Not undermining is not about being nice and friendly. Here’s why we must fix it and eradicate it: It’s Low Quality I’ve been there, I sometimes still fall for it.īut at the same time don’t accept that kind of behavior from yourself. If you catch yourself doing any undermining, start by not being too harsh on yourself. Terrible stuff for any relationship, please don’t do that :). The topic was that opprobrium that is GDPR:īy saying “36.999 of which are mine” he is undermining her achievements and dragging her down. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is a great example. Then here it comes the guy who does not get, or pretend he doesn’t get it, and schools you as if you what you had said was not in jest, but serious. You joke about something, and you think it should be obvious it’s a joke. Well no, now that you say it my dear underminer, I finally realize what an idiot I was to overdress -eye-rolling. Underminer: Hey, nice jacket, are you feeling cold today? When I arrived at my location, I was greeted with a typical ironic undermining move: But it was a long time I hadn’t rocked my Japanese-styled overcoat, and I decided to take it for a spin. The ironic underminer throws a jab and then hides behind the “it was just a joke” defense. Here are a few real-life examples types of underminers: #1. With these people, you better nip it in the bud or they will see your silence as a sign of weakness.īut in my experience, power movers are a minority when it comes to undermining, and the majority are in the first three categories. Undermining is a way of challenging someone and saying “I can tackle you” or “I’m above you / you’re not that far higher up”. They grew up in a family where one-upping and microaggressions are the norm, and never realized how damaging it is. Instead of working on themselves and building alliances of equally cool people, they try to drag you down to make themselves feel better. Laughing at someone is one way to undermine someone’s statusīringing people down is a (sick) way for some to build themselves up. Undermining you is their way to bring you down so they can go up. People undermine you when you’re in charge or have more social power but they feel close enough to feel that they could be on top. It’s been my life experience that people undermine when there is envy, animosity, low self-esteem or somewhat of a “competition mentality”. It’s because the underminer is not only and not always motivated by social gain, but also by an (unconscious) need to feel better with himself.Īnd dragging people down is one way to achieve it, whether it’s in a social setting or not. Undermining however doesn’t have to happen in social settings. Undermining and social climbing are similar and there’s often an overlap. Social climbing is taking value away from someone for our own social gain. In a previous article we have talked about social climbing. And that decreases your authority (and increases theirs).Īs you might have noticed, it’s a common cheap shot of workplace warriors. It’s as if they were saying “good, but you forgot this, now I will fix it”.
In simpler words, an underminer acts like an asshole who is out to disempower you. Someone is undermining you when they say or do anything which decreases your social status, calls into question your moral and ethics, seeks to decrease your authority in a relevant field or causes third parties to lose respect for you. We will work with this definition for “undermining someone”:
TO UNDERMINE SOMEONE HOW TO
How to Stop Someone From Undermining You.