Intro: On this episode of the Workology Podcast. Whatever you do, you don’t tell the narcissist what your boundary is. So if you tell your narcissist the boundary, they are going to press it and push it and basically you’re just giving them little “here’s the button that’ll really annoy Katrina.” So what you do is you set an internal boundary. So you’re like, I’m going to wait until 5 p.m. to have this piece of information. If I don’t have it, I’m just going to move on. And then there’s ways of phrasing the conversation with them. I took—there’s one in my memoir which is actually about parenting. And so instead of saying, “I’m waiting to hear from you about, you know, the kids this weekend,” you say, “If I don’t hear from you by 5 PM, I will organize the kids this weekend.”
Welcome to the Workology Podcast, a podcast for the disruptive workplace leader. Join host Jessica Miller-Merrell, founder of Workology.com, as she sits down and gets to the bottom of trends, tools, and case studies for the business leader, HR, and recruiting professional who is tired of the status quo. Now here’s Jessica with this episode of Workology.
Welcome to the Workology Podcast, sponsored by Ace the HR Exam and Manager Essentials Mini Courses. These are two courses that we offer for certification prep and people leader training. You can learn more about these at workology.com. This podcast was recorded and edited in Riverside. You can learn more about Riverside and other creator tools that I love at workology.com/creator.
Have you ever worked with someone who seems to make everything about them? They take credit for wins, deflect blame when things go wrong, manipulate situations, or leave you questioning your own experience? Navigating a narcissistic coworker, manager, or leader can be exhausting, and it can have a real impact on your confidence, your relationships, and your career. In this episode, we’re talking about what narcissistic behavior can look like in the workplace and how to recognize the patterns.
And most importantly, how to protect your boundaries and your professional reputation without getting pulled into all the drama. Because you might not be able to change the fact that you work with a narcissist, but you can change how you respond. And that’s exactly why I invited our guest today. Before we get to that, I do want to hear from you. Please comment podcast on our Instagram account—it’s at WorkologyBlog. You can ask questions, leave comments, and make suggestions for future guests. I do want to hear from you.
Today’s guest on the podcast is Katrina Collier, author, facilitator, speaker, and recruitment expert with more than two decades of experience in the recruitment profession. She uniquely combines her professional expertise with her lived experience of healing from trauma to help organizations address one of the biggest challenges in hiring and work today: human connection. She works with companies to improve collaboration, recruitment processes, recruiter mental health, and the candidate experience, and she is a popular global keynote speaker.
Katrina is the author of The Robot Proof Recruiter, Reboot Hiring, and her memoir, The Damage of Words: A Memoir of Self Healing, Self Hate, and Gaining Self Mastery. In The Damage of Words, she shares her deeply personal experience of surviving narcissistic abuse and her 12-year journey toward healing, self-love, and self-mastery. Her story offers a powerful perspective on the lasting impact of harmful words and toxic relationships, making her a compelling voice for navigating narcissistic behavior and difficult relationships at work. Katrina, welcome to the Workology Podcast.
Katrina Collier: Thank you so much for having me. It has been ages. I’m so excited to be here.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: I’m excited for a lot of reasons, and I really have resonated with the book and the things that you’ve been talking about. One of those areas is that you have been so open about your experience with narcissistic abuse. I don’t think a lot of people are comfortable with that always, but it’s nice to hear it from someone else. What do you think, or how do you think people maybe misunderstand narcissistic behavior, especially when it shows up in the workplace?
