Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

This is the first episode of Unmanaged The Podcast.

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Hi, I’m Elizabeth.

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Welcome to Unmanaged Workplace Strategy.

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This is going to be a little bit of a longer episode.

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I’m testing out kind of moving to longer form podcasts,

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so please let me know what you think after this episode.

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I’d love to hear from you.

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Today I want to tell you about a version of myself that I’m not embarrassed about anymore.

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I’m not embarrassed to talk about it,

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but it was a version of me that I spent a really long time not understanding.

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And I’ll start my story here.

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I was an HR director at a new organization.

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The interviews had gone really well.

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My boss seemed funny and kind.

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My colleagues seemed affable and kind.

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It was an organization that had been through a lot.

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And from my interviews, what I heard was, we’re turning over a new leaf.

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We want you to help drive the accountability,

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the management,

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training,

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and all of that so that we can change the culture.

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And I’m all up for a good transformation.

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That’s one of my favorite things to do.

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So I was all in on that.

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Then a few months in,

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I was in a meeting with my boss and we were just talking about HR stuff and another

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director walked in and they were talking and then suddenly they were both yelling

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and my boss was like slamming his hand on the table and the other guy was yelling

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and he was yelling and then suddenly the other director said okay thanks and he

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turned around and he walked out

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and my boss turned back to me and said okay where were we like just like nothing

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had ever happened I need a little bit more transition time than that to go from

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yelling to regular conversation it was unbelievable I had never seen anything like

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that before um

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So it was off and I started noticing other things were off but I kept justifying

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them so another time he told me how much he hated a specific employee and I thought

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that is strange that he uses the word hate and that he says it so without regret I

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hate this person and

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I justified it in my head by saying, okay, well, I’m building trust with him.

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So maybe this means that I can trust him.

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Maybe this means that he trusts me.

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And why I thought that justified it, I don’t know.

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But that’s what I did in my head.

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So another time he...

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I was walking out to my car and he caught up with me and he was asking me about a

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specific situation that had happened that day.

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And I said, oh, you know, better late than never.

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I don’t know.

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It was something like that.

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And he said, I am pissed.

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And it was just the way he said it with a stoic face.

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And, you know, I

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Often try to break tension with humor.

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And so I think I cracked some kind of a stupid joke.

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Anyways, he didn’t say anything in return.

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He just walked to his car and drove off.

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Anyways, I started dreading his moods.

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I never knew what version of him I was going to get.

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Like,

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are you going to be the brainstorming version or the two word answer version or the

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volatile one?

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The one that is silent and you just walk away.

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Like, which one are you today?

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So I overprepared.

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I brought data.

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I brought plans.

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I brought structure.

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And he would look at my work and literally toss it aside and tell me that I only

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wanted to do the fun stuff.

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And I’d heard him say that about other female leaders.

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And to be clear, I don’t know that this is a gendered comment, but

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And that was the only context in which I heard it.

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He actually drew me a diagram to explain to me how I only wanted to do the fun stuff.

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So he had three columns like ideas, approval slash implementation, and then fun stuff.

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And he put this X in the fun stuff column and was like, this is where you want to start.

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And he’s like,

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you have to go all the way back to the beginning And I was like,

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that’s what I gave you That’s what I handed you I handed you the plans,

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the structure The risk analysis I handed that to you And it didn’t move him at all

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He was just like,

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you know,

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you don’t get to work on the fun stuff yet Go back

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and create a better, you know, time off request form or something like that.

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Like he wanted me to do the manual work, even though I had a team that was doing it.

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He felt that I should be completely entrenched in that.

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So, okay.

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But I started getting just really...

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Nervous around him.

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I would see him in the hallway and if he scowled,

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then I would spin out and try to figure out what I did to cause it.

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Every time I executed something and it got any type of negative feedback or

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anything like that,

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which is always standard,

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right?

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You’re always going to get feedback from people who don’t agree with what you did

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and you can use that as data,

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right?

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And improve it and move forward.

