46. What to Do When Your Boss Undermines You

Written By Yann Dang

Being undermined doesn't mean you're powerless. When your boss invites your entire team to town without telling you, or when decisions about your department get made behind closed doors, it creates more than frustration—it destabilizes your leadership.

Power shifts happen in subtle ways. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's not. But either way, you feel diminished, overlooked, marginalized. Maybe you're left off an important email, or decisions get made about your functional area without your input. Your ideas get presented by someone else as their own. These aren't small oversights. They’re leadership misalignments that require your response.

Join me this week, as I share real-life examples from my coaching practice and corporate experience to show you exactly how to reclaim your authority without creating drama. You'll learn a three-step framework for addressing undermining behavior and discover why self-empowerment matters more than waiting for the system to change.

Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • How to recognize the subtle signs of being undermined.

  • Why your emotional responses to power shifts are important data, not overreactions.

  • How one client turned repeated undermining into culture-building opportunities that strengthened her leadership.

  • A 3-step framework for what to do when you’re being undermined.

  • Why, particularly in male-dominated spaces, learning to lead yourself becomes non-negotiable.

Listen to the Full Episode:

What do you do when the person who's supposed to have your back doesn't? When your boss invites your entire team to town without telling you? When you find out again that decisions are being made behind closed doors without your name in the room? That's not just frustrating; it's destabilizing. But here's the truth. Being undermined doesn't mean you're powerless. And today, I'm going to show you how to protect your leadership and your energy when trust at the top gets shaky.

Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.

Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential. 

Hey podcast listeners, welcome to today's show. We are going to talk about how to hold your power when your boss undermines you. And in this case, you can think about your boss being even a peer undermining you. Maybe it is another senior leader undermining you. You can use this in a lot of different ways. It doesn't need to just be your boss, but for simplicity, I have titled this How to Hold Your Power When Your Boss Undermines You.

So let's dive into this because I want to help people understand that undermining rarely comes with a dramatic confrontation. It could be something really subtle. It could be exclusionary. It could be withholding information, or it literally could just be being forgotten, sometimes on purpose or maybe not on purpose. I want to also explain that when somebody undermines your leadership or undermines you, it may be intentional, but it also could be unintentional. So we're going to dive into all of these things and how to respond in a way that has you in your power and not feeling powerless, even when your boss is undermining you in different ways.

I want to tell you that this topic comes up more and more, especially as you are increasing in your leadership. There's lots more conversations happening. It's super important to be in the room, into these high-stake situations and to be part of the team. And often times, there are things that are happening where people are consciously and intentionally undermining you as well, where they want to somehow rattle you, take away your power, or they are just super emotionally immature. It kind of is back to that episode that I talked to you about toxic environments. They could also be just highly immature.

So let's talk about what undermining looks like, and then we'll dive into different examples to show you how to respond in ways where you are taking back your power and what it could look like to you. I'm going to share with you a how-to framework at the end of this as well.

So undermining looks like a lot of different things, but you're going to probably feel diminished in some way, overlooked, marginalized. So it could be being left off of an important email or an invite, right? Maybe there's a big strategic meeting where it's a go or no-go for things that are going to impact your functional area, and somehow you're not in the room or you weren't on the invite. It could look like decisions being made around you.

As a finance leader, sometimes things would get approved and I would not know about it, and I was the finance leader. And I'm like, wait a minute, what happened? Who approved this? How did this happen, right? It could look like your ideas being presented by someone else. Somebody hearing your idea, presenting it as their own. Or it could look like leadership being bypassed in front of your team. Maybe it's your team or your responsibility to do something, and instead of allowing the tech team to do it, they're like, okay, well, the strategy team's just going to take it over. And, you know, it's basically, you know that there's responsibilities that you should be in charge of, but somehow it is not happening. And your boss doesn't have your back, maybe other senior leaders don't have your back, and you need to speak up for yourself or you need to take your power back in this situation.

So I want you to just also notice that if you feel confused, embarrassed, or suddenly small, that you're not overreacting. Usually, it is because something is happening. You're picking up on a power shift. And you're allowed to notice it. And actually, it is your responsibility as a leader to notice these power shifts because as they happen, you need to be aware of what's going on so that life is not just happening to you. You don't want to be the person that's constantly undermined and like, I don't have a voice, I don't have a say, even though I have a big title. You have a responsibility to speak up for yourself, for your team, for your functional area when it matters to you.

