Written by JoyGenea; proof by Copilot AI
I shared this story earlier this week
Here is the condensed story. A good, honest, and kind upper-level leader got played by a con-artist in particular about job skills and ability.
Because the business leader was busy with a crisis when this person started the job, they didn’t spot the signs right away, until it was months later.
Here is the important part, this situation, the ongoing lying and gas-lighting was causing them to doubt their leadership skills, to second guess their parenting, to even question why they were in the business of running a company. That is called “Self- Gaslighting” and it is the telltale sign that you are being lied to, because you have stopped trusting yourself.
I knew just what to do. Help them reconnect with themselves, their strengths, and wisdom.
I needed to interject some truth and then fight out the lies with them when they heard it.
If you could relate to some of this, you’re not alone, AND…
you didn’t cause this, this person arrived at your company broken, that happened long before you met them.
You can’t fix this. This is WAY above your skills and pay grade and more than that, you never want to be in the business of judging people to then try and fix them. That backfires every time. There is only one person you get to control in this lifetime and that is YOU!!
Here is the key question: What is the first thing you need to do to take care of yourself?
Notice I am only asking for one action in this question, and it is the first thing that comes to mind.
Whatever the answer is, do it ASAP and then ask that question again, and again until you start to get momentum.
Before you know it, this person will be in your rearview mirror.
IF you would use some of these words to describe your leadership style: kind, thoughtful, collaborative, a givers mindset, often looking for the win-win for everyone, this might make you a target for what gamers call, “black hats” or people with harmful or totally selfish intentions.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart and one I have had to work through and get challenged to grow even more muscles and skills around from time to time.
I have always been more of a giver than a taker in my personality and leadership style. I want to believe in the best of people. At this age, I know better, and I just need to be able to notice those people and move quickly away.
I don’t know if this trait is just because of my dyslexia, ADHD, and autism or if it has more to do with the adversity of my childhood. I think it is both. Some of it I came into the world with and some of it the world pushed onto me. Either way sometimes I miss the signals from my gut telling me a person or situation isn’t right, and I have to unweave a mess and regain my barring’s. I want to share what I have learned and give you some of my coaching secrets so you can explore this and map out your own best practices.
Givers and Takers
Adam Grant wrote a really useful book about this called Give and Take. Here are his definitions of a giver and a taker.
Givers are individuals who prefer to contribute more than they receive. They focus on helping others without expecting anything in return. In the workplace, they’re often generous with their time, knowledge, and support, driven by a desire to elevate those around them.
Takers aim to get more than they give. They prioritize their own interests and often seek to gain advantage, sometimes at the expense of others. Takers tend to be self-promoting and protective, believing that success comes from outperforming others.
This contrast is central to Grant’s thesis: while takers may rise quickly, it’s often givers, especially strategic ones, who achieve lasting success and build meaningful relationships.
This topic relates closely to unconventional leaders and also those with neurodiverse traits, like those of ADHD, autism, and dyslexia. In the neurodiverse community the trait of being kind and trusting, sometimes too trusting and understanding. It is described in many articles, books, and especially if you are reading anything focused for parents to help their different thinking children.
I know that feeling of having someone take advantage of you. The first time I recall it was when I was about seven and one of the neighbor girls came over to play at my house. After she left, I noticed I was missing my favorite gold ring my dad had gotten me. It never crossed my mind that she took it. I remember tearing my bedroom apart, not to the pleasure of my mom, and not finding it. When my dad got home, I told him that I had lost the ring, I was so sad and crying. He asked a few questions and the next thing I knew I was walking down the block, and he was knocking on the door of my friend’s house.
I don’t recall what was said, but I do recall that my friend came to the door and handed me my ring back. I was shocked. It had never crossed my mind that someone would do that. I know I have coveted other people’s Barbie’s and Legos and I knew that taking them would not end well for me and I just wouldn’t take someone’s stuff.
This is one of the nicest stories. I have others that cover years of my life and are far more dramatic. The feelings are the same. Sometimes I am too close to someone with my love and good thinking that I can’t see the whole picture of what is going on, because it is not in my nature to think that way.
Can you relate to some of this? Good, stay with me to learn more about adjusting for this gift, so it doesn’t become a costly and painful curse.
What you need to know
Just as there are people who think the best of situations and others there are people that do not. Society has some terms and language for those types of people and their behavior. You need to know this.
Narcissist is someone who exhibits an inflated sense of self-importance, craves excessive admiration, and often lacks empathy for others. This behavior can be part of a personality trait, or in more severe cases, a clinical condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Example: Imagine a colleague, boss, or employee who constantly brags about their achievements, dismisses others’ contributions, and expects special treatment, like always being chosen for leadership roles, even when others are more qualified. They might react with anger, aggression, or contempt if they’re not praised or recognized. Some will even create drama to make sure the attention is always on them.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where someone causes another person to doubt their own perceptions, memories, or sanity. It’s often used to gain control or avoid accountability by distorting reality.
