The BEST Way to DEAL With Narcissistic People [Doing THIS One Thing Will DRIVE a Narcissist INSANE!]

Something that everybody who has a job or ever will have a job needs to know is how to deal with a narcissist, because we are all at one point or another going to have to learn how to deal with a narcissist. And there's a lot of aspects to narcissism that make them particularly problematic. But in this video, I want to focus on two aspects in particular that we have to learn how to deal with. Blame shifting and gaslighting. Blame shifting— narcissists generally do not take responsibility. They are imbued with a sense of entitlement, the sense that I am owed, I deserve adulation. And so they are not the kind of personality that is really going to take criticism. They're not going to accept blame when things go wrong. That's one. Number two is gaslighting. They are going to shift facts, they're going to ignore facts, they're going to lie about facts. But even more than that, they're going to put interpretations on facts that cause us to question our own reality. They're gonna try and change the narrative to manipulate us to suit their own ends. And those are two big things that we can learn how to deal with, and that's what I wanna show you. My name's Mark Murphy. I'm the founder of the research and training company Leadership IQ. I'm a New York Times bestselling author. You can see my research and our firm's research all over the place. And two of my most recent books are Managing Narcissists and Blamers and Dramatics and More. That's a leadership book. And then Working for a Narcissist. This is a book for basically all of us who have had or will ever have a narcissist boss. And I got bad news, that's pretty much going to be all of us. So With this, how do we deal with a narcissist, especially when we're talking about blame-shifting, gaslighting? Okay, I want to start with a model called the FIRE model that is gonna— it's gonna give you a mindset shift, but it's also gonna give you specific things you can say when a narcissist tries to shift blame onto you, finger point, or they try and gaslight you. And it works like this: in difficult conversations, there are generally 4 layers to those conversations. And this is owing in large part to— this is kind of in a simplified way how our brain tends to process information. There are facts, there's objective reality. We saw something, we heard something, we read something, something objective, verifiable, observable. But then based on that fact, our brain tries to give that meaning. Our brain is not a fact engine. Our brain is an interpretation engine, which is why we're susceptible to narcissists, frankly. We try and give this meaning, so we interpret it. We make some judgment about what that person said or did or wrote or whatever. Based on that, we have an emotional reaction, and then based on that emotional reaction, we have some desired end. We want something to happen. So we call it the FIRE model because it's facts, interpretations, reactions, and ends—FIRE. Now let me give you kind of a weird example just to show you how this works, and then we're going to get into some specific how to respond using the FIRE model when a narcissist tries to gaslight you or manipulate you or shift blame. Okay, imagine you step outside your house and you look at the sky. The sky is covered, 3/8 covered with clouds. That is what is known meteorologically as scattered clouds. Scattered clouds, the definition is 3/8 of the sky is covered with clouds. So you can observe this, you can map this out. You could, if you wanted to, you know, get some software and actually start to assess the cloud cover and see what percentage of the sky is covered with clouds versus not. That— it's just facts. It's observable. It's mathematically calculatable. Okay, now when normal humans walk outside and look at the sky, we do not look up at the sky and say, my, isn't that interesting, the sky is 3/8 covered with clouds. What we instead do is try and interpret that. We try and give it some meaning. So we look at the sky and we go, ooh, it's partly sunny, or it's partly cloudy. Side note, by the way, when you hear weather people say phrases like partly sunny or partly cloudy, those are not facts. They both refer to scattered clouds. They are interpretations, positive or negative interpretations. If you are positively disposed, you will say like, oh, it's partly sunny. Look at that, 3/8 cloud cover, it's partly sunny. That's my interpretation. Based on that, you will have an emotional reaction like, oh wow, the weather's great. It's so, I'm happy, serotonin, it's lovely. And then based on that, your desired end is, Oh, I'm gonna go for a run outside today. I'm gonna put the top down on my car. I'm gonna do whatever. It's great, I love it. If, however, you look at the 3/8 cloud cover sky and you have a negative interpretation, you're like, eh, it's partly cloudy, your emotional reaction might be, ah, the weather stinks. And your desired end is, I'm just gonna curl up inside. I'm gonna make a fire. I'm not doing anything. It's blah, it's out. I don't like it outside. Okay, that's a weird, simple example though of how the FIRE model works. And we're gonna use this weirdly to deal with narcissists Because when it comes to dealing with narcissists, we are going to— whatever they say to us, we are going to suck it back and stick it back in the world of facts. We are going to live in the world of facts. We're going to think factually. We are going to speak factually. Okay, let's get into some real-life examples here. Imagine— and I'm going to take some examples now where I'm working for a narcissist because it's a simple, easy example. Everybody can understand this. If the narcissist says to me, for example, "You are always late on your test," they're criticizing me, they're trying to beat me down, make me more emotionally fragile so that they can manipulate me more easily. "You're always late on your tasks." Okay, is that a factual statement? No, right? It's an interpretation. Why? Now, usually words like "always" and "never" They're what's known as a form of black and white thinking. It's a cognitive distortion. Most things in the world are not always or never much