that businesses could address the issue through individual contracts rather than a statewide law.

But that argument assumes a level of bargaining power most workers simply do not have.

People generally do not sit down on their first day of work and negotiate a private agreement governing gaslighting, mobbing, retaliatory performance management or psychological abuse by executives three levels above them.

They take the job.

Then, if the environment becomes abusive, they discover how much control the employer has: over their paycheck, their health insurance, their professional reputation, their references, their schedule and sometimes their ability to remain in their field.

A protection that exists only for workers powerful enough to negotiate it is not much of a worker protection.

The law has spent too long looking for the wrong thing

The legislative counsel explaining the proposal made an important distinction. The potential Nevada measure would focus not on the personal characteristic of the worker being targeted, but on the conduct itself—conduct described to the committee as unwelcome, degrading and dehumanizing.

That shift matters.

Workplace abuse is fundamentally a misuse of power.

Sometimes discrimination is part of that misuse of power. Sometimes retaliation is. Sometimes whistleblowing is the trigger. Sometimes a worker challenges an unethical practice, threatens an insecure manager, refuses to participate in dysfunction or simply becomes the person an organization decides it wants gone.

Whatever starts it, the tactics can look remarkably similar.

And workers experience the consequences regardless of whether they can fit what happened neatly into an existing legal category.

This is why End Workplace Abuse advocates for the Workplace Psychological Safety Act.

The goal is not to make every disagreement at work illegal. It is not to give workers a lawsuit because a supervisor was rude or a colleague hurt their feelings.

It is to recognize patterns of serious, harmful abuse of workplace power and give employers a meaningful responsibility to prevent and address them.

There is a difference between a difficult workplace and an abusive one. Lawmakers are capable of drawing that distinction. Employment law already draws complicated lines around discrimination, retaliation, harassment, wage violations, safety hazards and dozens of other workplace harms.

Psychological abuse should not be dismissed as uniquely impossible to define simply because we have historically chosen not to regulate it.

Nevada workers moved this forward

It is important to be precise about where things stand.

Nevada has not enacted a workplace abuse law.

The interim committee has approved having a measure drafted. The actual legislation will come next, and then so will the familiar process: language, hearings, amendments, lobbying, opposition and votes.

There is a long way to go.

But legislation does not appear out of nowhere.

It gets onto an agenda because somebody tells the truth about what is happening.

It gets studied because workers refuse to accept that nothing can be done.

It gets drafted because advocates organize, testify, educate lawmakers, and keep coming back.

That is what happened here.

Nevada workers took experiences that could easily have remained private—experiences many people carry with shame, fear or exhaustion—and turned them into a public policy question:

Why does our law allow this?

Now Nevada legislators will have the opportunity to answer it.

For workers across the country fighting for psychological safety, that alone is progress.

End Workplace Abuse advocates for the Workplace Psychological Safety Act, legislation designed to protect workers from workplace psychological abuse regardless of protected-class status and to strengthen employer accountability for preventing and addressing abuse.

Source: Michael Lyle, “Curbing workplace bullying among objectives of bills ordered up by legislative panel,” Nevada Current, August 26, 2026.

When the Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal became public, the headlines focused on numbers.

Millions of unauthorized customer accounts.
Thousands of employees fired.
Executives resigning.
Billions of dollars in fines and settlements.

The story was often told as one of widespread employee misconduct.

But that framing misses the most important lesson.

The scandal wasn’t simply about employees making unethical choices.

It was about an organizational system that made those choices predictable.

That’s why the question we should be asking isn’t whether Wells Fargo punished enough people.

It’s whether the system that rewarded harmful behavior actually changed.

Bad Behavior Doesn’t Grow in Isolation

Organizations often explain misconduct by pointing to “bad apples.”

The employee who cut corners.
The manager who ignored complaints.
The executive who pushed too hard.

Certainly, individuals make choices.

But systems influence those choices.

When promotions depend on impossible targets...
When bonuses reward results regardless of how they’re achieved...
When speaking up carries greater risk than staying silent...

People begin responding to incentives rather than values.

That’s not simply an ethics problem.

It’s a systems problem.

The Wrong Question

After a workplace scandal, organizations often want to demonstrate accountability.

People are disciplined.
Policies are rewritten.
Training is expanded.

Those actions matter.

But they don’t answer the question employees care about most:

Has the pressure that created the problem actually changed?

An organization can replace leaders while leaving the same incentives in place.
It can rewrite policies while employees continue fearing retaliation.
It can promise ethical behavior while rewarding the very metrics that encouraged misconduct in the first place.

That’s not transformation.

That’s rebranding.

Incentives Shape Culture

Every organization has an unwritten scorecard.

Employees quickly learn what actually matters.

Not what’s written in the employee handbook.

What’s rewarded.

If leaders consistently praise results while ignoring how those results are achieved, employees receive a clear message.

Performance comes first.

Everything else comes second.

Over time, that message becomes culture.

Not because employees are inherently unethical.

Because organizations teach people what success looks like.

What Evidence Would Convince You?

Imagine Wells Fargo announced today that its culture had fundamentally changed.

What evidence would actually persuade you?

I wouldn’t start with another ethics campaign.

I’d ask questions like these:

• Have performance incentives been redesigned to reward ethical decision-making, not just sales outcomes?

• Do employees report feeling safe raising concerns about unrealistic expectations?

• Are managers evaluated on how they achieve results—not simply whether they achieve them?

• Has trust in leadership increased?

• Are retaliation complaints declining?

• Does the board regularly review psychological safety alongside financial performance?

• Are these outcomes independently measured and transparently reported?

Those answers would tell us whether the culture changed.

A mission statement wouldn’t.

Accountability Is More Than Punishment

One of the biggest misconceptions about accountability is that it begins after misconduct occurs.

Real accountability begins much earlier.

It asks:

What conditions made this behavior likely in the first place?

Were incentives aligned with organizational values?
Did employees believe they could challenge unrealistic expectations?
Did managers have reasons to stop harmful practices—or reasons to ignore them?

Punishing people without changing those conditions simply prepares the organization to repeat the cycle.

The Lesson Every Organization Should Learn

The Wells Fargo scandal wasn’t unique.

Organizations across every industry create unintended incentives.

Hospitals reward patient volume.
Manufacturers reward speed.
Technology companies reward growth.
Nonprofits reward fundraising.
Law firms reward billable hours.
Universities reward publication.

Every organization has metrics.

The question isn’t whether metrics exist.

The question is whether those metrics encourage the behaviors the organization claims to value.

When they don’t, culture eventually follows the incentives—not the mission statement.

The Question That Matters

The lasting lesson from Wells Fargo isn’t that organizations should punish unethical behavior.

It’s that organizations should examine the systems that make unethical behavior predictable.

The next time a company announces that it has disciplined employees after a workplace scandal, don’t stop there.

Ask another question.

What changed about the system that rewarded the behavior in the first place?

Until organizations are expected to demonstrate that incentives, accountability, and psychological safety are aligned, we’ll continue treating misconduct as an individual failure instead of asking whether the organization quietly designed it into the system.

Because people don’t work in a vacuum.

They work in systems.

And systems shape behavior.

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Most people learn about authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful parenting styles in psychology or child development classes.

What gets talked about far less is how these same relational dynamics show up in workplaces every day.

Managers shape environments the same way parents shape households:
through power, communication, boundaries, emotional regulation, expectations, and safety.

And just like children, employees adapt to survive the environment they’re in.

Some workplaces create confidence, growth, and psychological safety.
Others create fear, hypervigilance, dependency, or disengagement.

Understanding these four styles can help explain why some workplaces feel empowering — while others feel emotionally exhausting.

1. Authoritarian Management

“Do what I say because I said so.”

Authoritarian parenting is high-control and low-empathy.
The same pattern appears in authoritarian workplaces.

These managers often:

• Demand obedience over collaboration

• Use fear, intimidation, or humiliation

• Punish mistakes harshly

• Discourage questioning decisions

• Equate disagreement with disrespect

• Micromanage excessively

• Withhold psychological safety

Employees in these environments often become:

• Fearful of speaking up

• Overly dependent on approval

• Hypervigilant

• Burned out

• Less creative and innovative

• Focused on survival rather than growth

Authoritarian managers often believe they are “maintaining standards,” but what they frequently create is compliance without trust.

The problem is that fear can produce short-term obedience while destroying long-term engagement.

Employees stop bringing problems forward.
They hide mistakes.
They disengage emotionally.
And eventually, many leave.

This style is especially common in organizations where hierarchy matters more than learning.

2. Permissive Management

“I don’t want conflict.”

Permissive parenting is high-empathy but low-boundary.
In workplaces, permissive managers may be kind people — but ineffective leaders.

These managers often:

• Avoid accountability conversations

• Fail to address harmful behavior

• Let stronger personalities dominate teams

• Struggle with consistency

• Avoid difficult decisions

• Say yes too often

• Confuse being liked with leading well

At first, permissive managers can seem easier to work with than authoritarian ones.

But over time, employees often experience:

• Confusion

• Unequal workloads

• Team resentment

• Lack of direction

• Burnout among high performers

• Unchecked bullying or dysfunction

In psychologically unsafe workplaces, permissive leadership can unintentionally enable abuse.

When harmful behavior is tolerated because leadership avoids discomfort, employees learn:
“No one is going to protect us.”

That loss of trust matters deeply.

3. Neglectful (or Uninvolved) Management

“You’re on your own.”

Neglectful parenting is low-support and low-structure.
In workplaces, this often looks like absentee leadership.