And when you're noticing these emotions coming up, to not just brush them under the rug and say, "Oh, they probably just forgot," or to create excuses for them and to kind of amp yourself up in different ways. Like, oh, somebody might say, "Well, they forgot me, but it's okay. It happens." You throw it under the rug. But if there is a silent resentment that's building up or if there is you not speaking up for yourself and you're noticing yourself holding back, this is where you need to actually use your emotions to take action, to do something, to think about something differently, to create a mental context for you that creates more power for you to show up in these spaces. So let me give you some examples of what this looks like, right? Because I think sometimes this can feel really abstract, but the more grounded examples I give you, the more you're like, oh yeah, I could see how that happened and what happened in that situation.

So, I'm going to share with you what happened with one of my clients and how she was able to take ownership and power back for herself two times. You probably have heard this example if you have been a long-time podcast listener. I have talked about this very example in the pain versus suffering podcast where I had shared about how my client was told by her team members that her CEO, the boss, had invited all of them into the city that she lives in, into their hometown to do a meeting and he didn't even tell her.

So he basically summoned all of her staff from across the country and even from Europe and said, come here, I want you guys to all work on this thing together. And he didn't even let her know, and she is, you know, the head of this department. So one of her people on her team were like, hey, the CEO let us know this, he emailed us and what should we do? And she said, come, right? Of course she was angry, of course she felt rage, of course she felt undermined. First she was like, you know, allowed herself to have her feelings, which is a lot of the work that we do is to really ground ourselves in our emotions. And she had every right to be upset. If you have team members and your boss is reaching out to them directly, telling them to book flights and come to a location and not even tell you, not even have the decency to tell you to do it, like that is a clear undermining, a clear communication flaw. It's definitely a dig to her.

Whether it's intentional or not intentional, this person maybe we give him the benefit of the doubt, he just doesn't understand communication skills, but he's the CEO. So let's hold him to a little bit higher standard. And what she did in that situation, after feeling her emotions and especially the feeling of anger, which I teach my clients, underneath anger is usually hurt or fear, and using that anger intentionally, what she did was tell her team, hey, fly in, I'm going to show up for that meeting. And what happened is they all flew in, she showed up for that meeting, and she, you know, is starting to build this relationship with the CEO. So she doesn't have the type of relationship where there's a lot of trust and rapport. And so when this relationship isn't so much like that, she has two choices. She has a choice to confront him, to push back, or she has a choice to reclaim her voice and her boundary.

And in this case, and I'm here to tell you, there's no right or wrong. It's more about how you feel empowered in yourself. If she wanted to have that conversation with the CEO, that's definitely something she could have done. But weighing out all the options, she decided, I'm going to show up. So she decided again, showed up, took up space, ran the meeting, pretended like nothing, you know, went wrong, acted totally professional, and got the job done and was productive and was like totally no drama. So even if she felt the hurt or pain, she wasn't in the suffering about it because she had made a decision. I am the leader of this group and I'm going to show up as the leader. And even if this person is trying to undermine me or shift power away from me, I'm going to reclaim it by showing up to this meeting and making it so and not allowing him to disrupt her leadership and her authority.

And so she did an amazing job owning herself and being empowered in herself and what she could do and less in the drama or the suffering of what's happening to her. She was deciding what was going to happen to her in that future. And then guess what? This week I talked to her and it happened again. So he invited a bunch of people from across the country and, you know, from Europe to come to the office again. And he wanted to, you know, bring them together for culture. So of course my client was like, okay, it happened again, but I did a great job last time and I'm going to do a great job again this time, reclaiming my power, showing my authority. And I was pretty blown away by what she did because he wanted to bring all the team together. He wanted to take them on this bar crawl and she's like, this is not culture building. Like if you really want to build culture, we need to create spaces to really connect with people authentically.

And this is who she is. She is that type of leader. She is an amazing leader. So instead of helping to do the bar crawl stuff, she said, actually, I wanted to invite like four or five people to my home, like her house, which is so vulnerable and such a huge step in creating more culture because if you've ever been invited to a colleague's house, and I've been invited, I've had the experience of being invited to my boss's house or to a colleague's house, and it is very intimate. It is like another level of connection and vulnerability. And if you are thinking about culture building, there is probably not that much more you could do than invite people to your house. And I remember I invited my staff to my house once, my direct reports. I created this amazing brunch spread and it they knew like they felt very special and I felt very special. I'm welcoming them into my home, my house, my place, my sacred space.