Example:
Imagine an employee tells their manager, “You said I could take Friday off.”
The manager replies, “I never said that. You must be imagining things.”
Even though the employee clearly remembers the conversation, they begin to question themselves.
Gaslighting can happen in personal relationships, workplaces, or even public discourse.
If you are a giver and you have not learned enough about this, people will take advantage of the fact that you trust what they say and question yourself and not them first.
Self-Gaslighting is when someone’s gaslighting of you causes you to question your own perceptions, memories, skills, abilities, thoughts, instincts, or sanity. Your own internal dialogue starts to question your decisions and choices in real time. This is what truly erodes someone’s self-confidence and ability to fight back. It becomes a very mentally unhealthy loop that can be hard to get out of.
I explore this more in another article. CLICK HERE TO READ THAT
What to do
The #1 thing you can do for yourself is ask for help. You will need the support, guidance, wisdom, and skills of those who love you and who have been through this themselves.
Call hotlines, join support groups, get a counselor, get a coach, seek out and build your trusted advisor team.
What do I do for myself? I have a team, and I talk with them about business decisions I am going to make or people I am going to work with, and they are spot on about noticing the ones that don’t have my best interest at heart. Don’t think I haven’t ignored them recently, I did, and I paid for it in money, time, mental bandwidth, and confidence. I did gain more trust in my team and more ability to shut that crap down quickly and move on.
It felt foreign to me, because I had never done it before, but I got that I had to learn to do this, or this was going to keep happening.
I recently spotted one who tried to sell me something, and they never made it past the first call. I did it with kindness and boundaries. No explanations, no excuses, no answers to their questions. I stopped all communication. It was a sanity saver and that is what I was fighting for.
#2 Learn things! Currently, you don’t have to live with your own thoughts and try to figure things out on your own. That is what the extreme taker wants you to do, because then they can keep feeling powerful by playing you. Do some research, watch some videos, take a workshop or class on assertiveness, improving your self confidence, or finding your voice, hire a coach, and use AI to make sense of things. You are not alone, you just feel alone. Those are two different things.
I recently found this video from Mel Robins and Jefferson Fisher where he shares some brilliant language around how to handle people taking advantage of you.
CLICK HERE to watch.
I recently posted this video that walks you through a quick exercise for improving your confidence and worth when someone has bullied you out of remembering your greatness.
CLICK HERE to watch.
One of the best things about reading the Adam Grant book, and I thank him with my whole heart, is he stopped me from being ashamed of my kind heart and compassion for others. He even made me feel proud to be so vulnerable and I realized that it is what makes me a good coach and why people want to work with me. It is one of my differentiators. It is not a weakness. It is a strength.
I want you to feel that way too. I hope this article has got you thinking about your team and about how wonderful you are to be a compassionate leader and professional.
I would love to hear some of your stories please send me a video, voice note, email, or DM me on one of the social platforms. I want to celebrate your wins and hear about what you have done for your growth in this area.
JoyGenea Schumer
Unconventional Leadership and International Neurodiversity Success Coach
Transcription:
Leaders whose kindness is above average can sometimes be a target for those who want to take advantage of others. That is, this week, what I’m talking about primarily in my article.
And I don’t normally say, “You gotta read this,” but I’m saying—you wanna read this, ’cause it’s really good. And it’s chock-full of additional links (I’ll put them down below). Maybe that’ll help. But I’m telling you, it all rolls together nicely in there.
Within the neurodiverse community—particularly in the community that works with and supports neurodiverse individuals—it is a known fact that it is common for neurodiverse people with ADHD, autism, and dyslexia to be more understanding, potentially compassionate, and more trustworthy than the average person.
It is also a fact that in business, some of the greatest leaders—and actually, a majority of the greatest leaders, it turns out—are also high givers. High compassion, high giftedness in empathy, and those types of things… leaders.
And one of the roles in that is the fact that being a high giver—which I’ll get into that term in a minute—means that you also might be more susceptible to people that are of a black hat energy and goal. Which means they are seeking only their own advancement, their own best interests—those types of things.
So that’s what I talk about in this article. I get really clear and crisp about what that looks like. I’m defining out some things. I talk about Adam Grant’s book Give and Take, which he goes into detail—hang on, let me grab it. Things are always better with a visual.
So here’s the book I was talking about from Adam Grant. And in here, he talks about givers and he talks about takers.
Givers are individuals who prefer to contribute more than they receive. They focus on helping others without expecting anything in return. In the workplace, they’re often generous with their time, knowledge, and support—driven by a desire to elevate those around them.
