It begins not with a confrontation but with a casual remark. “Oh, he leaves at 6pm sharp. Must be nice,” says a manager during a team meeting, framing dedication to work-life balance as laziness. The comment draws chuckles and is quickly forgotten—except by its target, who begins to question whether they are truly pulling their weight.
This is corporate gaslighting in its infancy: a quiet erosion of confidence that makes employees doubt their own perceptions, memories, and abilities. Unlike workplace bullying, which announces itself through aggression, gaslighting operates through subtlety, ambiguity, and the gradual rewriting of reality.
The phenomenon is more widespread than many organisations care to admit. According to workplace experts, it manifests through shifting goalposts, selective memory, and the weaponisation of feedback—tactics that leave victims questioning their competence whilst appearing unremarkable to observers.
The anatomy of manipulation
Manish Majumdar, head-HR, Centum Electronics, describes the typical progression. “Quite often the employee sees the shift. They may not label it as gaslighting, but they definitely feel it. The manager stops calling. Their answers become curt—not out of brevity but out of indifference.”
The manipulation often centres on moving targets. An employee receives clear instructions, completes the task, only to be told: “No, that’s not what I meant.” When this pattern repeats, the focus shifts from the work itself to the employee’s ability to understand basic requirements.
“When said often enough, especially in front of senior people, even small statements can have a devastating impact,” Majumdar explains. “Over time, the employee begins to question their own competence. The ground beneath their professional identity begins to shift.”
What makes corporate gaslighting particularly insidious is its ability to masquerade as legitimate management. Sudden reorganisations, role changes, and strategic pivots—all standard business practices—become tools of psychological manipulation when deployed without transparency or explanation.
Praveen Purohit, Dy CHRO at Vedanta Resources, notes the structural problem this creates: “When these decisions are made without clarity, transparency, or discussion, the impact on the employee is devastating. If the leader is the source of gaslighting, the usual upward route of reporting is blocked.”
The feedback weapon
Perhaps nowhere is gaslighting more prevalent than in performance management. Pradyumna Pandey, a senior HR leader, identifies the weaponisation of feedback as a particularly toxic practice.
“Sometimes we only give critical feedback, not developmental. That becomes toxic. That’s not leadership—it’s control, and control breeds distortion,” Pandey observes. In healthy organisations, he notes, feedback flows naturally with empathy and clarity. In gaslighting environments, managers shift expectations without warning, then blame employees for failing to meet undefined standards.
Selective praise represents another subtle tactic. “You won’t say a word to someone who is less good strategically, but you’ll stay silent even when they achieve something,” Pandey explains. The absence of recognition becomes as damaging as overt criticism.
The psychological toll
The emotional impact proves profound and cumulative. Majumdar describes a pattern of “rumination”—negative thoughts that loop endlessly, leading to anxiety, depression, and paralysing self-doubt. High-performing employees begin second-guessing decisions they would previously have made confidently.
The organisational cost extends beyond individual suffering. “You will sense when the person is a bit disengaged and they’re not participating, not giving ideas, just blindly agreeing—’Yes, everything is fine’,” Purohit observes. “It’s the most dangerous phrase in the workplace—because it often means exactly the opposite.”
This disengagement doesn’t happen overnight. Employees gradually withdraw intellectual and emotional investment, moving from active contribution to passive compliance. The organisation loses not just their current productivity but their future potential.
The systemic challenge
Corporate gaslighting thrives in environments lacking psychological safety. When employees fear that challenging assumptions or expressing dissent will be met with retribution, manipulation becomes easier and more effective.
The problem is compounded by power dynamics that make resistance difficult. Unlike harassment, which often leaves clear evidence, gaslighting operates through plausible deniability. The manipulator can always claim misunderstanding, poor communication, or legitimate business necessity.
For victims, options remain limited. “It depends on the person’s confidence, employability, and their situation,” Majumdar acknowledges. “Ideally, if the culture is toxic and the power dynamics rigid, the best choice may be to leave. But not everyone has that option.”
Building immunity
Prevention requires deliberate cultural intervention. Purohit emphasises leadership accountability: “Respect your people. Align them. Take them along with you. Difficult decisions, if communicated with transparency and dignity, don’t destroy trust—but secrecy does.”
Pandey advocates for psychological safety as the fundamental antidote: “Leaders must be comfortable when their assumptions are challenged. They must give people the space to agree, disagree, speak up.”
Organisations serious about prevention need robust escalation mechanisms, transparent decision-making processes, and leaders trained to recognise their own manipulative tendencies. They must also acknowledge that good intentions don’t prevent gaslighting—busy managers under pressure often resort to these tactics unconsciously.
The recognition imperative
Corporate gaslighting represents a sophisticated form of workplace abuse that traditional HR frameworks struggle to address. Its subtlety makes it difficult to identify, its gradual nature makes it hard to prove, and its impact on confidence makes victims reluctant to report it.
Yet recognition remains the first step towards prevention. When organisations acknowledge that manipulation can masquerade as management, they create space for honest conversation about power, accountability, and respect.
The cost of inaction extends beyond individual careers to organisational health. In an economy dependent on innovation and engagement, companies that gaslight their talent risk losing not just employees, but their competitive edge.
The smoke signals are there for those willing to see them. The question is whether leaders will act before the fire spreads.