These managers may:

• Be emotionally unavailable

• Provide little guidance

• Fail to advocate for employees

• Ignore team conflict

• Disappear during crises

• Offer little feedback or recognition

• Leave employees unsupported and isolated

This environment often creates:

• Anxiety

• Lack of clarity

• Role confusion

• Learned helplessness

• Disengagement

• Internal competition

• High turnover

Employees under neglectful leadership often feel abandoned rather than managed.

Ironically, organizations sometimes mistake neglectful management for “empowerment” or “autonomy.”

But true autonomy requires support, trust, communication, and clarity.

Abandonment is not empowerment.

4. Authoritative Management

“High standards. High support.”

Authoritative parenting is considered the healthiest model in developmental psychology because it combines:

• Clear expectations

• Emotional safety

• Accountability

• Communication

• Consistency

• Respect

The workplace equivalent is authoritative leadership.

These managers:

• Set clear expectations

• Hold boundaries consistently

• Give feedback without humiliation

• Encourage questions

• Address conflict directly

• Support employee growth

• Build trust through predictability and fairness

Authoritative leaders understand something critical:

Psychological safety does not mean the absence of accountability.
It means accountability without fear.

Employees in these environments are more likely to:

• Innovate

• Speak up early about problems

• Recover from mistakes

• Collaborate effectively

• Stay engaged long-term

• Feel loyalty toward the organization

Research consistently shows that psychologically safe teams outperform fear-based ones over time.

Because when people feel safe, they think more clearly.
They communicate more honestly.
And they contribute more fully.

Why This Framework Matters

Many workplace cultures normalize authoritarian management while dismissing its emotional consequences.

Fear-based leadership is often reframed as:

• “High standards”

• “Pressure”

• “Tough leadership”

• “Just business”

• “Performance culture”

But the human nervous system does not neatly separate workplace experiences from psychological impact.

Chronic humiliation, unpredictability, exclusion, and fear affect people biologically and emotionally — whether they happen at home or at work.

And just as unhealthy parenting patterns shape children’s development, unhealthy management patterns shape organizational culture.

Employees adapt to survive environments.

Some become quiet.
Some become hyperproductive.
Some become conflict-avoidant.
Some become emotionally numb.
Some leave entirely.

The question organizations should ask is not:
“Are employees complying?”

The question should be:
“What kind of environment are we training people to survive?”

Healthy Workplaces Are Built — Not Demanded

Strong leadership is not about dominance.
It is not about control through fear.
And it is not about avoiding accountability.

Healthy leadership balances:

• Expectations with support

• Structure with humanity

• Accountability with dignity

The best managers do not create obedience.

They create environments where people can think, contribute, grow, and feel psychologically safe enough to do their best work.

And that distinction changes everything.

For years, workers have been told that mental health matters.

Employers launch wellness initiatives. Government agencies publish guidance about workplace stress. The U.S. Surgeon General has declared psychological safety a foundation of workplace well-being. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health warns about psychosocial hazards. The World Health Organization recognizes bullying, authoritarian supervision, excessive workloads, lack of control, discrimination, and negative workplace cultures as risks to mental health.

But there is an enormous difference between recognizing a workplace hazard and legally requiring employers to prevent it.

A July 2026 federal appeals court decision makes that gap impossible to ignore.

In Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down an OSHA regulation requiring employers to record certain work-related mental illnesses. The case involved an Exxon employee who entered a burning refinery unit twice during an emergency response and was subsequently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder by multiple health professionals. OSHA had cited Exxon for failing to record the worker’s PTSD as a work-related illness.

The court vacated both the citation and the rule.

The significance extends well beyond an OSHA form.

The court did not say psychological harm isn’t real

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling is sometimes summarized as holding that OSHA cannot regulate workplace mental health. The actual decision is narrower.

The court considered whether Congress gave OSHA authority under Section 8 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act to require employers to record work-related mental illnesses. It concluded that it did not. Looking at the statutory context and definitions used around the time the OSH Act was enacted in 1970, the court determined that “illnesses” in that particular provision referred to physical rather than mental ailments.

That distinction matters. The decision does not establish that workplaces cannot cause psychological injury, nor does it decide every possible question about OSHA’s authority over psychosocial hazards.

But it does reveal a much larger problem.

We are trying to address 21st-century knowledge about workplace health through laws written for a very different understanding of occupational safety.

And courts are becoming less willing to let federal agencies bridge that gap themselves.

The post-Chevron world makes that gap bigger

The Fifth Circuit decision did not emerge in isolation.

In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the longstanding Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Under Chevron, courts had sometimes deferred to reasonable agency interpretations when federal statutes were ambiguous.

After Loper Bright, courts must exercise their own independent judgment about whether an agency has acted within the authority Congress gave it.

That is exactly what the Fifth Circuit did with OSHA.

From one perspective, this is an important separation-of-powers principle: if Congress wants an agency to exercise authority, Congress should clearly give it that authority.

But applied to workplace health, it creates an obvious practical problem. Our understanding of occupational harm evolves far faster than Congress rewrites statutes.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act was enacted in 1970.

The modern science of psychosocial hazards, organizational stress, trauma, bullying, psychological safety, and work-related mental health has developed enormously since then.

Yet whether regulators can respond to that science may increasingly depend on what judges conclude Congress meant by words written more than half a century ago.

Meanwhile, the government’s own health agencies recognize the hazard

This part is where the regulatory contradiction becomes particularly striking.

NIOSH, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, defines psychosocial hazards as workplace conditions capable of causing stress, strain, interpersonal problems, and psychological or physical harm. Its researchers have warned that work-related psychosocial hazards are approaching or surpassing many traditional occupational hazards in their contribution to poor health, disability, injury, and costs. NIOSH cites associations with depression, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, sleep disturbance, burnout, and suicidal ideation.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being goes further. Its first essential is Protection from Harm, and it expressly describes safety as protection from both physical and nonphysical harm, including bullying and harassment. The framework calls physical and psychological safety a critical foundation for workplace mental health.

OSHA itself tells employers that work can contribute to mental health challenges and publishes guidance on addressing workplace stress and supporting employee mental health.

International health authorities have reached similar conclusions. The World Health Organization identifies excessive workloads, low job control, authoritarian supervision, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, exclusion, and organizational cultures that enable negative behavior among the psychosocial risks workers can face.

So the scientific and public-health question is increasingly settled:

Work can cause psychological harm. How work is organized matters. How workers are treated matters.

The unresolved question is what employers are legally required to do about it.

OSHA was built primarily around physical danger

The OSH Act’s architecture shows why psychological harm fits awkwardly into the existing federal system.

OSHA’s General Duty Clause requires employers to provide workplaces free from recognized hazards that cause or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. To establish a violation, OSHA generally must show a recognized serious hazard and a feasible way of correcting it.

That framework makes intuitive sense for an unguarded machine, toxic chemical, dangerous trench, or extreme heat.

It becomes far harder to apply to a supervisor systematically isolating an employee, sabotaging their work, manufacturing performance problems, imposing impossible workloads, threatening their livelihood, or mobilizing coworkers against them.

The hazard may be real. The resulting health damage may be profound.

But the legal machinery was not designed around it.

Civil rights law leaves another major gap

Workers often discover a second limitation only after seeking help.

Federal anti-discrimination law prohibits workplace harassment when it is connected to a legally protected characteristic such as race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, or age. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission explicitly explains that personality conflicts, criticism, or mistreatment standing alone are not covered by federal EEO law unless the conduct is tied to a protected characteristic.

That means two workers can experience essentially identical abusive conduct and have very different legal rights depending on why the perpetrator targeted them.

A manager might repeatedly undermine a worker because she is a woman, because he has a disability, because she exposed wrongdoing, because he threatened an insecure manager’s status, because she challenged an unethical practice—or simply because the manager decided this particular employee was expendable.

Some of those circumstances may trigger existing laws.

Others may not.

The psychological impact does not necessarily care which legal category applies.

Workers’ compensation is moving—but it addresses a different problem

Some states are beginning to recognize psychological injuries more clearly through workers’ compensation.

New York, for example, expanded its workers’ compensation law so that any worker may file certain claims involving mental injury caused by extraordinary work-related stress, rather than limiting that possibility to specified first responders. The state’s workers’ compensation system also maintains treatment guidelines for PTSD and work-related depressive disorders.

That is meaningful progress.

But workers’ compensation largely asks a question after something has gone wrong: Has work caused an injury serious enough to qualify for benefits?

Psychological safety law asks an earlier question:

What was the employer required to do to prevent and stop the harmful conduct in the first place?

Those are not the same policy problem.

This is the regulatory landscape the Workplace Psychological Safety Act enters

The Workplace Psychological Safety Act is not based on the idea that OSHA simply forgot to write the right regulation.

It addresses a structural hole in American employment law.

Rhode Island’s 2026 Workplace Psychological Safety Act, S2502, illustrates the approach. Its stated purpose is to ensure employees’ psychological safety without regard to protected-class status by holding employers accountable for workplace bullying.

Rather than requiring a worker to first develop PTSD, depression, or another diagnosable condition, the legislation focuses on workplace conduct and employer behavior.

It defines actionable bullying as severe or pervasive degrading and dehumanizing conduct that creates a threatening, hostile, or abusive environment and unreasonably interferes with the employee’s work. Examples in the bill include false accusations, sabotage, ostracism, removal of responsibilities, unreasonable workloads, excessive monitoring, persistent hypercriticism, impossible deadlines, pressure to surrender rights or behave unethically, retaliation, and repeated verbal abuse. It expressly excludes ordinary disagreements, constructive feedback, and minor isolated incidents unless they meet the severe-or-pervasive threshold.

Just as importantly, it creates preventive and responsive duties for employers: timely responses to complaints, fair investigations, transparent complaint and disciplinary processes, recordkeeping, anti-bullying and anti-retaliation policies, and employee training. The legislation also provides a private right of action and remedies when its requirements are violated.