What Narcissistic Behavior Looks Like in the Workplace
Katrina Collier: Just how it gets into you. It’s so hard—it’s like a toxic web when you’re dealing with it. It is so hard to explain. Going back to my childhood for a minute, because it was my mum, there’s lots of people that are just like, “But it’s your mum.” They just can’t believe that somebody, you know, who creates life could possibly have those behaviors, which are the classic things of not having regret or remorse. They lie, they gaslight, and they do all the stuff that we’re going to talk about. And I think that they operate from shame and insecurity, and they create this incredible facade around them where they pick a supply—someone who’s a victim becomes their supply of energy, of a challenge. They just kind of want to drain them. And I think that’s why it’s so hard to understand, because you can’t possibly imagine having a colleague or a leader who just wants to pick on you because it makes them feel better, or they want to crazy-make because it makes them feel better. But no, they really do do that. Unless you’ve experienced it, it is so difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t. And getting stuck in their web—I would just call it a web—is so hard. It’s so damaging across organizations. Well, and homes, obviously.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Agreed. And I feel like you’re describing my first marriage. Oh, my gosh. I was completely clueless and unaware. I was two different people—showing up to work one way as a successful human resources leader, and then coming home, it was a whole different place.
Katrina Collier: They just soul-destroy you, don’t they? They just tear you apart. And actually, a lot of that drive to be extremely successful—because I know you’ve been healing as well—is actually usually because at home you’ve been made to feel so worthless. So you’re trying so hard to counter that in some ways, to prove, “No, I am right, stop saying I’m not good,” and stop saying all these horrible things. And they just do it so cleverly as well. Like my mum could give you this backhanded compliment that was an insult. It wasn’t always just direct like “you never finish anything.” It could be quite backhanded: “You’re so good at this, why are you crap at that?” And you’re just spinning—you just don’t know what’s real.
I found that this one particular experience I had of a team leader who was a narcissist—she was a covert narcissist as well, ’cause there are different types. And to me, the covert is the worst. I mean, you’ve got the overt that’s far more obvious: very egocentric, very loud, everyone’s fully aware who they are. But the coverts are quite insecure, and everyone kind of pities them. They tell their little story of woe, they play the victim, and everyone falls for it. And then once you’ve fallen for it and you’re in the web and you’re their target, then they’ll isolate you from other people. And if you can see through them and see what; how they’re playing. And that’s what happened with this woman. I could see the game she was playing. Then she basically turned the entire floor of people—or it felt like it—against me. I did not know who I could trust. And you can’t call out their behavior because everyone defends them. That was the other bit: “Can’t you see she’s—” “No, she’s not like that. You’re like that. You’re not telling the truth.” And it was just crazy.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: It makes it challenging to navigate your job or be successful in your career. So maybe talk us through what are some early warning signs that might tell us that we’re dealing with someone who’s narcissistic at work, whether it’s a coworker, manager, or leader?
Warning Signs You’re Working With a Narcissistic Boss or Coworker
Katrina Collier: I mean, some of the first stuff—the obvious stuff—is that they’re going to take credit for your work a lot of the time, but they will lie. And when you call them out on that lie—say they take responsibility for something that you’ve done the work on, and you go, “No, I did that,” and they go, “No, you didn’t”—and then if you can actually prove that they lied, they will gaslight. For example, say that they had written something in an email and you brought it to their attention and said, “Here’s the lie, or here’s the correspondence with the client where you said XYZ, and it’s a lie,” they will then say, “How dare you check up on me? How dare you go behind my back and talk to XYZ about it?” That kind of behavior is one of the big ones.
Certainly, for the covert, constant criticism and constantly undermining what you’re doing can be one thing. Someone I know experienced this recently—and actually, I’ll talk about how he handled it because I thought it was brilliant. His project kept getting changed, so he was being given a project that he could just about deliver in time, and then new stuff would be added, which meant he would fail no matter what. It wasn’t possible. And he’d always been somebody who’d had really, really top ratings all the time that he’d been working. Then all of a sudden, with this new leader and this ridiculous workload, he was failing according to this leader. But it was because of the constant boundary-slipping, the constant overstepping, the constant new responsibilities, the constant taking credit for good work, and on it goes. Is that what you’ve experienced? It’s like that, isn’t it?
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Yes, it is. And that wears on you, especially when you are somebody who takes pride in your work and maybe you’re a solid performer. It starts to make you question your qualifications, your abilities, your purpose, all those things.