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But every time something happened like that, he would

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Come and talk to me and say, remember when I told you this wasn’t going to work?

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And look what happened.

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Excuse me.

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He would say, like, remember when you said this was a great idea and now we have this mess?

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And it was always about one or two little things that didn’t go the way I had planned.

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Things that were recoverable, easy to adjust to because things change.

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Sorry I got a tickle in my throat there but anyways every single time I got

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something negative feedback or even just like ways you could improve this he

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decided that that meant that it was a failure and that he had been right all along.

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So like a frog in boiling water I was slowly being destroyed by my environment

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And the moment I finally noticed it was when I was in my office.

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My boss had come to talk to me about something.

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The door was shut, and he was pacing back and forth in front of the door.

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Now, for anyone who’s been through traumatic experiences, that may trigger you.

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It certainly triggered me.

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Inside of me, I was screaming, I can’t get out.

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Like, I need a path to exit.

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But I couldn’t say anything because he was yelling and he was sneering at me,

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which is something that I hadn’t experienced ever in a professional workplace.

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But he actually said to me, blah, blah, blah, and then some other things.

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But I had never experienced that in a workplace.

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Was totally shocked and then he I asked him to leave and he yelled and sneered and

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then slammed the door behind himself and that’s when I finally said to myself I

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don’t think this is normal but by that point I was crying every day like people

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would walk into my office and say how are you and I almost couldn’t stop myself

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from crying like that’s how

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It was constant brain fog.

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I would go home,

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maybe grab some crackers to eat for dinner and go straight to bed because I

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couldn’t actually handle talking to my husband or anything else.

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It was just too much.

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It wasn’t until I left many months later that I could start to see what had

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actually been happening.

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And a really interesting thing happened when I left is my former colleagues started

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reaching out and sharing their own experiences in the same workplace.

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And hearing someone else’s story,

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I started seeing the patterns that I had completely missed while I was inside of

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that workplace.

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The manipulation, the gaslighting, the way information had been used as a weapon.

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I started kind of zooming out and looking at this as a big Jenga puzzle,

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pulling out the bad pieces,

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pulling out the noise,

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right?

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And what was left standing was the truth of what had happened.

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And at the top of it was my competency,

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my skills,

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my track record,

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the thank you notes from employees that I’d helped through hard situations,

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the managers

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who told me that their conversation with an employee was a success because of the

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work that we had done together prior to the conversation.

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I hadn’t failed, and the problem wasn’t my competence.

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It was that I kept delivering messages that they didn’t want to hear.

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So as an HR director, it’s my job to bring

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Risk, People Risk Situations up, right?

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And let them know, hey, this is a risk that is being created in this area.

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You may want to do something about it.

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And so I would do that as part of my job.

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But whenever I had to report something about one of the executives,

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my boss would take it personally,

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like I had just called him a name.

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And then he started asking me questions like,

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whose side are you on,

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the employee’s side or the manager’s side?

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And I said, there isn’t a side.

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The best way to support an organization is to support employees to be successful.

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This is what I see as a risk.

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This is problematic.

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And if we don’t address it, it’s going to be a problem.

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But I think their expectations of HR were much different from mine.

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And in their minds,

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I think HR is there to protect them,

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not the business,

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but protect them from getting in trouble and keeping the paperwork going.

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That is what I could see clearly.

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After I really went through the process of visualizing,

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seeing it clearly,

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structurally,

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without the fog,

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and it shifted everything for me.

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I built Unmanaged because when I looked back at what had happened,

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I could see exactly where I had lost myself.

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The doubt I had internalized.

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The endurance I had mistaken for professionalism.

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The good faith that I extended to people who had not earned it.

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And it was in fact dangerous for me to have faith in them.

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The way I had personalized every mood, every slight, every slammed door.

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And that just heavy burden of obligation that I felt I had to drive myself into the

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floor to prove that I belonged there.

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But I didn’t belong there.

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And it’s not a character flaw, right?

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Like these are patterns of behavior and they’re actually patterns of behavior that

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are seen in workplaces all across this country.