That is a fundamentally different regulatory model.

It does not wait for a worker to become clinically ill and then ask whether that illness can be proven to have originated at work.

It asks whether the employer allowed an abusive workplace environment to develop—and whether the employer took reasonable steps to prevent and correct it.

Prevention should not require a diagnosis

The Exxon case illustrates how backwards the current system can become.

A worker survived an industrial fire. Multiple clinicians diagnosed him with work-related PTSD. The resulting federal litigation ultimately revolved not around how to prevent psychological injury, but around whether a statute passed in 1970 authorized OSHA to put that diagnosis on an injury log.

That is not a criticism of the judges for answering the statutory question before them.

It is a criticism of the regulatory vacuum that made the question so consequential.

If courts increasingly insist that agencies cannot extend old laws into areas Congress did not clearly address, then legislatures have an even greater responsibility to address those areas explicitly.

We should not have to pretend that psychological harm is physical harm to make it legally visible.

We should not have to transform every case of workplace abuse into a discrimination claim to make it legally actionable.

And workers should not have to become sick enough to qualify for workers’ compensation before an employer has a meaningful obligation to intervene.

The science has already changed.

Our public-health institutions already recognize the problem.

What is missing is the law.

That is the space the Workplace Psychological Safety Act is intended to fill.

References

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, No. 25-60108, decided July 21, 2026.

• U.S. Supreme Court, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).

• National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, “An Urgent Call to Address Work-related Psychosocial Hazards and Improve Worker Well-being.”

• U.S. Surgeon General, Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being.

• Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Workplace Stress resources and OSH Act General Duty Clause.

• World Health Organization, “Mental Health at Work” and Guidelines on Mental Health at Work.

• U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, guidance on harassment and federal EEO protections.

• New York State, expansion of workers’ compensation coverage for specified work-related mental injuries.

• Rhode Island General Assembly, 2026-S 2502, Workplace Psychological Safety Act.

There is an obvious abandonment that happens in workplace abuse.

Someone with power harms you, and the people or systems that are supposed to protect you don’t.

Your manager dismisses it.
HR minimizes it.
Coworkers who privately agree with you become quiet when speaking carries risk.
An investigation reduces a pattern of behavior to isolated incidents.
Leadership protects the person with power.
The institution you believed would intervene doesn’t.

That is the first abandonment.

But there is another abandonment that can happen afterward.

It is quieter, harder to recognize, and sometimes lasts long after we’ve left the workplace.

We follow the institution away from ourselves.

The Second Abandonment

The organization says:
“Maybe it wasn’t that serious.”

And we start wondering:
Was it really that serious?

They say:
“We couldn’t substantiate your complaint.”

We think:
Maybe I’m seeing this wrong.

A manager tells us we’re too sensitive.
We start investigating our sensitivity.

HR asks what we could have done differently.
We spend months examining what we could have done differently.

Someone questions our credibility.
We assemble another 47 pages of documentation to prove that we deserve to be believed.

The first abandonment is:
They didn’t protect me.

The second is:
I stopped protecting myself while trying to convince them that I deserved protection.

When Someone With Power Hurts Us

Workplace abuse happens between adults.

But the emotional experience it creates can sometimes touch something much older.

Human beings are profoundly dependent on others early in life. We need adults to notice distress, provide comfort, offer protection, and help us make sense of experiences we cannot yet understand ourselves.

When those needs aren’t reliably met, children adapt.

Some become extraordinarily self-reliant.
Some become hypervigilant.
Some learn to please.
Some learn to perform.
Some become highly attuned to other people’s moods.
Some learn that maintaining connection requires suppressing their own needs.

And some carry an enduring hunger for someone to finally say:

I see what is happening to you.
I believe you.
You matter.
I’ll protect you.

The concept of “mother hunger,” associated with therapist and author Kelly McDaniel, describes the longing that can develop when important needs for nurturing, protection, and guidance were insufficiently met by a mother or primary caregiver.

Not everyone who experiences workplace abuse has this history.

And childhood wounds do not cause workplace abuse.

But when current harm collides with an older experience of not being protected, the emotional impact can become enormous.

Because the nervous system may not experience the workplace betrayal simply as:

My employer handled this badly.

Some part of us may experience something much more painful:

Again.

Again, someone with power is hurting me.
Again, nobody is stopping it.
Again, I have to convince someone that my pain matters.
Again, nobody came.

The Search for the Person Who Will Finally Understand

This part may help explain something I’ve seen repeatedly among people experiencing workplace abuse:

The extraordinary amount of energy spent trying to make the institution understand.

Another email.
Another meeting.
Another timeline.
Another complaint.
Another carefully worded explanation.
Another attempt to show HR the pattern.
Another conversation with the manager.
Another packet of documentation.

Maybe if I explain it better, they’ll understand.
Maybe if I produce enough evidence, they’ll believe me.
Maybe if I prove I’m a good employee, they’ll realize I’m not the problem.
Maybe if they understand how badly this has affected me, they’ll finally care.

Sometimes these actions are strategically necessary.

Documentation matters.
Reporting matters.
Organizing matters.
Legal action matters.
Accountability matters.

But there is an important psychological question underneath all of that:

What am I trying to obtain from this person or institution?

Justice?
A documented record?
A legal remedy?
Protection for other workers?

Or something much harder for an abusive system to provide?

The feeling that someone finally came for me.

When Healing Becomes Dependent on the Person Who Hurt Us

This part is where the pursuit of accountability can become tangled with the pursuit of emotional repair.

If HR would just acknowledge what happened, I could move on.
If my manager apologized sincerely, I could heal.
If the investigation vindicated me, I’d know I wasn’t crazy.
If my coworkers finally spoke up, I’d know I wasn’t alone.
If the company admitted what it did, everything would make sense.

There is nothing unreasonable about wanting those things.

People who cause harm should acknowledge it.
Organizations should repair harm.
Workers deserve accountability.

But there is a painful danger in making their acknowledgment the prerequisite for our recovery.

Because now the institution that harmed us has become the gatekeeper of our healing.

The people who abandoned us are being asked to prove that we weren’t worth abandoning.

And sometimes they never will.

What If Adult You Came Instead?

Imagine a small child comes running toward you.

Someone has frightened her.
She feels rejected, humiliated, confused, and alone.

She says:
Something is wrong.
Someone is hurting me.
I’m scared.

You probably wouldn’t leave her standing there while you chased after the person who hurt her.

“Excuse me! Don’t you understand what you’re doing to her?”

You wouldn’t spend hours trying to persuade that person that the child’s feelings were legitimate.

You wouldn’t turn back and say:

“They say you’re too sensitive. Let’s investigate that.”

You would go to the child.

You would kneel beside her.

I see you.
I believe you.
That hurt.
You don’t have to convince me.
I’m here.
We’ll figure out what to do next.

That is the shift.

Instead of spending all of our emotional energy chasing the person who hurt us, we turn toward the person who was hurt.

Ourselves.

“I Came.”

Inner-child work can sound like a soft concept.

In the context of workplace abuse, I think it can be radical.

Because this concept isn’t simply self-soothing.

It is self-loyalty.

Adult You doesn’t tell the frightened part:
“Everything is okay.”

Sometimes everything is absolutely not okay.

Adult You says:
I see that this isn’t okay. And I’m staying with you while we decide what to do.

That is very different.

The younger part says:
Make them understand.

Adult You says:
I understand.

The younger part says:
Make them believe me.

Adult You says:
I believe you.

The younger part says:
Make them care.

Adult You says:
I care.

And perhaps the most painful one:
Please, somebody come get me.

Adult You answers:
I came.

Comfort Is Not Compliance

This distinction matters enormously in conversations about workplace abuse.

Too often, workers are offered psychological tools as substitutes for structural change.

Build resilience.
Manage your stress.
Meditate.
Use the EAP.
Take a mental health day.
Develop better coping skills.

Then return to the same harmful environment.

That idea isn’t what we’re talking about.

Workers should not have to heal themselves enough to tolerate abuse.

The purpose of self-comfort isn’t to convince ourselves that an unsafe situation is safe.

It’s to create enough internal safety to see the situation clearly.

Your distress may contain information.
Your anger may contain information.
Your dread on Sunday night may contain information.
Your body’s reaction when your supervisor walks into the room may contain information.

Adult You doesn’t automatically silence those signals.

Adult You listens.

And then decides what to do.

Self-Comfort Can Lead to Action

Sometimes we imagine emotional regulation as the opposite of action.

It isn’t.

When we’re desperately trying to get someone else to restore our sense of safety, our choices can become organized around them.

How do I make them understand?
How do I get them to stop?
What should I say so they don’t retaliate?
What documentation will finally convince HR?
How do I prove I’m not the problem?

Self-comfort can create a different starting point.

I believe myself. Now what serves me?

Maybe Adult You documents.
Maybe Adult You reports.
Maybe Adult You consults an attorney.
Maybe Adult You organizes with coworkers.
Maybe Adult You sets a boundary.
Maybe Adult You takes medical leave.
Maybe Adult You makes a financial plan.
Maybe Adult You looks for another job.
Maybe Adult You fights.
Maybe Adult You walks away.

The idea is for action to come from clarity rather than desperation.

Two Kinds of Protection

Ultimately, workers need two forms of protection.

The first is collective and structural protection.

Employers must prevent and address abuse.
HR systems must be accountable.
Workers need protection from retaliation.
Investigations must be fair and independent.
Unions must protect members.
Regulators and courts need meaningful mechanisms for addressing harm.
Laws must constrain abuses of workplace power.

Workers should never be expected to psychologically manage their way around abusive systems.