Katrina Collier: And actually, yeah, belief in self as well. Because particularly for me, going into a workplace where—actually, I’ve had several narcissists—from a childhood like mine as well, where truth really matters to me because I always felt like I needed to know what the truth was, and I knew my truth and I knew I wasn’t lying. And then I go into a workplace and suddenly the truth was moving all the time. It’s really hard not to react. I was emotionally dysregulated through that whole experience. I was always stressed, always upset, always fighting for myself.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: I do think it’s hard not to react, especially if you have had many narcissists in your life. So there’s almost a conditioned response, at least for me, where I start to feel things and there’s a way that I’ve responded, especially since I was married to one. I have a lot of opinions about these things, and I put up with a lot less shit than I have prior. Is that your experience also?
Katrina Collier: Yeah. I mean, if you’ve been through any form of narcissistic abuse, until you heal yourself—which is so much of the reason I wrote my memoir—you will track them like moths to a flame. They will just keep coming because they just sense it. I don’t know what it is, but I’m an empath, and I think that narcissists attract empaths and they just know. They hook their little hook onto you. And so until you learn—really, I mean, I’m sure some of the techniques we’ll talk about—to set boundaries, to know that you are worthy… I mean, their favorite thing to do is to tear down a high performer. Often we’re compensating for a lack of self-esteem by overperforming—the perfectionists, the people-pleasers. So it’s actually really knowing your true self-worth. It took me, hence the memoir, a long journey to get to that, putting myself back together.
And I think that was because it was narcissistic child abuse. It’s particularly tough to grow up through that. It’s tough enough as an adult when I’ve come up against it. But you’ve got to put together your self-esteem, know your worth, know the red flags so you know not to play the game. It’s a journey to get through, but once you get there, now I’m like—there’s one. I spotted one in a friend and I was like, “Bye.” The first thing I did was unfollow, unfriend on everything, block their phone number. The second they displayed it, I was like, “My gosh, how did I not pick that up earlier?” But I’d kind of given them the benefit of the doubt a few times, and then suddenly it was like—I just won’t have them. I mean, I’m lucky I can do that. I won’t have them in my orbit. But when you have one at work or you have one in a family, it’s a lot more challenging. You’ve got to navigate it without being destroyed, ’cause they do genuinely like to destroy people.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Yeah, they take pleasure in those things. It makes them feel powerful, I feel like.
Katrina Collier: Yeah. And I think so much of the work that I did as well was actually really understanding they are wounded. So you don’t want to feel sorry for them, okay, ’cause they’ll destroy you, but it actually does help when you realize, “Actually, they’re operating from a wound as well,” but your focus has to be on healing your own wound. It just helps a bit.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Do you think it’s so difficult to recognize that you’re being manipulated or emotionally impacted by someone at work or in your life who’s a narcissist?
Why Narcissists Are So Difficult to Recognize and Deal With
Katrina Collier: Because we just innately expect good of people. And we’re at work, we’re there to do a job. So you just expect it to be… I know that’s crazy. According to Dr. Ramani Durvasula—who I think I always mispronounce her surname, sorry, strain—she says that 20% of people display narcissistic traits. Now, often what I actually get hit back with is, “Well, only half a percent of people have been diagnosed with NPD.” It’s like, well, yeah, because the narcissist does not own it—they don’t take responsibility for anything, so they’re not going to go and get diagnosed. So I’m quite happy to go with her stat of 20% of people. So it’s actually a lot. But I think we turn up to work and just expect we’re all here, we’ve all got a goal, we’ve got a job to do, there’s a company to be productive for. And so it’s a bit of a shock when you kind of think, “Gosh, people are being paid to turn up and be a narcissistic leader, and nobody’s doing anything about it.” There’s a lot of it about. I mean, it’s quite shocking.
And then when you start to see it, of course they then start to deny that you’re seeing it. They do that crazy-making: “I didn’t say that,” “You just took it that way,” “I meant this, I didn’t really mean that.” And they just lie, deflect. If you hit them with a fact, they’ll just deflect it back onto you. And so when you’re going through that often enough, you do start doubting yourself, unless you have been through it a few times and you’re kind of going, “Red flag, red flag.”