of anything. So when somebody says you're always late on your test, that's usually an interpretation. It's not factual. What we want to do is we're not going to respond to that directly. What we are going to do, because we're not going to go challenge and say, you said always, and let me— but we're not going to fight. We're going to be factual. And part of being factual is being very calm, just unflappable, which is an important aspect too. When you're dealing with a narcissist, you want to be as unemotional as you can. Doesn't mean jerky, it means unemotional. You might say something like, you know what, for the last 3 projects, I met every deadline. I can show you the records if necessary. I'm going to go back to the world of facts. You're always late on your tasks. Okay, well, I always— man, how far back does always go? Like forever? Like, you know, I was born in whatever year, and, you know, do I got to go back all the way to there? No, I'm gonna pick and go something I can get my hands on factually, and I'm gonna take it back into the world of facts. And the last project, the last two projects, last three projects, something factual, demonstrable, verifiable, observable, and I'm gonna deal with that. If they say something like, "I never told you to focus on this project," now that is not an interpretation. That's actually— let's assume that they're lying about the facts— that is taking a fact and denying or ignoring or just flat out lying about the fact. And in that case, I might say something like, "In our meeting last Monday, you asked me to prioritize this project over the others. Here's the email where we confirmed it." Now Something to note just in these just two examples so far is that when you are living factually— yes, I am right now talking about speaking and thinking factually, living in that world— but what's an implication of everything I've said so far? An implication of everything I've said so far is document, screenshot, save records, use your phone, take a picture of the email if you have to. Be able to back yourself up with the facts. It will do multiple things. Number one, it will insulate you and inoculate you much more against things like gaslighting. When somebody says, I never told you to focus on this. Okay, well, actually, I took a picture of the email right here, and, um, no, I think it says pretty clearly, uh, focus on this project. So at very least It's not always going to be that I'm going to win in some imaginary courtroom with them, but it is going to protect me from going nuts and starting to question my own recollection of things. That's one way we protect ourselves against gaslighting and try and inoculate ourselves against it. If the boss says, "You're making everything worse by what you're doing," okay, well, that's an interpretation with a dose of negative emotions, all right? You're making everything worse. Okay, well, I might respond factually. I'm following the plan we agreed upon. I can provide you a status update. Notice I'm not taking the bait. When somebody comes at me with an interpretation or an emotional reaction, I'm not going to take that bait. I'm not going to get sucked into that, and I'm just going to respond calmly, simply, and factually. If they say, this project is a disaster because of you— again, interpretations with a dose of negative emotions. I'm going to respond factually. The project is 85% complete. We've hit the key milestones. I'm working on addressing the last outstanding issue. I can provide you a project update. Here's the email from last week where I gave you the status. If you don't work all weekend, we're all going to fail and it's all going to be on you. Okay, again, factually, I'm not going to take the bait. Notice that's an interpretation. If you don't work all this weekend, We're all gonna fail, everything's gonna be on you. That's not a fact, that's an interpretation. So my response is going to go back into facts. I've completed my responsibilities for this week. I'm confident we're on track. I'll be available to assist during regular working hours next week. Now, one big thing in all of this, when I am responding factually, a couple of key things. Number one, obviously, I am limiting myself in what I say to things that are verifiable, observable. That's clear. Number 2, though, notice again, I'm being very calm, very rational, very factual, even keel. I am not going to take the bait for the interpretations or the emotional reactions. That's what they want. Then a narcissist wants to goad me into taking the bait and losing my cool a little bit. The minute I do that, That's when they've got me. The third thing that is implied in everything I just showed is that you'll notice my responses are very simple. Sometimes people will say, well, you know, I really need to go back and I need to have a deeper discussion about this with them. Here's the thing, narcissists tend to be really, really skilled at manipulating. That, that's, you know, how they got to be narcissists in the first place, right? If you are You're utterly incapable of influencing others. You're not a very good narcissist. The narcissists who get away with being narcissists tend to be highly skilled at manipulating others. The more you say, the more ammunition you give them to use to manipulate you. The longer this conversation goes, the more words you give them, the more data points you give them to pick at, and they will find something else to change the topic and spin you off. I want my responses to be simple, clear, direct, factual, and unemotional. I'm just gonna stay in my little bubble here. If it's not a fact, I'm not gonna talk about it. But there are plenty of facts, especially if I really pay attention. If I learn to think factually and document the facts of things, I'm gonna be in pretty good shape. Hope you got something out of this. Be on the lookout. If you click subscribe to our YouTube channel here, the Leadership IQ YouTube channel, like the video, get notifications about the new videos. We're going to be releasing a lot more about narcissism, both managing narcissists and working for a narcissist. You can also pick up the books on Amazon, uh, links will be in the description. Hope you got something out of it.