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You know,

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the statistic of 80% of American employees identify as being in a toxic work

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environment.

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That’s a huge number.

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And when I think about how I felt during that experience,

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the despair,

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the inability to take care of myself,

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like exercise,

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healthy food,

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time with friends,

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time with family.

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No, like I was entirely consumed by

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with this job and how I could meet expectations that were not designed for me to meet.

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I became alarmed at imagining 80% of American employees feeling that same way.

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Because what does that mean?

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It means that you don’t have the time or bandwidth in your brain to critically

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think through what’s happening.

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And in the cultural environment that we find ourselves in now, like that is so scary to me.

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If workplaces are negatively impacting people to that degree,

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that they lose themselves,

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they lose their values,

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they lose everything that’s important to them.

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What are we doing?

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This is why workplace violence happens.

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It’s why people get so frustrated at not being heard.

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And the feeling of despair is just overwhelming.

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That is really what got me thinking of how can we stop this?

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How can we mitigate it?

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And based on my experiences, it hasn’t been

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Easy to get leaders to look at their own behavior and that’s often where the

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toxicity starts right because the head of the organization often sets the tone for

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the environment and for the culture so as I mapped out like what I had to unlearn

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and what I learned then they kind of fell into the unmanaged pillars right so we

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have 10 of them and

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I started to see a structure where maybe we could start infusing these skills and

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these abilities in our employee base across the country.

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Critical thinking,

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emotional intelligence,

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nervous system regulation,

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with what we’re learning about neuroplasticity and the ability to rewire our

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brains.

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I think it’s exciting.

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We can train employees

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We can train ourselves to regulate our nervous system,

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to critically think through situations using emotional intelligence at work,

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but also in the world,

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with our families,

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in our personal relationships,

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because these are the things that successful strategies are built on because you

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are separating the emotions from the facts and you’re moving forward in that way.

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My revolutionary idea for Unmanaged is to get employees below the executive level

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to identify where they’re losing themselves and turn it around so that they don’t

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get to the point that I got to where I was completely lost.

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That we start giving them these skills to start identifying the patterns while they’re in it.

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so that they can not only protect themselves,

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but when they leave that organization,

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they can take what they learned and make it a better place,

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their next place a better place.

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It might be pie in the sky ideas,

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but I feel like maybe we could use some pie in the sky ideas right now.

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And so that’s why I built Unmanaged.

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I hope that you all get something valuable from the resources that we have on our

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website it’s unmanagedpeople.com please check it out and I’d love to hear from you

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please send me an email send me feedback tell me what you’re struggling with I’d

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love to hear from you and if you’d like to be a guest on my podcast please let me

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know because I’d love to talk to people about their experiences and how they

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overcame the damage that a toxic work environment did to them

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I hope you have a great week.

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We’ll talk to you later.

For more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com.

Download Free Tools

Watch Unmanaged on YouTube.

Listen to Unmanaged on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Book a free consultation.

Submit an anonymous question for Fridays Off the Record.

Contact Elizabeth.

Apologies for the late Friday post - I have been a bit inundated.

On Thursday I wrote about the email I sent to the Board of Trustees of my former employer. I wanted to come back to answer some questions:

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Q: Why didn’t you name names?

A: Because it’s not about one company or what this company did to me. It’s about the level of behavior that we’ve been socialized to accept as normal in the workplace. It’s about the culture of silence that gets reinforced with every act of retaliation. It’s about the millions of people who are quietly enduring that which is annihilating their purpose, their sense of self, and their confidence. Collectively, we must not tolerate this kind of treatment - but that looks different for each person. I want to help individuals navigate these workplaces so that collectively, we can work towards a better culture in our workplaces.

Q: Why didn’t you just sue them?

A: When I left, I was a shell of the person that I am now. I didn’t get out of bed for weeks. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I was not able to take care of myself, never mind manage the flow of accurate information from my very fatigued brain to an attorney in court. I didn’t have the physical or mental stamina for such an ordeal. I don’t believe that is coincidental. The strategy of avoiding lawsuits for companies often includes mentally breaking down those who will accuse them.