Jessica Miller-Merrell: I think it’s interesting that 20% of people likely are narcissistic. And then I think about narcissistic behavior—these individuals are probably not going to admit that they might be different, because that’s not how they operate. So therefore, the numbers would be a lot lower in terms of a official diagnosis because you’re not seeking out to get this label.
Katrina Collier: Yeah. They won’t… I mean, I’m going back to my mother for a second. Mum was very physically abusive, and there’s a big difference between—I’m a seventies kid, we got smacked—there’s a difference between a smack and what my mum did. And she would say, like deadpan, “Social services would be called on my behavior now.” And it would just be this flat acknowledgement with no regret, no remorse, no kind of empathy or compassion for what I was experiencing.
You know, a lot of great leaders are very empathetic. They’re quite capable of saying, “How do you feel about that, Jess?” or they can see your point of view. A narcissist can’t. They are incapable of that, and they certainly don’t regret their behavior, which is quite extraordinary. But they can sometimes do—like Mum did—they’ll just say it, but no, she wasn’t sorry. And it’s quite amazing when you work amongst people like that.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: I think they can be sorry, but it’s mostly because it hurts them in some way. It’s not about you being hurt, right? It’s about them. Maybe they got in trouble.
Katrina Collier: Yeah. Yeah, maybe someone above them told them off for like, “You upset Katrina, so apologize.” So they apologize, but they don’t actually mean it. There’s a big difference between that, the real genuine apology and the performative one. So yeah, that’s true. Complicated, right? Like it’s hard to spot them and it’s hard to handle them because they play with human beings.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: So they play. But let’s be clear—and we’ll kind of circle back because we’ve kind of danced around this, but I want to make sure that we’re clear—common tactics of narcissistic people at work. What are some things that you are seeing specifically?
Common Narcissistic Tactics: Gaslighting, Manipulation, and Blame-Shifting
Katrina Collier: Absolutely, they lie. So they lie. Like they’ll say that they’ve done something that they haven’t done, or they’ll say that they did something that was yours, or so on. There’s constant lying going on. They may promise you a promotion that’s never going to happen, or they might threaten you with a demotion that’s never going to happen either. I mean, it can be all sorts of things. They will absolutely lie. When you call them out on that behavior—when you have evidence that they have lied—they will then gaslight. Whereas a liar would actually go, “Gosh, you’re right, I did lie. I said that and it wasn’t true, and I knew it wasn’t true when I said it. I’m sorry.” Whereas a narcissist will push it straight back on you: “How dare you check up on me? Who are you to go behind my back?” And so on and so forth. So there’s that side.
With the covert narcissists, they tend to also brew, so they can be quite malicious and create dramas and be quite underhand with backstabbing and manipulating people against you. The way I found out that it had got so crazy was one of my teammates texted me by mistake—what she meant to text this team leader—and I’m reading it going, “What? I’ve never done anything to warrant the vileness of this text message.” It was about me: “I can’t believe you’ve left me here working with that bitch,” and rah rah. And I’m just reading it going, “What? What have I ever done?” And it was just because of the games that were at play. So there’s a lot of that. Lies and gaslighting are the big ones for me. Would you add to that? Am I missing a big one? I probably am. Those to me are the big ones.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Lies, gaslighting, kind of like reorganizing their version of what happened, right? Which I guess is a form of gaslighting in a way: “Like, that wasn’t the way I remember it, you know.” I think that was a common one that I got a lot.