That is why structural reform matters.

But there is another form of protection we can develop while fighting for the first:
internal protection.

I will not abandon my perception simply because someone with more power disagrees with it.
I will not confuse an organization’s decision with objective truth.
I will not spend endless energy understanding someone who is hurting me while ignoring the person being hurt.
I will not require the people who failed me to determine whether my experience was real.

I can pursue accountability without handing someone else authority over my reality.

Relocating Authority Back Inside Ourselves

This part may be one of the most overlooked parts of worker empowerment.

Empowerment isn’t only giving workers more external power.

It can also mean helping people relocate authority over their own experience back inside themselves.

HR says nothing happened.
HR concluded that what happened didn’t violate its policy. I still know what I experienced.

My manager thinks I’m difficult.
My manager is entitled to an opinion about me. I am entitled to decide whether this relationship is acceptable to me.

My coworkers won’t speak up.
Their silence doesn’t erase what I witnessed.

The organization won’t acknowledge the harm.
I can demand accountability without making their acknowledgment a prerequisite for my recovery.

These perspectives don’t make institutional accountability less important.
They make institutional failure less capable of taking us with it.

Stop Following Them Away From Yourself

Workplace abuse can produce a profound betrayal:
Someone with power hurts us, and the people who should intervene don’t.
We should name that failure.
We should fight to change the systems that allow it.
We should demand accountability.

But while doing that, there is another promise we can make.

I will not join them in abandoning me.

When they minimize what happened, I won’t automatically minimize it too.
When they question my perception, I won’t automatically surrender it.
When they refuse to care for me, I won’t conclude that I’m unworthy of care.
When they walk away from my pain, I won’t follow them.

I will turn around.
I will find the part of me still standing there waiting for somebody to come.
And instead of chasing the people who left, I will walk toward her.

You don’t have to convince me.
I see what happened.
I believe you.
I’m here.
We’ll figure out what comes next.

Perhaps healing from workplace abuse isn’t only about getting someone else to finally acknowledge what happened.

Perhaps part of healing is becoming the person who no longer leaves ourselves behind.

The frightened part asks:
“Is anybody coming?”

And Adult You answers:
“I came.”

In 2017, Uber became synonymous with toxic workplace culture.

Former engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post describing sexual harassment, retaliation, and an HR department that repeatedly failed to act. Her account sparked investigations, intense media scrutiny, executive departures, and ultimately the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick.

For many people, that became the story.

The CEO resigned.

Problem solved.

But that’s the wrong ending.

The real question is one we rarely ask:

How do we know employees actually experienced a safer workplace afterward?

Leadership Changes Are Easy to Measure

When an organization faces public scrutiny, visible actions follow.

Executives resign.
Policies are rewritten.
New executives are hired.
Consultants are brought in.
Mandatory training is rolled out.

Companies often describe these steps as evidence of transformation.

They’re not.

They’re evidence that something was done.

Whether those actions actually changed employees’ daily experience is an entirely different question.

Culture Isn’t What Leaders Say

Organizations frequently announce that they’re committed to changing culture.

That’s a good place to start.

It’s not proof that change occurred.

Culture isn’t measured by a CEO’s speech.
It isn’t measured by revised policies.
It isn’t measured by the number of hours employees spend in compliance training.

Culture is measured by what happens on an ordinary Tuesday.

Can employees raise concerns without fear?
Do managers intervene early when problems emerge?
Are investigations trusted?
Do workers face consequences when they mistreat others?
Do employees believe the organization values their psychological safety as much as its financial performance?

Those are the questions that define culture.

The Uber Lesson Is Bigger Than Uber

Uber’s story wasn’t unique.

It was simply highly visible.

Every year, organizations across every industry respond to allegations of workplace abuse by announcing reforms.

Some of those reforms undoubtedly improve workplaces.

Others become little more than public relations exercises.

The problem is that we rarely distinguish between the two.

Once the headlines fade, public attention moves on.

Employees remain.

What Evidence Would Convince You?

Imagine Uber announced today that its culture had fundamentally changed.

What evidence would you want to see?

Personally, I wouldn’t start with another statement from leadership.

I’d ask questions like these:

• Do employees report greater psychological safety than they did before?

• Has trust in reporting misconduct increased?

• Are retaliation complaints declining?

• Do employees believe investigations are fair?

• Are abusive managers consistently held accountable, regardless of performance?

• Are these improvements being measured independently rather than solely by the company?

Those answers would tell us far more than another culture campaign.

Accountability Is a System

One of the biggest misconceptions about workplace abuse is that it’s primarily about personalities.

Replace the difficult executive.
Fire the abusive manager.
Hire someone new.

Problem solved.

Sometimes leadership change is necessary.

But it isn’t sufficient.

Healthy workplaces are built through systems that make abuse difficult to sustain.

Independent reporting mechanisms.
Protection against retaliation.
Transparent investigations.

Leaders evaluated on how safely people experience working for them—not just on business results.

Reliable data showing whether employees actually trust those systems.

Those are the foundations of accountability.

The Standard We Should Expect

When a bridge is repaired, engineers inspect it.
When an aircraft has a safety issue, investigators verify the fix.
When a hospital changes its procedures, patient outcomes are measured.

We expect evidence before declaring a physical environment safe.

Workplaces should be no different.

Organizations shouldn’t simply tell us their culture has improved.

They should be able to demonstrate it.

Not because the public deserves reassurance.

Because employees deserve confidence that they can go to work without fear.

The Question That Matters

Uber’s story reminds us that changing leadership and changing culture are not the same thing.

The next time a workplace scandal dominates the news, don’t stop at who resigned.
Don’t stop at who apologized.
Don’t stop at who was hired to replace them.

Ask the question that matters most:

What evidence shows employees are actually safer today than they were before?

Until organizations are expected to answer that question with measurable outcomes—not just promises—we’ll continue confusing organizational change with organizational accountability.

Help fund the Workplace Scorecard

Five years after Evan Seyfried’s death by suicide, the wrongful death lawsuit against Kroger has ended—not with a jury verdict but with a confidential settlement. His family receives compensation. Kroger avoids the uncertainty of trial. The litigation is over.

But one opportunity was lost: the chance for a court to further define an employer’s legal responsibility when workplace psychosocial hazards contribute to an employee’s suicide. A jury verdict could have helped shape how courts evaluate those claims in future cases.

The case has closed. The legal gap it exposed has not.

The debate shouldn’t begin and end with whether two managers behaved badly. The more important question is whether Kroger exercised reasonable care once a psychosocial hazard became apparent.

Every workplace experiences conflict. The difference is whether employers develop systems to identify, investigate, and address patterns of abuse, protect workers from retaliation, and stop foreseeable harm before it escalates.

That’s the principle we apply to physical safety. Employers are expected to identify hazards, assess foreseeable risks, and take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of serious harm.

Psychological safety should be no different. The goal isn’t to regulate personalities; it’s to require employers to exercise reasonable care when psychosocial hazards become apparent. That’s exactly what occupational safety law has always done.

Research increasingly links exposure to psychosocial hazards to anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, cardiovascular disease, burnout, and suicidal ideation. Yet U.S. workplace law largely addresses psychological harm only when it falls within the narrow categories of unlawful discrimination or harassment.

That gap in the law leaves millions of workers without meaningful protection. We would never wait until someone lost a hand before requiring an employer to install a machine guard. Yet when the hazard is psychosocial, our legal system often waits until someone has already lost their health, career, or even life before asking whether anything should have been done.

Even then, legal accountability remains uncertain. Absent discrimination, retaliation, or another recognized legal claim, many workers have little or no direct legal remedy even when severe psychological harm results from foreseeable psychosocial hazards.

Confidential settlements have value. They spare families years of additional pain, provide compensation, and reduce the emotional burden of trial.

But settlements are designed to resolve individual disputes—not solve systemic problems. They rarely establish new legal standards, reveal everything that happened, or tell other employers exactly what must change.

We cannot rely on litigation alone to make workplaces psychologically safe.

We need prevention.

Employers should have clear responsibilities to identify, assess, and manage psychosocial hazards, investigate complaints independently, protect workers from retaliation, correct unsafe conditions, and monitor whether interventions are actually working.

Just as importantly, lawmakers must recognize that psychological safety is a workplace safety issue.

That’s the direction workplace law should move—from reacting to psychological injury after it occurs to preventing foreseeable harm before it does.

No family should have to depend on a wrongful death lawsuit to ask whether a workplace could have prevented psychological harm.

The Evan Seyfried settlement should not be remembered as the end of a lawsuit. It should be remembered as the moment we began treating psychological safety with the same seriousness we treat physical safety.

This is one of the hardest decisions.

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Jason Arday spent much of his academic career studying what happens when institutions that claim to value merit operate through systems shaped by racism, ableism, elitism, and exclusion.

Then, in the final weeks of his life, he became the center of a public controversy that raises an uncomfortable question for every workplace:

Where is the line between legitimate accountability and abuse?

Arday, a sociologist of education, became the youngest Black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge when he was appointed in 2023 at age 37. His scholarship focused heavily on racial inequality, education, neurodiversity, and the barriers faced by people who do not fit the traditional image of who belongs in elite institutions.

In July and August 2026, serious questions were raised publicly about portions of his academic work, qualifications, and claims about some of his achievements. Arday denied plagiarism, while acknowledging mistakes in his doctoral work. Liverpool John Moores University, which awarded his doctorate, had previously investigated the allegations and upheld the degree. Cambridge subsequently announced a new investigation after receiving additional information.

Arday resigned from Cambridge on August 5.

In his resignation statement, he said that criticism was part of academic life but that what had happened to him had gone beyond scholarly disagreement. He described relentless accusations, speculation, and public commentary and said the experience had taken a profound toll on him and his family.