So she did this. She invited, you know, four or five people. The guest list ended up getting much bigger. Her CEO decided to come. Other people decided to come. What was going to be like a four or five person like little get together became like 15 people at her house on the weekday. She had a pool, she had a barbecue. She had everything set up. And I was like, wow, this is so amazing of you, right? First he does this again, but you decide that you're going to be the type of leader who's truly going to build cultural experiences. Even if, you know, the environment doesn't always like, you know, is not the most welcoming thing. And your CEO is often undermining you.

She again takes up this responsibility, but she's not doing it from a place of scarcity. She's literally doing it from a place of authenticity and purpose. And she is reclaiming her power by doing this. And actually what happened at the end of it, so many people thanked her. So many people thanked her for opening her home. And the CEO even thanked her and said, this was an amazing event. Thank you so much for doing this. And he was honest. Like she knew he enjoyed himself and other people enjoyed themselves. And that is another situation where she didn't allow the drama or the upset or the disruption around her to dictate how she was going to show up as a leader. And she took her power back and reclaimed what mattered to her and created this amazing cultural experience and connection for her team members, including the CEO who undermined her.

So I just want to share that with you because this is a master class in how to really lead yourself, empower yourself, no matter what is happening. And I'm going to share some examples from my own experience with my boss too. Actually, I'm going to share two of them and I'm going to share why they're important experiences to underline and then we're going to talk about the framework of if you find yourself in this type of situation where you're being undermined, dismissed, forgotten in some way, this is really important steps to take to take back ownership.

I do want to discern that in my client's situation, she is still at the stage of building trust and rapport with her CEO. And that direct confrontation doesn't always land well. Of course, business books or communication books will say, say what's so, be clear, you know, be honest, be vulnerable, but you have to use your judgment as well. So when I'm coaching clients, I'm not telling them what to do. I'm saying, let's look at all of your options and what you know to be true and which way do you want to move forward in an empowering way? When I coach my clients this way, they learn to trust their intuition and themselves. And I will always expand possibilities for them and show them any blind spots, but I'm always somebody who is going to trust my client to support themselves and take that step that feels empowering to them.

So in my experience, I want to give you context that I had a lot of trust and rapport with my boss at the time that I had confronted him with these things. And I was building it. I'm not saying that it was always perfect, but we learned how to be really straight with each other, to be really honest with each other. And I still felt uncomfortable in these situations, but the point here is that my sort of actions and my confrontation directly with my CEO comes from a history of having trusted rapport, which for you, you've got to notice for yourself what is going to be the best next outcome. In my client's situation, she was like, I'm going to take back ownership, I'm going to decide to move forward without confronting him. In my situation, I'm going to talk to you about what I did to confront my boss directly. But again, I've had trust and rapport with him.

I'm going to give you two situations where I was undermined by my boss directly and how I dealt with it. So in one situation, so if you all know my past experience, I was basically the de facto CFO of my company. So all of the communications, all of the numbers would go through me. I would work with my CEO. But I had a divisional CFO who I reported to. And I had a strong dotted line to my CEO, but this CFO could see my numbers in the system, could, you know, look at things, but basically the way that things worked was that he could look at my numbers, but my numbers were mine. They were, I was the person that was in charge of my numbers and really nothing should happen to my numbers unless I have a conversation with my divisional CFO.

And this is really to maintain the trust. If he's giving me and my CEO the authority over our financials, then we should own the forecast, we should own everything that's in it. And there can be conversations that happen, maybe there's a cost allocation or something that will go on top of it, but it's always a conversation because at the end of the day, if the parent company is going to hold me and my CEO to the numbers, then they need to be ours. We need to have authority over those numbers, understand what's in it and out of it because that's our target.

So what had happened was with I think it was just a very busy budget season and there were numbers that didn't make sense in my numbers, which meant that somebody had approved some sort of challenge, some sort of communication that reduced the net income of my numbers, which I was really confused by and I had to go find out what was going on because that type of thing typically doesn't happen. And what I found out is that my boss had instructed people on his team to load something into my numbers that he wasn't supposed to, or at least if he did it, he was supposed to let me know ahead of time. And I remember this was kind of earlier on in our relationship, but I had called him.