Katrina Collier: Mm-hmm. Lack of empathy. Yeah, big one. That one. They are not capable of seeing anything from the other point of view. So actually, if you were to take them into a mediation, they would just be, “It was all Jess, it was all Jess, it was all Jess.” They would never be, “Well, I did this and that’s why Jess did that.” That would never happen. Whereas someone without narcissistic traits would be much more inclined to kind of be going, “Yeah, good point. Actually, yeah, no, I can see how my behaving that way upset you, and actually if I was in their position I’d feel that way.” You don’t get that. They just genuinely cannot do it.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Let’s take a reset here. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell, and you are listening to the Workology Podcast. It’s powered by Ace the HR Exam and Workology’s Manager Essentials mini-courses. Today I am talking with Katrina Collier about narcissistic bosses and how to navigate and manage having these on your team or with you at work. So if you’re working with someone who is constantly undermining you and manipulating you—they’re a narcissist—what’s the first thing we should do? How do we get out of this?
How to Protect Yourself: Document Everything
Katrina Collier: Start collecting data. Evidence. You want cold, hard evidence. Easy to do now. I mean, you know, back when it was happening to me, there were very few emails flying around. But now it would be a case of collecting emails, etc. So what my friend did—bless him, he’s so amazing, he’s a technical project manager, so he’s extremely talented—he gathered all of the times that the project had changed, which was constant, or the number of times he was told to stop working on it and pulled away for a meeting he didn’t need to be part of, which meant he wouldn’t deliver the project. He kept it documented: at this time, at this date, this was said. Here’s all the evidence.
So when it came to—he was put on a performance review and they were trying to manage him out of the business—it came down to the final meeting where he would be let go potentially, after having been with this particular company for thirty years. He’s one of those kind of employees, but very dynamic and worked his way up, you know? And so he presented his findings. And then HR turned to the manager and said, “So what evidence do you have?” “I don’t, I just think it. I just feel it. I just sense he’s like that.” And that was it. He did have to be transferred to a different team, but he didn’t lose his job, and he’s okay with that. But that’s the fact-collecting.
I found it extremely hard to know who to trust when I went through it. So it’s also hard to know, “Well, can I go to HR?” Because you don’t know how clever this person is being with that team as well. You don’t know how neutral they’re going to be. They should be, of course—and I know what the audience of this podcast is—you should be, but you’re also human. And these people are master manipulators. You know, they can get you in their web as well and have you believing all sorts of stuff that you don’t necessarily believe. They’re quite clever people. So I think as the employee, it’s like gather the data and gather the facts so you can remain extremely calm when you then do go into a situation where, okay, your job is on the line and you’re not feeling calm and you want to go—that time you don’t have to. You can go, “On this date or this time this was said, and this project moved, and this happened, and I actually did that work, here’s the evidence, and they claimed that they did,” and so on and so forth. And you might have to collect it over months, but that to me is the best way.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: And I feel this with social media and we’ve got all this technology and email and Slack channels and all this stuff—like the conversations are on multiple places and spaces. So the collection I think could be a little bit more challenging. But what I found—and I’m curious your opinion—is a lot of time narcissists will seek out people who are easily rattled or they know how to push their buttons or are already dysregulated, knowing that they’re not going to have their shit together enough to be able to pull all that data from all those places to put together a picture like your friend did.
Katrina Collier: If they’re listening, just do it. Make yourself do it. Screenshot it. I mean, if it’s coming in on a text, screenshot the text. You know, even if it just dumps into your photo reel and you don’t have to think about it on your phone. I mean, you just have to make yourself… once you start—and I guess you’re right, initially, but once you start and you really are sure that they are doing that, that they are lying and that they’re manipulating you and that… you know, I think one of the big red flags is you start feeling crazy. They do definitely hit up emotionally dysregulated people, that’s for sure, ’cause they know they’re looking for that insecurity. Even though someone might seem a high achiever, underneath they can see that they’re not. I still think we have to find a way to document it.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: I think the documentation is a lot easier now with AI. For example, if I was experiencing it at work, I would take screenshots, forward emails, BCC another email that I would then connect with like Claude or ChatGPT or whatever. Claude is kind of my favorite for this. And then I would ask it, “Put together a timeline of any emails that I forwarded you about projects that have changed.” And it can do that for you. So at least you have something, right? it’s going to save you a lot of time.