Nine days later, Arday was found dead at age 41. Police described his death as unexpected but not suspicious. His family subsequently said that he had experienced sustained abuse for years and that the campaign against him had become overwhelming.

We should be careful about drawing conclusions that the available evidence cannot establish. We do not know that every criticism of Arday was unfair. We should not turn legitimate questions about academic integrity into something they are not.

But that is exactly why his story matters to the workplace abuse movement.

Because due process and psychological safety must be able to exist at the same time.

Accountability does not require dehumanization

One of the most damaging myths about workplace abuse is that protecting workers from abuse means protecting them from criticism, discipline, investigation, or consequences.

It does not.

Organizations need mechanisms for investigating misconduct. Workers need to be accountable for their actions. Academic institutions in particular have an obligation to protect research integrity.

But accountability should be a process, not a public destruction ritual.

A psychologically safe accountability process asks:

Was the concern investigated fairly?

Was the worker given an opportunity to respond?

Were conclusions proportional to the available evidence?

Was confidential information protected where possible?

Were irrelevant attacks on the person’s identity, personality, history, or worth allowed to become part of the process?

Was the worker treated as a human being while the facts were examined?

And did the institution intervene when legitimate scrutiny expanded into harassment, threats, humiliation, or abuse?

Those questions matter whether the worker ultimately did something wrong or not.

The International Labour Organization’s Convention 190 recognizes violence and harassment in the world of work as conduct capable of causing physical, psychological, sexual, or economic harm. Its framework is important precisely because workplace harm cannot be reduced to whether someone technically violated an employment rule. The manner in which power is exercised matters too.

Arday had already written about being “more to prove and more to lose”

There is something particularly painful about revisiting Arday’s scholarship now.

In 2022, he published a paper titled “More to prove and more to lose”: Race, racism and precarious employment in higher education. His work examined the unequal conditions under which Black academics attempt to build careers inside institutions where whiteness remains structurally dominant.

A year later, Arday and sociologist Chantelle Jessica Lewis published research examining the intersection of race and neurodiversity in higher education.

They described Black neurodivergent academics as facing a form of “double jeopardy”: navigating racial inequality while simultaneously functioning inside institutions organized around neurotypical assumptions about intelligence, professionalism, communication, achievement, and merit.

Their argument was larger than interpersonal prejudice.

It was about systems.

Institutions establish an image of what competence looks like. What professionalism sounds like. How a credible person communicates. How a successful career is supposed to unfold.

People whose lives do not follow that template may spend enormous amounts of energy proving that they belong.

And when something goes wrong, marginalized workers can discover that their mistakes are not treated merely as their mistakes.

They become evidence.

Evidence about whether diversity initiatives work.

Evidence about whether people from their racial group deserve opportunities.

Evidence about whether accommodations undermine standards.

Evidence about whether they were ever qualified to be there in the first place.

That is a burden workers from dominant groups rarely carry.

Indeed, after Arday’s death, Cambridge’s vice-chancellor explicitly warned against using his individual case to question the legitimacy or scholarship of other faculty members of color.

That warning tells us something important.

One employee’s conduct should never become a referendum on an entire class of people.

When scrutiny becomes identity-based

Cambridge has said that it provided Arday with significant mental-health and security support, including screening racist correspondence and installing panic alarms. Those details matter.

They demonstrate that whatever else may be disputed about the controversy surrounding him, racist abuse directed at Arday was sufficiently serious that extraordinary protective measures were put in place.

That is no longer ordinary professional criticism.

And it illustrates a pattern familiar to many targets of workplace abuse.

The original dispute may concern work.

Then the boundaries expand.

The worker’s character becomes the issue.

Then their credibility.

Then their motives.

Then their entire career.

Then people begin searching backward for additional evidence that the person was always defective, fraudulent, unstable, difficult, or undeserving.

Eventually the question being debated is no longer What happened?

It becomes What kind of person is this?

That transition is critical.

Accountability evaluates conduct.

Abuse attacks identity.

Psychological safety matters most when something goes wrong

It is easy for an organization to talk about dignity, inclusion, wellness, and psychological safety when everyone is getting along.

The real test comes when there is conflict.

Or a complaint.

Or an accusation.

Or a mistake.

Or an employee whom the institution suddenly considers reputationally inconvenient.

Psychological safety does not mean saying, “Nothing bad will ever happen to you here.”

It means building systems that say:

Even when something goes wrong, we will not abandon fairness.

We will investigate rather than speculate.

We will distinguish allegations from findings.

We will separate relevant evidence from character assassination.

We will recognize power imbalances.

We will intervene against harassment.

We will not make humiliation part of the disciplinary process.

And we will remember that the person whose conduct is under review remains a person.

Research on workplace bullying and harassment consistently shows why these safeguards matter. A 2024 study examining workplace bullying and harassment found associations not merely with general distress but with depression and anxiety serious enough to require health services. The ILO similarly identifies bullying and harassment as psychosocial hazards capable of undermining mental and physical health.

This is why an employee assistance program, counseling referral, or wellness resource can never substitute for preventing the harmful conditions in the first place.

You cannot wellness-program your way out of an unsafe system.

Institutions cannot outsource abuse

There is another lesson here that extends well beyond Cambridge.

Modern workplace abuse does not necessarily stay inside the workplace.

A controversy can move from internal communications to social media, news coverage, professional networks, online forums, and political commentary almost instantly.

That does not mean an employer controls everything said about a worker.

It does mean institutions need to think differently about their responsibility when an employment dispute turns into sustained external harassment.

What happens when an employee is receiving threatening messages because of a controversy connected to their job?

Who coordinates security?

Who monitors psychological risk?

Who communicates publicly?

Who protects confidentiality?

Who ensures that institutional statements do not unnecessarily inflame a situation?

Who checks whether the worker is still capable of navigating an investigation safely?

Those are workplace-safety questions.

They should be treated with the same seriousness organizations bring to physical hazards.

We do not have to choose between truth and humanity

There will be people who look at Jason Arday’s story and say the only relevant issue is whether allegations against him were true.

There will be others who see only racism and persecution.

Both approaches risk flattening a complicated human story.

It is possible to believe that academic misconduct should be investigated rigorously and that racism is real.

It is possible to demand accountability and oppose harassment.

It is possible for someone to have made mistakes and for the response to those mistakes to become cruel.

It is possible to investigate a person’s conduct without putting their humanity on trial.

That distinction is central to ending workplace abuse.

Because the fundamental question is not whether Jason Arday was flawless.

Workers should not have to be flawless to qualify for dignity.

The question is whether our institutions are capable of holding people accountable without destroying them in the process.

A workplace committed to psychological safety should be able to do both.

And when it cannot, the problem is bigger than any one worker.

It is the system.

References

Arday, J. (2022). “More to prove and more to lose”: Race, racism and precarious employment in higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43(4), 513–533.

Lewis, C. J., & Arday, J. (2023). We’ll see things they’ll never see: Sociological reflections on race, neurodiversity and higher education. The Sociological Review, 71(6), 1299–1321.

University of Cambridge. (2023). Jason Arday appointed Professor of Sociology of Education at University of Cambridge.

Associated Press. (August 6, 2026). Youngest Black professor at Cambridge resigns as university investigates allegations of plagiarism.

Associated Press. (August 14, 2026). Black professor at Cambridge who faced plagiarism claims is found dead.

The Guardian. (August 16, 2026). Cambridge University defends its mental health support for Jason Arday.

International Labour Organization. Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190) and guidance on violence, harassment, and psychosocial risks in the world of work.

Bunce, A., et al. (2024). Research on the prevalence and mental-health effects of workplace bullying and harassment.

For years, Boeing told employees that safety was its highest priority.

The company had ethics hotlines.
Reporting channels.
Compliance programs.
Whistleblower policies.

On paper, the systems existed.

Yet multiple investigations, employee testimony, and congressional hearings raised a troubling question:

If employees were encouraged to speak up, why did so many say they were afraid to?

That’s the question we should ask after every workplace scandal.

Not whether a company had a reporting system.

Whether employees trusted it.

A Reporting System Isn’t the Same as Psychological Safety

Organizations often point to their ethics hotline or whistleblower policy as evidence that employees can report concerns.

But those are structures.

Psychological safety is an experience.

An employee may know exactly where to report a concern and still remain silent.

Why?

Because they believe nothing will change.
Because they fear retaliation.
Because they’ve watched colleagues be ignored.
Because speaking up feels more dangerous than staying quiet.

That’s not a reporting problem.

It’s a trust problem.

Silence Is Data

When organizations evaluate workplace culture, they often focus on the number of complaints received.

But low reporting doesn’t necessarily mean a healthy workplace.

Sometimes it means employees have stopped believing reporting matters.

Imagine a hospital where no one reports medication errors.

Would we celebrate?

Of course not.

We’d wonder whether employees felt safe admitting mistakes.

The same principle applies to every workplace.

Silence isn’t always evidence that nothing is wrong.

Sometimes it’s evidence that employees have given up.

Boeing’s Lesson Is Bigger Than Boeing

The Boeing story isn’t simply about manufacturing airplanes.

It’s about what happens when organizations mistake having procedures for having trust.

Every organization can write a policy.
Every organization can launch an ethics hotline.
Every organization can require annual compliance training.

Those are important.

But they don’t answer the most important question:

Do employees believe the organization wants to hear bad news?

That’s the difference between compliance and culture.

What Evidence Would Convince You?

Imagine Boeing announced tomorrow that its culture had fundamentally changed.

What evidence would actually persuade you?

Not another statement from leadership.
Not another training program.

I’d want to know:

• Do employees report greater confidence that concerns will be addressed?