It was a Zoom call and I said, hey, you loaded numbers into my financials and reduced our profit without me knowing and I spent a day trying to figure out what was going on because I thought we did it. And I just kind of held that silence and let him respond. And he said, "Oh, yeah, we had a challenge at the top and I talked to you about this and I communicated this to you." And I said, "Nope, I didn't get any email, I didn't get any phone call. I was totally unaware of this and my CEO was totally unaware as well. And we have been scrambling to try to figure this out." And then I could tell he was so uncomfortable and he started like ruffling things and looking into things. And, you know, really this was clearly a mistake on his part. And after he looked through things and his face was very red and he said, "Okay, sorry, that was a big mistake. I am sorry that happened."

It wasn't easy for me to just accept. Part of me wanted to just be like, "Oh, don't worry about it." But I really had to silence that being nice part of myself. I know we just had that episode about being nice. There's a part of me that wanted to say, "Oh, it's okay, don't worry." But I'm like, no, it's not okay. This is a big no-no. This is not something that is supposed to happen. And he has grilled me lots of times on doing things that are not supposed to happen. And in this case, the roles were reversed and it was really important for me to sit in my silence and to sit in the discomfort with him as he apologized to me because part of me was also rewiring in my mind that we're, you know, from my culture, right, we're supposed to make authority figures and elders comfortable and not see them squirm.

But for me, being an authority of myself and in my role, this was an important moment for me to really take in that he was apologizing for something that he should be apologizing for, for undermining me in a way that was not conscious, right? So it was unintentional, but it was still, it still happened. And it was just important to sit in that discomfort with him. And so again, I took a lot of power back by being able to not diminish the problem, to sit with the problem, to show my boss the problem in a very factual, clear way and not to create more drama and to allow him to have space to realize that he made a mistake.

This is power. This is what we're talking about. This is how you can take your power back and it's not about shouting, it's not about yelling, it's literally about slowing down, noticing the power dynamics, the power shifts, and really being calm in your own inner authority. That moment was just a big moment for me because it helped me to see that I am powerful. That this powerful person is apologizing to me for something that he should apologize to me for. So I want to show you that example because it just allows you to sit with what is possible when you notice these things and you call attention to them. Again, I had built more trust and rapport with him. He was somebody who if I had confronted him with this, I don't know actually, I would probably be 50-50 on that trust thing, but the way he reacted built more trust between us. And the fact that I really allowed him to apologize and took in that apology also shifted our relationship to another level.

All right, so that was one piece and we're going to go into the framework of this, but I wanted to give you that example of what it could look like in your own experience to take your power back.

Another time this happened is I was having a lot of issues with the team in London that was handling our shared services, our accounting transactions. So that was a part of the finance team that I needed. In my role was really about helping my organization, my leaders, my CEO make decisions, but our numbers were not always accurate. And I remember my boss saying, you've got to go to London, you've got to do this workshop with this shared services team, which is under him as well. And he's like, you just got to be honest. I think he literally said, you need to go, you need to be really American, really blunt is what he meant to say, right? He's European, so he was just telling me like, you know, go direct, go say what it is.

And I had this whole plan. He didn't really tell me a lot of things how I should do it, but I had a plan. I think it was like a three-day thing. So I went in and I sent out an email after he approved this with budget and stuff. And I said, hey, this is what we're going to do with the other team member and my colleague, my peer. I wrote this whole thing out about what we're doing. And he didn't like something about it. I think he didn't like that maybe it was three days long. Maybe he didn't like that I did too much vision stuff, which I think he might have thought was too soft or, you know, not getting down to business quick enough. But in any case, he had sent an email that basically said, we're not doing this. We're going to do XYZ. And I was so angry.

I was very angry in the moment when I got the email because here I am trying to fix stuff, letting him know I had an issue, him giving me permission to do it my way, and then this email totally undermines my leadership. Notice that I say it undermines my leadership, not my authority, because my authority is, we were both peers and working for this boss. So he really had the authority to do this, but he really undermined my leadership in that moment. And instead of writing a nasty email back or shutting down or just creating a lot of drama for myself, maybe I could have just ignored everything or acted resentful towards him. I called him.

And again, I had a lot of trust and rapport with him at this time, but I called him and said, hey, listen, I just saw the email that you sent. I want you to know that, and I don't know if you did this intentionally or not intentionally, but it totally undermined my leadership. If you had a problem with my agenda, I would have expected you to call me directly and let me know. Instead, you sent this email to the people that I'm trying to influence, the people that I am my peers that I'm trying to make a difference with. And then you've basically sent this email saying not to listen to me. And then I just like mic dropped, paused and let him reply. And he jumped in and said, hey, I'm not trying to undermine you. And I'm like, I know that you're not trying to consciously do it. I trust that you want the best for me, but this is what's happened.