Katrina Collier: Yeah my dad used to call it the “cover your butt” book. You know, back then it was paper. You had to use a notebook and actually write it down. But I think it’s really important because that’s what HR will be looking for anyway, won’t they? They’re looking for documented proof, not just hearsay. And the narcissist is going to rely on hearsay because they don’t have the proof because they’re gaslighting you. You know, they’re making stuff up, they’re crazy-making. So I just think, yeah, I like that idea with it. It sounds like a great use of technology—you just want it to document it. You don’t want it to change it. That’s the important thing, isn’t it? You don’t want it to improve the communication or anything. You just want it to document it.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: That’s why you just ask it for a timeline. And as an HR person—a former HR person—like that timeline is really important, especially if you have receipts. Because the number of people that come into my office over the years and have said, “This person’s treating me badly,” right? But it’s all in the break room or casually over conversation, passive-aggressive conversations in meetings, or things that weren’t reported or recorded, whatever—it’s really hard as an investigator to find the proof in that. But if you have recap emails like, “Thanks for the meeting. You changed this project. You know, I appreciate the direction. Just know that this is going to increase the timeline, the completion date because you’re making all these changes,” there’s the evidence right there that you can pull into your meeting.
Katrina Collier: Apply to that, because that’s going to be like a red flag to a bull when you do that to a narcissist. They’re going to react to that and come back at you: “Well, you will deliver it on time because I told you to,” and things like that, and you’re just like, “Okay.” And I think as well, when it comes to handling that person, when you have worked out they’re a narcissist—and you know, other than going to some of these experts and hearing what they have to say about narcissism, because the best thing you can do is educate yourself, because once you educate yourself, you start going, “There it is. There’s the projection.”
My mother was excellent at projecting. So instead of owning something, she would put it on me. And the other day it was that I hadn’t properly apologized. But to me, I genuinely had apologized and I meant it quite genuinely. And it’s like, projecting their own stuff. Ooh, you’re a… okay. And it was to me, it was like, this is… but there was a whole load of other behavior that was just reinforcing. But what you’re then looking to do is you don’t want to go into the grandiosity. So you don’t want to play into that, and you don’t want to argue with their lies. So once you work out, “Okay, I’m dealing with a narcissist” (so I had this happen, and someone wasn’t doing the work, and they just kept saying, “You don’t understand the process,” and I’m going, “Great, what is the process?” and they wouldn’t tell me what the process was, but “You don’t understand the process,” “You could just explain it to me,” you know, and we were having this…) and eventually I just started going, “Okay, noted. Noted.” And like, just one-word answers: “Okay,” “All right.” And you just… rather than I tried to—I was going to say suck up, that sounds awful, right?—I tried to play into it to get the process, didn’t work. I tried to argue that I hadn’t been given it, wasn’t given it. So I just started going, “Okay, noted. Sure. Thumbs-up emoji.”
And what I would do if I was working in the office with somebody like that and you knew that you were going into a meeting with them: “Hey, I’m just really busy at the minute, so I’m just going to record this meeting. I’ve got my voice notes on my phone, and I’m just letting you know that I’m doing that.” And they’re soon going to be, “I don’t want you to do it.” “Well, I need it. You know, I’m a bit behind. It’s going to help me catch up. I’m going to get it transcribed.” And you just… you just say you just do it. And then they will stop, ’cause they don’t want that recorded.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: No, yeah.
Katrina Collier: That’s sneaky. Yeah. I mean, I know that some of this wouldn’t count, but you know, if I was suffering it enough at work, I’d be recording everything. And I wouldn’t even go into the coffee room without my phone on. You know, I know it doesn’t count as evidence, but I’d be like—
Jessica Miller-Merrell: But it sort of is, in a way, giving you awareness into a pattern that is developing. So let’s say that we have a narcissist, or maybe we just have a lot on our plate, either way. Like, how do we create boundaries, whether we’re just overwhelmed or we’re experiencing working with someone on the team who’s a narcissist? What do you recommend?