• Has trust in leadership increased?

• Are reports investigated independently?

• Do employees believe they can challenge decisions without risking their careers?

• Are managers rewarded for surfacing problems rather than suppressing them?

• Does the board regularly review psychological safety alongside operational safety?

• Are the results measured and shared transparently?

Those are the kinds of questions that distinguish accountability from aspiration.

Safety Starts Long Before an Incident

When people hear the phrase “workplace safety,” they often picture hard hats, protective equipment, or emergency procedures.

But psychological safety comes first.

Employees must feel safe enough to report hazards before organizations can prevent them.

A culture of fear delays bad news.

A culture of trust surfaces it early.

That’s true whether the issue is harassment, discrimination, fraud, product defects, patient safety, or aircraft quality.

Fear doesn’t stay contained.

It spreads.

The Accountability Standard We Need

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is treating psychological safety as an employee wellness initiative.

It’s much more than that.

Psychological safety is an operational control.

It determines whether critical information reaches decision-makers before small problems become major failures.

That’s why leaders shouldn’t ask only:

“Do we have a reporting system?”

They should also ask:

“Do employees believe it’s safe to use it?”

Those are not the same question.

The Question That Matters

Boeing reminds us that the presence of a hotline, policy, or whistleblower program doesn’t tell us whether employees feel protected.

Systems only work when people trust them.

The next time an organization points to its reporting channels as evidence of a healthy culture, ask a different question.

How many employees genuinely believe they can speak up without fear?

Until organizations measure trust—not just compliance—we’ll continue confusing the existence of reporting systems with the existence of psychological safety.

The goal isn’t simply to give employees a voice.

The goal is to build workplaces where they believe using it will make a difference.

Help fund our Workplace Scorecard

Gaslighting and condescension are some of the most psychologically destabilizing behaviors in the workplace because they attack something deeper than your job performance:

They attack your perception of reality.

Over time, the target stops asking:

“Why are they treating me this way?”

and starts asking:

“Am I overreacting?”
“Did I misunderstand?”
“Maybe I am the problem.”

That confusion is not accidental.

Condescending and gaslighting behavior often function as power tactics designed to create self-doubt, establish dominance, avoid accountability, or discredit someone without overt aggression.

And many people respond by:

• over-explaining,

• becoming emotional,

• trying harder to be understood,

• arguing about intent,

• defending themselves endlessly.

But the more you chase clarity from someone committed to distorting the interaction, the more power they gain.

Flipping the script starts with understanding this:

You do not need the other person to validate your reality in order for it to be real.

Gaslighting is often subtle, not dramatic

People tend to imagine gaslighting as blatant lies.

But workplace gaslighting is usually quieter and harder to prove.

It sounds like:

• “You’re being too sensitive.”

• “That’s not what I said.”

• “You misunderstood.”

• “I think you’re reading into this.”

• “Everyone else understood.”

• “I was just trying to help.”

• “You seem emotional today.”

• “I never said that.”

• “You always take things negatively.”

Condescension often overlaps with it:

• over-explaining basic concepts,

• speaking in a parental tone,

• publicly questioning your competence,

• reframing criticism as “helpfulness,”

• treating disagreement as confusion,

• disguising disrespect as professionalism.

The point is often not communication.

The point is hierarchy.

Stop defending your emotional legitimacy

One of the most powerful shifts is this:

Stop trying to convince someone you’re allowed to feel what you feel.

When targets defend their emotional reaction, the conversation gets redirected away from the original behavior and toward the target’s “tone,” “sensitivity,” or “reaction.”

Instead of:

“I’m not being sensitive.”

try:

“That comment was dismissive.”

Instead of:

“I know you probably didn’t mean it that way…”

try:

“The impact was undermining.”

Instead of:

“I’m sorry if I misunderstood…”

try:

“Let me clarify what I heard.”

Gaslighting thrives when you abandon your own frame of reality to negotiate inside theirs.

Name the behavior calmly and specifically

Condescending people often expect one of two reactions:

1. submission,

2. emotional escalation.

Calm specificity interrupts the pattern.

Examples:

• “You’re answering a question I didn’t ask.”

• “You’re reframing what I said instead of responding to it.”

• “You interrupted me three times.”

• “The tone feels dismissive.”

• “That sounded more corrective than collaborative.”

• “You keep changing the focus from the issue to my reaction.”

• “I’d like to stay with the original point.”

Notice what these responses do:

• they stay grounded in observable behavior,

• they avoid diagnosing motives,

• they refuse the distorted frame,

• they redirect attention to the actual interaction.

You are no longer defending yourself.

You are observing the dynamic.

That changes the power balance.

Ask clarifying questions instead of arguing

Gaslighting depends on confusion and speed.

Questions slow the interaction down.

Examples:

• “Can you clarify what you mean by that?”

• “What specifically are you referring to?”

• “Can you explain why you’re framing it that way?”

• “What evidence supports that conclusion?”

• “Where exactly do you think the misunderstanding happened?”

• “Can you help me understand the discrepancy between what was said earlier and what’s being said now?”

Condescending or manipulative people often rely on vagueness.

Specific questions force clarity.

And clarity reduces their room to distort.

Stop over-explaining

Targets of workplace gaslighting often become hyper-explanatory because they are trying to prevent future distortion.

But excessive explanation can unintentionally communicate:

“I need permission to trust my own judgment.”

Short, grounded responses are often more powerful.

Instead of:

“I just want to explain that what I meant was…”

try:

“That’s not accurate.”

Or:

“I disagree with that characterization.”

Or:

“That’s not what happened.”

Simple.
Direct.
Unhooked.

Use documentation to stabilize reality

One reason workplace gaslighting is so psychologically damaging is because it creates cognitive instability.

Documentation helps restore orientation.

After important conversations:

• send recap emails,

• summarize decisions,

• clarify expectations in writing,

• save contradictory statements,

• document patterns — not isolated incidents.

For example:

“Just confirming our discussion today: the deadline remains Friday, and the deliverables are X and Y.”

Or:

“I want to document that during the meeting my concerns were characterized as confusion rather than addressed directly.”

Documentation is not only evidence.

It is psychological grounding.

It helps you maintain confidence in your own perception.

Don’t mistake calmness for harmlessness

One of the biggest misconceptions about workplace abuse is that if someone sounds calm, polished, or professional, they must be acting reasonably.

But many psychologically manipulative people are extremely controlled communicators.

They may:

• weaponize professionalism,

• use plausible deniability,

• maintain a pleasant tone while undermining you,

• bait emotional reactions,

• subtly isolate or discredit others.

A soft tone does not automatically mean healthy behavior.

Sometimes the most damaging workplace aggression is socially acceptable aggression.

The real goal: reclaiming your internal authority

Flipping the script is not about becoming aggressive, dominant, or emotionally detached.

It’s about reclaiming your ability to trust your own perception.

Because once someone successfully conditions you to distrust yourself:

• they control the interaction,

• they define reality,

• they dictate the narrative,

• they gain psychological power.

The moment you stop over-defending, stop over-explaining, and stop negotiating the legitimacy of your own experience, the dynamic begins to shift.

Not always externally.

But internally.

And that matters.

Because gaslighting only fully works when you abandon yourself in the process.

Recently, one of our bill directors at End Workplace Abuse sent me a TikTok featuring actress and comedian Ana Gasteyer.

In the video, Gasteyer appeared to be talking about being bullied by a Broadway actress named September L. Davis.

Then she did what workplace abuse advocates tend to do.

She started looking into the alleged bully. She Googled September L. Davis.

There were stories. Feuds. Broadway credits. Professional rivalries. Grievances. Scandals.

And then she discovered something unexpected.

September L. Davis does not exist.

She is Ana Gasteyer.

More precisely, September is an elaborate satirical character created and played by Gasteyer: an aging Broadway diva with an increasingly absurd theatrical history, a collection of professional grudges, and an ongoing public feud with — among other people — Ana Gasteyer herself.

Our director was upset.

Workplace bullying is real, she said. People lose jobs, livelihoods, health, and sometimes entire careers because of it. Why was someone’s experience of being bullied being played for laughs?

But once we understood how drawn out the bit was, the TikTok became more understandable.

And something else became much more interesting:

We work in workplace abuse, and none of it had initially sounded implausible.

The joke worked because we recognized the bully

September L. Davis is absurd.

That is the point.

She is self-important, theatrical, aggrieved, vindictive, professionally territorial, and perpetually embroiled in some new conflict. Her universe is populated by rivalries, betrayals, career disappointments, accusations, and spectacular grievances.

It is satire.

But satire works because something underneath the exaggeration is recognizable.

We know the archetype.

Most of us have met some version of the person whose ego dominates the room. The colleague who keeps score. The powerful employee who decides someone has crossed them and cannot let it go. The leader whose personal grievances become organizational problems. The person everyone quietly learns how not to upset.

Workplace abuse does not always look like a screaming boss throwing staplers.

Sometimes it looks strange.

It can look petty.

It can look theatrical.

It can involve shifting alliances, reputation attacks, inexplicable hostility, exclusion, favoritism, retaliation, selective enforcement of rules, or a conflict that seems wildly disproportionate to whatever supposedly started it.

That is part of what makes workplace abuse so difficult to explain.

And it may be why September did not immediately register to us as fantasy.

The behavior was heightened.

The dynamic was not.

But we recognized the target, too

This part may be more uncomfortable.

Gasteyer is not only playing September.

Within the larger joke, she also plays the person subjected to September’s endless grievances and attacks.

And viewed without context, that person can look familiar too:

She is recounting increasingly bizarre interpersonal behavior.
She is talking about something other people may regard as ridiculous.
She is explaining a conflict that has clearly consumed significant time and attention.
She sounds, at moments, incredulous that any of this is happening.

