A client called me recently, still shaking. Mascara everywhere. She’d just been called into her boss’s office, where he informed her — at volume, with fist-on-desk percussion — that she wasn’t getting it, her thinking was dim, and an intern could’ve done better. Each insult came with a little crescendo, like he was building to a key change.
She asked me, “What do I do?”
Here’s the part I love: I was hired by his boss. To coach her. On leveling up. On handling her stress better.
Nobody mentioned the fist. Nobody mentioned the volume. What I got, when this engagement was pitched to me, was a lot of flattering language about my background as a Marine leader, my work in leadership development, and how there were “some team members who could benefit from coaching.” Sure. Everyone can benefit from coaching. I signed up.
What I didn’t clock right away is that I wasn’t hired to help someone grow. I was hired to help someone cope. There’s a difference, and it took me embarrassingly long to feel the shape of it.
Congratulations, You’ve Been Promoted to Professional Victim
Let’s call it what it is, minus the clinical diagnosis I’m not licensed to hand out. We’ll just say the guy’s an a-hole, because that’s accurate and doesn’t require a DSM code.
What organizations are often quietly asking for, when they hire a coach for someone getting run over by an a-hole, is not “help her get out.” It’s “help her take it better.” Build her resilience. Sharpen her boundaries. Give her some breathing techniques for the drive home. Basically: reinforce the tires so she can keep driving over the same nail.
I know this move. I learned it in the Marine Corps, where getting screamed at, insulted, and pushed to your absolute edge was, in fact, the design. It was meant to break you down so you could be rebuilt into something more capable of handling chaos. And it worked, for me, in that context.
Here’s the piece that gets lost when people try to import that model into a cubicle: in the Marine Corps, that intensity has a shelf life. It’s orientation. It’s weeks, sometimes months. Then it’s over, and you carry the toughness forward into a totally different chapter where the culture is powerful, positive, loving and supportive. Read: you’re done with Boot Camp.
At the office, there’s no graduation. There’s no “you’ve completed your abuse and may now proceed to a normal job.” It just… continues. Monday. Tuesday. The quarterly review where he does it again, but louder, because apparently that’s a skill he’s building too.
The Job I Actually Won’t Do
My contract says “executive coaching.” It does not say “tell people to quit.” I get that. I’m not there to blow up someone’s paycheck on day one, and I’m not going to pretend I have the standing to make someone’s decisions for them.
But there is a very fine, very specific line between helping someone build boundaries and helping someone build a higher tolerance for mistreatment, and I will not quietly stand on the wrong side of it just because the invoice says otherwise. My actual job, the one I give myself permission to do, is to help someone see themselves and their opportunities clearly. To help them notice they’ve arrived at a real inflection point (not a rough patch, not a “tough season,” an inflection point) and to help them find the courage to act on what they already know.
Because they always already know.
What No Pep Talk Can Fix
I want to be direct about something, because I think we’ve all gotten a little too comfortable dressing this up in soft language.
If someone is yelling at you regularly. If someone is pounding a desk to punctuate how stupid they think you are. If someone is chipping away at your intelligence, your competence, your worth, on a schedule, that is not a “difficult working relationship.” That is abuse, and it does not matter that it’s happening under fluorescent lights instead of somewhere more dramatic.
No morning affirmation is going to undo that. No calming playlist on the commute home is going to repair what gets worn down in you, session after session, insult after insult. You do not meditate your way out of a toxic relationship. You leave it.
And here’s the sneaky, cruel part of staying too long: you start to think you’re the problem. Your confidence erodes so gradually you don’t notice the floor dropping until you’re already several feet down. You go quiet in meetings. You second-guess things you used to know cold. You start rehearsing conversations in the shower, trying to figure out how to say things in a way that won’t set him off – or, her off, because women do it, too – as if that’s a solvable equation, as if there’s a version of you good enough that he stops.
There isn’t. That was never the assignment.
So, Some Actual Advice
If you’re in a toxic work relationship: get out.
If someone yells at you regularly at work: leave.
If someone is berating your intelligence and stomping on your dignity to make a point: pack your bags. Not eventually. Start now.
Make a plan first. I’m a Marine, not an anarchist, and I believe in reconnaissance before you move. Line up your finances, your network, your next step. But the destination is the same regardless of how long the map takes to draw out.
And if you’re reading this and you know someone going through this, a colleague, a friend, someone on your team getting quietly dismantled in a closed-door meeting once a month, say something. Have the courage to name it. You don’t have to fix it for them. You just have to be the person who says, out loud, “this isn’t normal,” because sometimes that’s the sentence that finally lets someone give themselves permission to leave.
I can’t believe we’re still doing this. Still normalizing it. Still hiring coaches to help good people build a higher pain tolerance instead of hiring leaders who don’t require one.
Be the person who says something. Someone will thank you for it. Possibly with a mascara-free face.