I signed a separation agreement and agreed not to sue them. That brought me closure enough that I could take a month or so to try to recover and heal. That was my first priority when I left.

Q: You know you won’t be hired as an HR person after this, right?

A: That’s okay. I have bigger pursuits. And if there is a company that values integrity, honesty and their employees, then maybe it won’t look like something wrong, but rather something brave.

Q: Why are you so angry?

A: I’m not angry. I’m motivated to shine a light on things that happen in the dark, because things that happen in the dark, in secret, behind closed doors, when it involves the decisions around how employees are to be treated, what is sanctioned and what is not - that can impact someone’s life just as much or more than it impacted mine. It’s not necessary. Why not hold people accountable to some very basic standards of respect when employees are the reason that most companies can even exist?

Q: Why should we believe you?

A: You don’t have to. I can tell you that it’s the truth. I put my name to it. The company forbade me from retaining any documents - again, not a coincidence - so I can’t prove what I’m saying. And this is exactly how companies control the narrative. They control the documentation, insist on confidentiality and then demonize the person: The person who left and made accusations is disgruntled; The person who left had poor performance issues and they made accusations to distract and excuse their performance; The person who left was emotionally unstable and wasn’t qualified for their job anyway. Luckily, I was tracking things from the beginning in my personal files, so I do have quotes and dates, which I included in the email to the Board.

They will twist things around to avoid scrutiny on themselves while doing everything they can to scrutinize me. I’m sure that’s happening now. I don’t care, because this is more important than one company.

Q: Why are you posting your story now if you left eight months ago?

A: I was ready to let it go, honestly. Until a few weeks ago when I got a call with the message from my company that they were going to come after me “with everything we’ve got.” I will not be bullied into silence. They know that they can’t prohibit me from speaking about my experience. They are trying to bully me into it. And that pisses me off.

So I wrote the email to the board. Again, that was going to be enough. And then I saw something where the president was praising the CFO for his amazing work. The thing is, it’s not even about the CFO. It’s about the way they automatically dismissed the complaint from me, refused to investigate and then retaliated against me for a full year until I absolutely could not go on - the harm from which I will be recovering for a pretty long time. The bullies? Unaffected.

So I decided to make it public. It’s literally the only leverage I have. The Board needed to know what happened, so that the Board can be held accountable if the individual executive players are not and this continues to happen. Accountability comes in all forms.

Q: Will you tell us the name/names/Give us information about your former employer?

A: No. I have disclosed what I am going to disclose. I am not able to discuss anything, other than my personal experience at this company.

For more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com.

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Join the Workplace Navigation Lab! (https://withme.so/unmanaged)

Watch Unmanaged on YouTube.

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Contact Elizabeth.

Thanks for reading Unmanaged Workplace Strategy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Yesterday I sent an email. It was unhinged. It was rude. It was passionate. It was emotional. It was defensive. It was imperfect. And it was kind of messy. It was not the type of thing I ever advise anyone to send. I broke my own rule of waiting 24 hours to send a high-stakes email.

It was to the Board of Trustees of my former employer. The board is comprised almost entirely of wealthy, white influential people. These are people that I don’t know personally. But I’ve personally felt and dealt with the hits and the deep chaos that resulted from their decisions about people, in which the actual people did not appear to be considered.

They are not unlike other boards who are rooted in the philanthropic tradition and do not understand the day-to-day grind of being underpaid and overworked. They only see the literal bottom line from a distance. People? There are no people in decisions. Only money and the three-day-long wine-drinking festival, I mean board meeting, once a quarter. They aren’t bad people. But they are usually not in touch with the reality of the working-class and the struggles that are faced on a minute-by-minute basis by the majority of Americans enacting and living with the decisions of out-of-touch boards.