Setting Boundaries With a Narcissistic Person at Work
Katrina Collier: Whatever you do, you don’t tell the narcissist what your boundary is. So if you tell your narcissist the boundary, they are going to press it and push it. And basically, you’re just giving them a little “here’s the button that’ll really annoy Katrina.” So what you do is you set an internal boundary.
So you’re like, “I, you know, I’m going to wait until 5 PM to have this piece of information. If I don’t have it, I’m just going to move on.” And then there’s ways of phrasing the conversation with them. I took—there’s one in my memoir which is actually about parenting. And so instead of saying, “I’m waiting to hear from you about, you know, the kids this weekend,” you say, “If I don’t hear from you by 5 PM, I will organize the kids this weekend.” And so it’s sort of just being much more direct. I would also, even though I just used the word, I would avoid the word “you.” So it’s like, well in that case you kind of want to hear from them, but it’s like “if I don’t hear from you, I will be…” I, I, I, as much as possible. You don’t want to accuse them of anything. So anytime you phrase a sentence with them, you try and remove the word “you” altogether and use “I” or just nothing if you can. So it takes a bit of work to write an email sometimes, but I would be looking for that.
And it’s just more, you know, basically say, “Look, I really need you to respond by this time because the project won’t work, blah blah blah. If I don’t hear from you by this time, I’ll be doing this with the project or this will be the impact of the project.” And just like very neutral, very succinct. And when they come back, you go, “Okay, noted.” And you’re just trying not to… don’t they call it grey rocking? It’s an expression for it. You’re trying not to just get drawn in, get sucked in. If you just think of yourself as being, “I’m in a web, I have to get myself out of the web,” so I’m trying to very carefully pick my way to the outside of it, so you don’t want to get pulled back in.
And by, you know, if you gave them the boundary so that they knew what the boundary was… like, a lot of boundary setting in a healthy relationship would be like, “You know, when you speak to me like that, I feel really upset because you’re bringing up something from my past,” or whatever they’re doing. You can do that in a healthy relationship and someone will be like, “Gosh, wow, I’d not really thought about that,” or “While you’re yelling at me, this isn’t fruitful. I’ll come back in ten minutes and hopefully you’ve calmed down.” That won’t work with a narcissist. They’ll be like, “She gets annoyed when I’m being angry or being loud, so I’ll continue doing that.” Does that resonate? You’re like going, “That was my marriage.”
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Absolutely. I mean, some other things that work for me… I love the email and I use that a lot just in general, just to get shit done. But I also will hold regular meetings with people. So if I’m the project manager or it’s my team or I’m an important contributor, I will recommend that we have maybe a meeting every two weeks. And it doesn’t even mean that we have to show up to the meeting, but it’s just the act of putting it on the calendar, I think, that helps people understand like you’re going to be held accountable to this. And we’re going to be checking things.
And what I also find is that people often make space right before the meeting to be able to get their things done, so they can be prepared because they know that you are prepared—even if you aren’t. Like a recurring meeting is a great way, psychologically, I think, to kind of shift it to “I am organized and have boundaries, and I’m not going to be talked to until we have this meeting.” A lot of times I will send people notes and I’ll just say, like, “Hey, I’m really busy right now, let’s save this for the meeting.” And then that way it helps them understand that you’re not going to answer their text message at 10 PM or whatever is going on that they’re using to try to manipulate and unhinge. So yeah, you have to train them.
Katrina Collier: Yeah, with a dark as well. They won’t… they’re not going to like it either. Like they are going to… and I think the funny thing is none of us really like it, but they especially don’t like it. The practice—just keep doing it, just keep doing it. I had it done recently. I wanted to have a session with my friend who’s done some healing for me, and she just came back and said, “I don’t do sessions on Monday, I’m available tomorrow.” And I really didn’t like it, but at the same time I was so proud of her for doing that, ’cause it’s like, go girl! ‘Cause I knew how hard it was for her to set a boundary with protecting her time. And that’s why I love that meeting idea where you can just be… particularly if you know that they’re going to do those late texts: “No, we can discuss it.”
