Story 217
Coercive control at work is not bad management. It is not a personality clash. It is a pattern of behavior — deliberate, directed, and purposeful.
I experienced this at Citi, in USPB Risk Management — under a former “manager” himself working under a known bully and harasser. As a sustained and consistent pattern directed specifically at me.
Micromanagement by someone whose actual experience and seniority were less than my own.
Surveillance — he personally disclosed to me eavesdropping on my telephone calls.
Communication restrictions — controlling my access to senior personnel to create the illusion that he was driving the ship.
Boundary guilt — not to assert self because “some people hold a grudge”. The message was clear: stay small, stay silent, or face consequences.
Credit theft — my achievements credited to others to manufacture justification for my elimination.
I suspect if asked, he would claim he was simply following instructions from his own manager. But “just following orders” does not absolve the behavior, especially when it directly contravenes Code of Conduct and companion policies.
What it confirms is more troubling: it was sanctioned from above.
This is how toxic leadership protects itself — not just by silencing dissent, but by deploying coercive control downward through the hierarchy, against the people whose competence and visibility threaten those above them.
If you recognize this pattern, you are not imagining it. And you are not alone.