Recently, the faculty at my former place of employment did a vote of no confidence for the CFO, my former boss. Now whether they were “authorized” under the governance rules to even do a vote of no confidence for the CFO, whether it was a good strategic move? I have no idea. But as a former HR director, I can tell you that that doesn’t even really matter when we are looking at the culture of the organization.

What matters is that employees brought forth concerns to the Board after an extended period of time being frustrated with the inaction from the administration. The Board’s response was to outright condemn the action. There was no curiosity. There was no interest in hearing the basis for concerns. There was no appetite in the least for feedback or criticism. There was stoic support of the administration - no questions asked.

Reminds me of organizations that obsess about taking negative reviews down, but refuse to acknowledge the consistent feedback that is written in those reviews. They want to stop the mechanism of reporting bad behavior, but not the actual bad behavior. But I digress.

This blind following of traditional hierarchy is gross to me. I’ve never been one to just follow along without questioning - and in higher ed, you would think that critical thinking, data-informed decisions - you would think those would be part of the playbook for administration. But they are absolutely not. The playbook, from my vantage point in HR, is comprised of ego, power, money and status, cloaked in the often seen intellectual self-importance of academia.

There’s a problem when the mission of the organization is benevolent - like the education of young people - but the values with which the organization is run are based in proximity to power and money. You see the people with the big hearts, working an insane amount of hours to get their work done with outdated tools, insufficient staffing, insufficient resources while the executives work exactly 8-5, making 5 or 6 times what a staff member makes, spending their evenings drinking expensive wine with expensive people for “networking.”

What that translates to, in people-speak, is an administration that is operating blindly because they: know very little of the day to day work, know very little of what the employees need to be successful, and know very little about the impact of their decisions on the faculty, staff and students. And this doesn’t seem to be limited to one liberal arts college. This dynamic appears to be common in many institutions across the country, maybe even the world.

Unmanaged was started because of my experience at this institution. But my passion for stopping abuse goes back more than 20 years. That was when I started being able to identify patterns of abuse instead of only seeing individual incidents. It was when I started clocking the impact on relationships, on self-esteem. And this wasn’t workplace abuse that I was dealing with then. But the truth is, people who abuse others use the same tactics over and over again. It’s not new. The setting changes, but the motivations, the treatment, the consequences of not following through - they all look remarkably the same.

It was with the lens of my 20+ year fight against abuse that I looked at my computer screen yesterday morning and decided to write the email. It was with the memory of unequivocal physical and mental exhaustion in the not so distant past. It was with the memory of the tortured mind that prevented me from sleeping while it was trying to figure out what I did wrong. I sat at my computer and I wrote: Dear Board of Trustees.

One specific memory was driving me. The memory of the president calling me into his office to chastise me for using the word “indirect” to describe the feedback mechanism of people going to the president to give feedback about me, instead of to me directly. I was rude, unprofessional, insubordinate and presumptuous, he had said. Genuinely confused, I inquired as to what I did wrong. “You are assuming that I am not doing my job.”

What? No, I mean genuinely. WHAT?

I was actually more concerned that I had lost trust with people, since they were not coming to me directly. I wasn’t even thinking about him. I asked three other people about the word indirect in that context. Okay, they were all neurodivergent, just like me, so maybe that wasn’t fair. None of them could understand what he was talking about.

The one phrase that kept going through my head as I wrote this email was earn those adjectives. I mean if the word “indirect” qualifies as rude, unprofessional, insubordinate and presumptuous, then why not live up to those words and go ahead and write in a way that doesn’t hold back. Because if they are going to call me rude, they should know what that looks like for real.

I thought about what I was trying to accomplish with this email. What was my goal? My goal was not change. I am not foolish enough to think that anything I do will inspire change in that organization. My goal was to let the board see the raw version of what I experienced. The words I heard. The gestures I saw. The tone of voice that pierced my ears. My goal was to put them on notice that their executives not only behave this way, but that the behavior is apparently sanctioned and approved by the president. My goal was to let them know that when another case comes up (because people don’t just stop this behavior), I will be happy to provide supporting documentation that they were aware of the misbehavior and chose to do nothing about it. My email would serve as documentation that they knew what I had experienced, knew the risks of employing my boss and that they actively chose to do nothing to protect the people that make their seat on the board even possible: the employees.