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Or if they’re the ones that send you lots of messages all the time—like, you know, you have that person who’s always sliding in trying to give you more to do, and it’s like, “Hey, why don’t you like pin that and we’ll talk about it on the meeting on Thursday?” And then again, the onus is on them; they have to remember to do it. It’s not your job to make a note of that.
Katrina Collier: You might make a note of it, yeah, hopefully, then. But also it’s all of that is also evidence, isn’t it, as well? I like it. Very clever.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: That’s what I’m here for.
Katrina Collier: Well, I can steal your ideas.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: No, that’s fine, please use them.
Katrina Collier: I steal with credit. I always go, “I learned this from Jess.” I’m not one of those… see, this is one of the ones that bugs me when you’ve been through narcissistic abuse, when someone just steals your idea. Whereas I’m going, “I learned that from Jess.” I mean, you’ll see in my books, I’m always like, “Steve Levy said that.” I’m always quoting Steve Levy’s questions all the time. Yeah, steal with credit, I think it’s great.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Well, where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing if they’re like, “I need to talk to Katrina, I want to get some access to tools, resources, her expertise”?
Healing From Narcissistic Abuse and Rebuilding Your Self-Worth
Katrina Collier: So, I mean, on the recruitment side, I’ve obviously got two books, or just Google me, Katrina Collier—I’m everywhere. LinkedIn, the usual place. And then if you have been through narcissistic abuse and are really curious about how I healed my trauma—it’s not prescriptive, it’s just how I healed my stuff—it’s called The Damage of Words. And it’s now available in an audiobook as well. I’m quite proud of myself; I just did the audio recording and published it. So it’s available everywhere you buy good books, and it really is about how I picked myself up and put myself back together and found who I am, like found self-love, which I actually didn’t think I’d ever find. And it’s been… I mean, you’ve seen, ’cause you’ve known me for years, it’s been quite the change as well. So I can’t recommend people just healing their stuff enough, so if you’re interested.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: We’ll include all the links—the LinkedIn, all the books, everything—in the transcript of the podcast. And Katrina’s a lovely human. I don’t know when the last time we actually were in the same room together was, but it’s been a minute, but it’s been a joy just to watch you grow and evolve. And I love the work that you’re doing. And I think there’s so much power in talking about how you heal so that maybe you can inspire others to feel like it’s possible.
Katrina Collier: ‘Cause it is possible, ’cause if I could do it, anyone can do it. That’s what I believe.
Jessica Miller-Merrell: Awesome. Well, thank you again, and check out Katrina, take a look at all her resources, and appreciate you chatting with us today.
Thank you for tuning into the episode today on the Workology Podcast. Navigating a narcissistic person, especially at work, can be complicated, exhausting, and sometimes deeply personal. But as Katrina reminded us today, recognizing that behavior is the first step. You can’t control someone else’s actions, but you can set boundaries, document what’s happening, and protect your personal reputation, all while making intentional choices about how you choose to respond.
A big thank you to Katrina Collier for sharing her experience and insights. If this conversation resonated with you, I hope you’ll take a moment to share this episode with a colleague or someone you know needs to hear about it. And remember, difficult workplace relationships do not have to define or derail your career. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is recognize what’s happening, trust yourself, and decide what comes next.
Thank you for joining the Workology Podcast, sponsored by Ace the HR Exam and Manager Essentials Mini Courses. Learn more about my favorite creator tools like Riverside for video and podcasting recording and editing also at workology.com/creator. You can also check out our new HR Tech Marketplace with my favorite HR technologies listed at marketplace.workology.com. This podcast you’re listening to is for the disruptive workplace leader who is tired of the status quo—and narcissists, frankly; we’re tired of those. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell. Until next time, visit workology.com to listen to all our previous Workology Podcast episodes.
RESOURCES
The Robot-Proof Recruiter by Katrina Collier
Reboot Hiring | Katrina Collier
Katrina Collier 🇦🇺🇬🇧🐾✨ (@katrinamcollier) • Instagram photos and videos