Takers aim to get more than they give. They prioritize their own interests and often seek to gain advantage, sometimes at the expense of others. Takers tend to be self-promoting and protective, believing that success comes from outperforming others.
This contrast is the center of Grant’s thesis in his book. While takers may rise quickly—so we’ll observe them rising quickly—it’s often givers, especially strategic givers (so you need to learn about this if you are a kinder, more compassionate leader), it is those strategic ones who achieve lasting success and build meaningful relationships.
So that’s what this article is about. We talk a little bit more about that. I talk about how it weaves into leadership and how it also weaves into being neurodivergent in work environments.
There are some terms that you need to know.
Narcissist is someone who exhibits an inflated sense of self-importance, craves access and admiration, and often lacks empathy for others. This behavior can be part of a personality trait, or in severe cases, a clinical condition known as narcissistic personality disorder.
I will give you a hint: if you are neurodiverse and watching this, you possibly communicate with others that you have a neurodiversity. “I think a little differently.” Or, “My spelling isn’t maybe the greatest,” or “Sometimes I switch subjects quickly,” right? You’ll self-identify quite often. Yeah—that’s not a taker style. I’m just gonna be really clear.
They are not aware that they have NPD. If they do, they’re not aware that’s how they dance in the world. They are just aware that they need to get what they need to get when they need to get it. And if you are in the way of that, or if you can at all be an advantage for them to take advantage of—you’re it. And they will do those things.
So don’t—one of the biggest misnomers is—we’re waiting for somebody to tell us that they’re a taker and that they’re going to take advantage of us. They’re not. They’re not gonna self-identify. That’s not gonna be part of it at all.
Another term that’s important to know (and I give some examples in there of these things) is gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where someone causes another person to doubt their own perceptions, memories, or sanity. It’s often used to gain control or avoid accountability by distorting and distracting from reality. I give a great example of that.
Gaslighting can happen in personal relationships, in workplaces, and even just in public discourse.
If you are a giver and you have not learned enough about this—both of these terms—you need to understand. Not to be paranoid of, not to be super protective of, but to have awareness. To ask more questions and to seek additional advice.
People will take advantage of the fact that you trust what they say and question yourself first—not them. They count on that.
One last term I want to talk about is called self-gaslighting. This is something I stumbled on while having a conversation with AI, actually. It said this, and I went, “Oh my goodness, this is very real.”
And I’m going to talk about it, actually, in my next week’s article.
Self-gaslighting is when someone is being gaslit, and it causes you, the person being gaslit, to question your own perceptions, memories, skills, abilities, thoughts, instincts, or sanity. Your own internal dialogue starts to question your decisions and choices in real time.
And this is what truly erodes someone’s self-confidence and ability to fight back.
It becomes a very mentally unhealthy loop that can be hard to get out of.
I explore that in another article, like I said—so check that out.
What can you do?
You’re like, “Okay, wow. You told me. Now what do I do?”
No. 1 – You need to ask for help.
That is going to be the toughest thing you’ve ever done.
You need to ask for help—and in particular, you need to ask for the support, guidance, and skills of those that you actually truly love, who love you, and you know you can trust them.
And other people who have been through this experience.
I promise you—many people watched me going through some of these experiences and loved me, but did not have the experience to give me healthy, good, sound advice.
Because they had never experienced anything quite like this.
And it is not—you don’t treat it like you treat most things. It’s a special… there’s a process to this.
No. 2 – You need to learn things.
You need to learn. You need to watch some videos.
In this day and age, you can easily watch videos, take workshops, hire a coach—you can do things. Use AI. Take the emotions out of things and clarify.
Learn some things. You will thank yourself later.
Also—another link in there—I recently found an incredible Mel Robbins and Jefferson Fisher conversation that they had on one of her podcasts recently. Really good.
Where Jefferson Fisher talks out and lays out how to respond to some of this stuff.
And I would tell you—watch it, and practice saying those things in a mirror, so that if you are in one of those situations right now, you can use those tools right away. And you can start to take back some of your power, and confidence, and value.
I also recently posted a step-by-step way to quickly—in a moment—gain some confidence and some self-worth. A little process and worksheet.
So if this resonates with you—if you are listening to this and going, “Oh man, I could stand to learn some more about that,” “I could really use some help in some of those situations”—I get it. I understand. I would love to hear about it.
Please feel free to comment.
Reach out to me.
Send a voicemail.
Send a video.
Any way that communicating works best for you.
But I would love to hear your journey through some of this.
Some of the things that you have done to improve your muscle around trusting people and trusting the right people—and knowing how to extract the ones that aren’t trustworthy and don’t belong in your atmosphere.
I’m JoyGenea—coaching the unconventional leaders and the international neurodiversity community as a whole.
Thank you so much for checking in with me, for listening.
I look so forward to meeting you—and please tune in, like, and follow.
Bye.