Real targets of workplace abuse often sound exactly like that.

Not because their stories are fabricated.

Because workplace abuse can become genuinely bizarre.

A worker says:
My boss suddenly stopped inviting me to meetings.
Then she told coworkers not to speak with me.
Then expectations for my job changed.
Then I received a negative evaluation that contradicted everything I had been told before.
Then HR said the problem was my communication style.
Then people who witnessed what happened stopped responding to me.
Then I started documenting everything because I knew no one was going to believe me.

Now imagine explaining that entire sequence to someone who has never experienced anything like it.

You can hear how it sounds.

Sometimes the more extreme the behavior becomes, the harder the story is to tell without sounding extreme yourself.

That aspect is one of the cruelest dynamics of workplace abuse.

The person describing abnormal behavior can begin to look like the abnormal one.

The “difficult target” is already a cultural character

Talk to enough people who have experienced workplace abuse, and certain descriptions become very familiar:

Dramatic.
Oversensitive.
Obsessed.
Angry.
Unstable.
Unable to let it go.
Always the victim.
There are two sides to every story.

Sometimes criticism of a worker is legitimate. Not every workplace conflict is abuse, and not every allegation establishes misconduct.

But these labels are also routinely applied to people who continue talking about mistreatment because no one has actually addressed it:

A worker reports a problem.
Nothing happens.
So she reports it again.
She starts documenting.
She sends emails.
She asks coworkers what they witnessed.
She goes to HR.
She contacts an attorney.
She explains the story to a spouse, a therapist, a union representative, a government agency, another attorney.

Every new person requires her to begin again.

Eventually, the persistence itself becomes evidence against her:
Why is she still talking about this?
Why is she documenting everything?
Why can’t she move on?
Why is she making such a big deal out of it?

The behavior created by an unresolved problem becomes part of the case against the person trying to resolve it.

That part is why our initial reaction to September L. Davis interests us so much.

The bully felt recognizable.

But so did the person trying to explain the bully.

We thought the exaggeration was reality

Once we understood Gasteyer’s larger project, we saw something we had missed.

She was not making a joke about someone being bullied.

She was creating a satire of ego, professional power, celebrity mythology, rivalry, grievance, and cruelty.

September is funny precisely because she takes recognizable human behavior and pushes it into absurd territory.

What surprised us was that we apparently have a much higher threshold for “absurd” than we realized.

Our bill director did not watch the clip and think:
No person would behave like that.

She thought:
That sounds like a description of a bully.

She did not think:
No one would end up explaining a workplace conflict this way.

She thought:
That sounds like someone trying to explain what happened to her.

So she Googled the bully.

That misunderstanding says less about Ana Gasteyer than it does about the workplaces we hear about every day.

We did not fail to recognize satire because workplace abuse is funny.

We failed to recognize it because reality had already trained us to believe the premise.

Workplace abuse has a credibility problem

People who have never experienced sustained workplace abuse often expect mistreatment to be straightforward.

Someone does something wrong.
The target reports it.
The organization investigates.
The facts become clear.
The problem gets addressed.

But many workers describe something much messier.

The abusive behavior happens through dozens of small interactions.
The most damaging conduct occurs without witnesses.
Standards shift.
Stories change.
Allies disappear.
A manager who behaves one way privately behaves another way in front of leadership.
HR reduces a pattern of conduct to an “interpersonal conflict.”
The worker becomes increasingly distressed.
And now the organization is evaluating not only what happened but also how calmly and convincingly the target can explain what happened after months of living through it.

That creates a strange credibility trap.

The worker is expected to describe extraordinary behavior in an ordinary way.

Be detailed, but not obsessed.
Be emotional enough to demonstrate harm, but not so emotional that people question your stability.
Document everything, but do not appear fixated.
Speak up, but do not become “difficult.”
Persist, but do not become a problem yourself.

The burden quietly shifts.

Instead of asking, “What happened here?”

People begin asking, “What is wrong with this person that they are still talking about it?”

That is why context still matters

There is another useful lesson in our September L. Davis experience.

Our director did not stop at the TikTok.

She got curious.

She looked further.

And context changed the interpretation.

That instinct matters far beyond comedy.

Taking workplace abuse seriously does not mean accepting every allegation without examination.

It means taking people seriously enough to investigate what actually happened.

Look at behavior.
Look at patterns.
Look at power.
Look at evidence.
Look at what happened before the employee became distressed.
Look at whether rules were applied consistently.
Look at what witnesses observed.
Look at whether retaliation followed a complaint.

And resist making a credibility determination based primarily on whether the person telling the story appears calm, likable, concise, or sufficiently detached from what happened to them.

Sometimes a story sounds unbelievable because it is untrue.

Sometimes it sounds unbelievable because people really can behave unbelievably when power, ego, fear, reputation, and institutional self-protection collide.

Our Google search produced an unusually clean answer.

September L. Davis was fictional.

Real workers almost never get such a tidy reveal.

Maybe Ana Gasteyer is doing something important

So we ended up somewhere very different from where we started.

Our first response was discomfort.
Then confusion.
Then amusement.
And finally, recognition.

Because Gasteyer is, in her own strange and funny way, bringing attention to a type of person many workers already know.

The workplace bully whose behavior is so outsized that explaining it makes the target sound ridiculous.

The powerful personality everyone else accommodates.
The professional grievance that metastasizes.
The rivalry that becomes retaliation.
The person whose behavior is tolerated because confronting it would be inconvenient.

September L. Davis is an exaggeration.

But good exaggeration reveals something.

Maybe the question is not whether workplace bullying should ever be the subject of comedy.

Maybe the more interesting question is why a deliberately ridiculous fictional bully was believable enough that workplace abuse advocates went looking for her.

We Googled September L. Davis because we thought she was real.

She wasn’t.

The workplaces that made her believable are.

“Why didn’t you report it?”

It’s one of the most common questions people ask after learning someone experienced workplace abuse, harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.

The question sounds reasonable.

But it often ignores a painful reality:

Many workers aren’t afraid of reporting because they don’t know their rights.

They’re afraid because they understand exactly how workplaces often respond.

The Promise vs. The Reality

Most organizations have policies that say abuse, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation are prohibited.

Most employee handbooks describe reporting procedures.

Many organizations require annual training.

On paper, reporting appears straightforward.

In reality, workers often watch what happens to people who speak up.

They see coworkers suddenly excluded from meetings.

They watch careers stall after complaints are made.

They observe targets being labeled “difficult,” “negative,” “not a team player,” or “unprofessional.”

The lesson becomes clear:

The official policy may prohibit retaliation.

The culture may reward it.

Why Retaliation Is So Difficult to Prove

Retaliation rarely looks like a manager announcing:

“We’re punishing you because you reported misconduct.”

Instead, it often appears as a series of seemingly reasonable actions:

• Increased scrutiny

• Negative performance reviews

• Exclusion from projects

• Reduced opportunities

• Social isolation

• Micromanagement

• Sudden concerns about attitude or fit

• Restructuring of responsibilities

Any one of these actions may appear harmless.

Together, they can create overwhelming pressure on an employee to leave.

This is why many workers describe the experience as being “managed out” rather than directly terminated.

The Workplace Abuse Playbook

Across thousands of stories, a familiar pattern emerges:

Step 1: Harm Occurs

An employee experiences harassment, bullying, discrimination, or other forms of abuse.

Step 2: Employee Reports

The employee follows policy and raises concerns.

Step 3: Institutional Protection Activates

Instead of addressing the underlying problem, attention shifts toward protecting the organization.

Questions become:

• Can the complaint be minimized?

• Is there enough evidence?

• Can this be reframed as a misunderstanding?

• Is the employee creating conflict?

Step 4: The Employee Becomes the Problem

The focus gradually shifts away from the harmful behavior and toward the person who reported it.

The organization begins managing the complaint rather than addressing the harm.

Step 5: Exit

Many employees ultimately resign, accept severance, go on leave, or are terminated.

The organization then points to the employee’s departure as proof that the issue has been resolved.

Why Documentation Matters

One recommendation appears consistently across employment attorneys, investigators, and advocates: document everything. Detailed records, timelines, emails, text messages, witness information, and performance records can become critical if concerns escalate. Documentation often helps establish patterns that may otherwise be dismissed as isolated incidents.

Documentation isn’t about “building a case.”

It’s about preserving reality.

Workplace abuse often relies on confusion, ambiguity, and shifting narratives.

A clear timeline can help employees maintain their footing when events are later questioned or reinterpreted.

The Question We Should Be Asking

Instead of asking:

“Why didn’t they report it?”

We should ask:

“What would make reporting feel safe?”

Because when employees are afraid to speak up, the problem isn’t employee courage.

The problem is organizational trust.

A psychologically safe workplace is one where employees can raise concerns without fear of career damage, social exclusion, or retaliation.

Until workplaces create that safety, many employees will continue making a rational calculation:

Staying silent may feel safer than speaking up.

And that should concern every employer.

The Real Solution

More reporting systems alone won’t solve workplace abuse.

Employees already know where HR is.

What they need is confidence that reporting will not make things worse.

That requires:

• Leadership accountability

• Independent investigations

• Meaningful anti-retaliation protections

• Transparency

• Consequences for abuse, regardless of rank

When workers believe they can speak up without losing their careers, reporting increases.

Not because employees changed.

Because the system did.

And that’s the workplace reform we should be fighting for.

When Activision Blizzard’s workplace culture became front-page news, the public conversation focused on accountability.

Executives resigned.
The CEO apologized.
The company announced changes.
Regulators investigated.
Lawsuits were filed.
Settlements were reached.