And this is where that power exchange happens in that discomfort. And I actually, as I recall to it, he had said, okay, these are the things I didn't like about it. And I said, fine, I'll make those changes. But in the future, I want you to call me and let me know and not just send an email like that. And he said, noted. So it felt just super satisfying for me to stand up for myself. And again, I had this relationship with him where I could be very bold and direct and really expect the type of leadership from him that he expected from me. He was one of my hardest bosses, but he made me a great leader. He held me accountable. He pushed a lot of things, and he also taught me how to communicate to him in that way too, with authority and power. And that's how I took my power back when I was talking to him.

And this is something you could think about for yourself too, as you build more relationship and rapport with people, it doesn't mean that you can't hold them accountable and say what's so for you. And even share with them if you think that they're the type of leader who's open to hear it, that you are being undermined in some way, especially your leadership, because often times people are not doing it intentionally, but you don't ever really know unless you have the conversations and decide for yourself.

So just taking a zoom out picture of like the examples that I shared about myself and the example of my client, we were both working on this empowerment muscle, this taking back our power, taking back our leadership. Both of us were able to lead ourselves when the person above us didn't, when we didn't feel like we were being led properly by the people in front of us. And so it's important to name it.

So let's talk about what do you do when you're being undermined. I've given you examples, but let me break it down to, you know, the three steps. First, you want to notice for yourself and name it. If you feel diminished, if you feel dismissed, you want to notice this isn't me being left out. This is a leadership misalignment. And you want to be real with yourself. You want to zoom out and see the bigger context. Is this fight worth the squeeze? Is this really something that's happening? You might want to ask a trusted ally, am I thinking about this, you know, correctly and having that sounding board?

The next thing you want to do is decide how you want to lead yourself. What version of me do I want my team to see right now? Like asking yourself that, like especially in my client's situation, how does she want to show up? She knew she still cared about connecting with them. She cared about the cultural imperatives that she saw, right? She didn't really feel like her CEO had a really great vision of what that is. Again, he could have been very emotionally immature in that way and not really know how to build culture, but she knew how to do it and she cared about doing it, and so she let herself to do that. And then in my case, if I were in full authority, how would I respond? Again, authentically with clarity. How do you want to respond? How do you want to take your power back is really what this step is about.

And then thirdly, address it or redirect with strategic clarity. You want to ask yourself, you know, how you want to handle this problem. So the first is call it in with curiosity. Hey, I noticed the team was brought in. What was there, what was the thinking there? Really have that conversation or like with my boss, I'm like, hey, I saw you sent that email. And again, I had that, you know, real relationship with him that I could say, this is how I felt about it. The next thing is set a boundary. For alignment and trust, I'd like to be in the loop next time. This matters to my leadership. And being able to set that boundary, again, with respect on both sides, respecting yourself and respecting your boss to hear what you have to say. And then lastly, if the boss isn't safe, if you don't feel safe with this boss, you want to figure out how to reinforce your authority with your team directly or show up as the leader. And you, you know, if you don't have a CEO who you think is safe or emotionally mature enough to have this type of conversation, how do you address it in a way that empowers you?

This is about self-empowerment. And this is why it's so important to learn how to lead yourself first. Okay, so again, the three steps of what do you do, right? You've got to name it. You can't change things you don't name. So you've got to zoom out, notice your feelings, notice what's going on, notice the power shifts. Number two, decide how you want to lead yourself. How do you want to show up and take back your power and authority? And then lastly, address it or redirect it with strategic clarity and empowerment in mind. Those are the three steps. And particularly in male dominated spaces, women are often rewarded for compliance but punished for authority. And that's why learning how to lead yourself becomes a non-negotiable.

You can't wait for the system to shift. You have to shift yourself in it. This is really the importance of taking back your power, being in control, being the authority. Because your boss may undermine you, other people may undermine you, the system may undermine you, but if you have authority over yourself and your ability to take care of your own emotions and your ability to respond in a way that creates radical responsibility for yourself, to create more authority, trust, power, this is really the game of it. And if you learn to reframe the game in this way, you're going to have a lot more fun, you're going to have more satisfaction, and you're going to learn a lot more.

All right, that is the episode for today. It was great to be with all of you. I look forward to our next episode together. Take really good care. Bye.

Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.

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Yann Dang
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45. From Nice to Powerful: How to Lead with Authority in High-Stakes Rooms