So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New

Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for

free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!

Welcome to the HBR idea cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nicky. Have you ever come out

of a work meeting where you did not understand what just happened or why? Like, why was that person

presenting the idea that you suggested at a previous meeting? Or wait, why did that supervisor do

an about face and act like it's totally normal? We've been taught to try to see things from other

people's perspective in the workplace, to fix things that you can control, like your communication

and your collaboration. It's easy to feel some self doubt when things go awry. Like, none of this

is how I remember it. What am I doing wrong? Well, maybe it's not you. Our guest today says that it's

some point in our working lives where likely to deal with a toxic behavior called gaslighting. That's the

idea that someone can make someone else question their memory, their perception of reality. In the workplace,

it's often a manager doing this. They pretend not to understand, they change the subject, they trivialize

your feelings, or they deny that something happened. And it's exasperating to deal with. When you're being

gaslit, it hurts your self-esteem, mental health, and job performance. Joining me today is Mita Malik.

She is the head of inclusion, equity, and impact at the firm Carta, and she wrote the hbr.org article

How to Intervene when a manager is gaslighting their employees. Mita, welcome. Thank you so much for

having me. Now, this is a word that's been used quite a bit in headlines. How do you define this

colloquialism gaslighting, especially when it comes to the workplace? Well, my really simple

definition, I'll start with Kurt, is if we were sitting next to each other right now, and I just

turned around and slapped you across the face, and you looked at me and you said, Mita, why did you

slap me across the face? And I just looked at you and said, I didn't slap you across the face,

...