For many people, that felt like justice.

But there’s a question almost no one asks afterward:

How do we know the workplace is actually safer today than it was before?

That’s the question that matters most.

We Confuse Action With Improvement

When a workplace scandal becomes public, organizations are expected to respond.

They issue statements.
They announce new policies.
They replace executives.
They launch investigations.

Those actions may be necessary.

But none of them, by themselves, tell us whether employees experience the workplace differently.

A leadership change is not evidence of a healthy culture.
Neither is a new policy.
Neither is a settlement.

Those are actions.

Culture is an outcome.

Psychological Safety Can’t Be Declared

Imagine if a hospital experienced a serious patient safety failure.

No one would assume patients were now safer simply because the hospital hired a new administrator.

We would want evidence.

Have medical errors declined?
Were procedures changed?
Do staff members feel comfortable reporting concerns?
Has patient safety measurably improved?

We instinctively ask for evidence when physical safety is involved.

Why don’t we expect the same for psychological safety?

Instead, organizations often announce that they’re “committed to improving culture,” and we move on.

But commitment isn’t evidence.

The Questions We Should Be Asking

If Activision Blizzard—or any organization following a workplace scandal—wanted to demonstrate meaningful change, what should it be able to show?

Not intentions.

Evidence.

Questions like these:

• Do employees report feeling psychologically safer?

• Has fear of retaliation decreased?

• Are concerns being reported earlier because employees trust the process?

• Have turnover rates improved in departments previously identified as problematic?

• Are managers consistently held accountable regardless of performance or seniority?

• Has independent oversight verified these improvements?

• What metrics are being tracked, and will they be publicly reported?

Those answers would tell us far more than another press release ever could.

The Missing Accountability Standard

One of the biggest weaknesses in workplace culture today is that there is no widely accepted standard for demonstrating improvement.

Organizations can spend millions on consultants.
Launch culture initiatives.
Conduct leadership training.
Rewrite policies.

Yet employees may still fear speaking up.

Without measuring outcomes, we don’t know whether any of it worked.

Imagine allowing a manufacturing company to simply announce that its equipment is now safe without requiring inspections.

We would never accept that.

Yet we routinely accept similar assurances about workplace culture.

Culture Is a System, Not a Personality

The public often wants to identify a villain.

One bad executive.
One toxic manager.
One difficult personality.

But healthy workplaces aren’t built by replacing one person with another.

They’re built by creating systems that make abuse difficult to sustain.

Independent reporting.
Protection from retaliation.
Consistent accountability.
Transparent investigations.
Leaders who are evaluated not only on business results, but also on how safely people experience working for them.

Those are systems.

And systems are what outlast individual personalities.

The Question That Should Follow Every Workplace Scandal

Activision Blizzard is far from the only organization to face allegations of a harmful workplace culture.

There have been countless others across industries.

Yet the public conversation almost always ends the same way.

Someone resigns.
Someone apologizes.
The headlines fade.

But employees continue going to work every day.

That’s where the real story begins.

The question isn’t whether an organization says it has changed.

The question is whether the people who work there would say the same.

Until organizations are expected to demonstrate cultural improvement with evidence—not promises—we’ll continue mistaking crisis management for accountability.

Real accountability isn’t measured by the quality of an apology.

It’s measured by whether employees are genuinely safer because of what happened next.

For a long time, I could not name what was happening to me at work. That is not a personal failure. It is how workplace abuse is designed to work. Workplace abuse does not announce itself. It arrives as edited meeting notes, a file that was somehow the wrong version, a gentle “concern” about your reliability raised to the right person at the right time. I didn’t have names for any of it yet. I do now.

What saved me was learning the patterns. Once I could see the moves, I could predict them, and once I could predict them, I stopped being afraid. Then something unexpected happened: I started laughing. Not because it was funny. Because laughing was the one thing they could not take, and every laugh was proof their attempts were not working.

Joy is the biggest form of rebellion in a toxic workplace.

I spent the last year turning that survival strategy into something other people can hold: a satirical card game called The Corporate Menace. 10 villain archetypes (Gaslighting Gabe, Sabotaging Sally, and Instigating Ian among them), every one grounded in 51 peer reviewed research papers on workplace power dynamics. The jokes are mine. The patterns are documented science.

The game is intentionally designed to do four things:

1. Help you see clearly what abuse looks like, early, while there is still time to act.

2. Let you strike back confidently and safely through satire—because every laugh proves you’re more resilient than they ever expected you to be, with zero career risk.

3. Rebuild the backbone a toxic boss tried to beat out of you.

4. Remind you of the thing I most needed to hear: there is a life worth living on the other side of a hostile workplace. A toxic boss does not get the final word on your story. The pen was never theirs to hold.

This community carries heavy stories, including the heaviest ones. I do not laugh at that, and the game does not either. Morale is not a luxury in this fight. It is equipment. It is how we last long enough to win, and this fight is worth winning.

This is also, not so quietly, why partnering with End Workplace Abuse matters to me. End Workplace Abuse is doing the cultural and structural work: giving people the words and the community before the law ever has to get involved and the policy fights that actually change what employers are allowed to get away with.

The Corporate Menace™ is funding on Kickstarter through August 28, and it only gets printed if it funds. If it resonates, back it or send it to the person who needs it.

And if you are still in it right now: there is life after. I am proof.

Back the Kickstarter campaign

Sometimes, the most strategic move is:

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Abuse is treated differently depending on where it occurs. The same rules and expectations don’t apply in some cases, legislation differs, the research doesn’t overlap, and, as a result, workplace abuse and domestic abuse are generally considered incomparable.

Misconceptions about domestic abuse and workplace abuse

There’s also an outdated perception of what abuse is, which adds to this disconnect, pushing domestic and workplace abuse further apart.

Domestic abuse is still widely perceived as being situational acts of violence—an angry partner acting out behind closed doors—whereas workplace abuse rarely manifests as physical acts of violence, which often deprives it from being classified as abuse at all.

Although these misconceptions still exist, the reality is that abuse at home and in the workplace have plenty in common. Identifying these similarities could prove useful, especially for workers, because domestic abuse legislation is evolving and is starting to recognize psychological abuse.

There’s been a long-held view that abuse must be physical and only occurs when someone loses control. However, there’s a growing recognition that abuse can also be quiet, pre-meditated, and imperceptible to onlookers. Rather than abuse only occurring when a partner loses control, it’s now understood that abuse also manifests as a pattern of behaviors designed to exert control.

Psychological abuse can look like humiliation, gaslighting and isolation, but there are so many other methods, making this form of abuse difficult to define. It’s complex and often hard to prove, and we haven’t had the language to accurately describe the victim’s experience and the abuser’s intent.

What the law says

It’s taken decades for domestic abuse legislation to even begin to reflect what survivors and pioneering professionals have been saying since the 1970s. Physical violence is often only part of the picture; it’s the psychological abuse that destabilizes the victim’s sense of self, decimates their support network, and ultimately makes it very difficult for them to “just leave.”

Domestic abuse

In the UK, Coercive and Controlling Behavior became a criminal offense in 2015, but only within the domestic environment. This legislation has provided a statutory framework and legitimized language for an experience that was previously hard to articulate. The term “coercive control” is gaining traction when describing this abusive behavior in intimate or family relationships, and it’s broadly understood as one individual using a variety of psychological tactics to exert control over another.

Although the United States has no federal coercive control law, a growing number of states have expanded their domestic abuse legislation to recognize psychological abuse. California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, and Colorado now explicitly recognize coercive control within parts of their civil domestic violence or family law frameworks, allowing courts to consider patterns of controlling and psychologically abusive behavior when issuing protection orders or making family law decisions. Hawaii also recognizes emotional and psychological abuse within aspects of its domestic abuse laws. Meanwhile, several other states, including New York and South Carolina, are considering legislation that would further strengthen legal protections against coercive control in the domestic environment.

Workplace abuse

It could be argued that there’s less risk of physical violence in the workplace, which differentiates it from domestic abuse where the risk is acute. Even so, if psychological abuse is deemed harmful in the home, there’s a strong argument that it’s harmful in the workplace.

This idea isn’t an assumption: we know how damaging psychological abuse in the workplace is:

• Victims are known to suffer the psychological impact with mental health issues that include anxiety, depression, PTSD, increased substance-use, and suicide attempts (Bartlett & Bartlett, 2011).

• It’s estimated that 32 percent of adults in the US have directly experienced workplace abuse, which equates to 52.2 million workers (Workplace Bullying Institute).

• The economic impact is also profound, with Forbes estimating that 43 million sick days were taken due to workplace misconduct in 2021 alone, resulting in an $8.54 billion loss for the US economy.

Despite all the evidence, there’s still an unwillingness to take workplace abuse seriously and to implement legislation that protects workers.

Abusers in the workplace

Just as domestic abuse was once viewed as isolated incidents, temporary lapses of control, or hotheadedness, workplace abuse is still primarily treated this way. Rarely does an angry boss or co-worker cross the line and resort to physical violence, but even when they do breach professional boundaries, they are often treated as isolated incidents.

With a relatively new legal recognition that there are people who use psychological abuse to control their partners, ex-partners, and family members, it stands to reason that these people also exist in the workplace. Is it unreasonable to suggest that they are capable of perpetrating these same behaviors in the workplace?

Take part in pioneering research

So what happens when we directly translate domestic abuse legislation to make it relevant to the workplace? If the same behaviors are identified, it would advance workplace abuse research significantly, with the potential to support future legislative changes.

This study is your opportunity to contribute your experience. If you are over 18 and have experienced workplace abuse, you are invited to take part in an anonymous survey that asks:

Does coercive control in the workplace exist?

Complete the survey