Most of all, without being currently employed by them, I was no longer under the pressure to conform to whatever their definition of “professional” was. I was free to be myself. If another employer finds out about this email and chooses not to hire me in the future? Okay. It’s probably not the kind of company I want to work for anyway. And also? The time for being quiet about abuse has expired. We’ve collectively seen the horrors of what happens with unchecked power and abuse in recent months. I for one, do not want to enable this to continue.

So I made a conscious decision to remove my filters. To be blunt and truthful. To be outraged in a way that words could communicate the enormity of how I felt.

CONTENT WARNING: Detailed description of abusive behavior, verbal abuse and institutional betrayal.

Dear Board of Trustees:

My name is Elizabeth Arnott. I was the Director of Human Resources at [redacted] from April 2023 - October 2025. Before getting into anything, I want to state that your names were gathered from the public [redacted] and your emails were found on the internet. At no point, did anyone provide information to me, nor I to them, about confidential information or contact information for anyone.

I am writing to make you aware of how [redacted] operates behind closed doors, when they are not in front of the Board of Trustees. To be clear, I do not expect anything to be done at this point. But I do want to know for sure that you all know about this behavior. I will save this communication for when [redacted] is inevitably sued again for the inevitable misconduct of its administrators and there is a need for corroboration of failure to address behavior problems among the executives. In this letter, I will only address my personal experience. I am not disclosing any confidential information related to the position I held, nor do I ever intend to. Despite [redacted] and [redacted] threatening to come after me “with all they’ve got” and accusing me of taking documents (completely false allegations), I have in the past and will continue to remain faithful to my agreement and the confidentiality of the role of HR and only speak about my experience, as the Oregon Workplace Fairness Act requires that I am able to do.

In the extremely unlikely case that any of you care about this situation and want to discuss my personal experience, I am open to that. My experience was so bad, so harmful, that I started a business to help people navigate toxic work environments. So just to reiterate: I LEFT MY 26-YEAR LONG CAREER IN HUMAN RESOURCES TO FIGHT TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENTS BECAUSE OF MY EXPERIENCE AT [REDACTED].

The reason I didn't bring my situation to the board in the first place is because historically, the Board has unequivocally supported the administration, without any objective inquiry and I expect no different now. You may recall an incident that happened at Lincoln University in 2024, where the board of trustees of their university ignored repeated requests for help in a bullying situation because they wanted to “stay out of it.” It “wasn’t their concern”. If you are curious how that ended up, the person who was being bullied, she committed suicide [ended her own life] after being refused help from the board multiple times. Maybe think about that for a minute in conjunction with your role at [redacted] and what is expected of you by the faculty and staff when they raise concerns to you about administration, since you all are the ones in charge of hiring the president and making sure that [redacted] is fiscally sound. Your response to employees matters. [Redacted] would not exist were it not for the people they employ. And yet the treatment of them does not reflect that level of respect…

Here is my account of what happened and the corresponding dates, based upon my comments sent …regarding [redacted]'s accreditation.

Personal Experience Relevant to Institutional Systems

In Spring of 2024, as the Director of Human Resources, I observed my direct supervisor, [redacted], CFO, regularly raising his voice and pounding his fists on the table during meetings. After regular occurrences started impacting me significantly, I informed the CFO that I would need to leave the room if it happened again, due to my PTSD from previous trauma. I notified him of this on August 1, 2024, in writing. I reported this in writing to the …President at the time, [redacted]. She reportedly talked to the CFO and asked him to stop raising his voice. He reportedly agreed. On August 5, 2024, [redacted] suggested daily check ins. This is scrutiny based on my complaint against him. This could be considered retaliation.

Between August 2024 and July 2025, the CFO’s behavior worsened and it became more of a seemingly targeted attack on me and my position. Barging into my office, being physically intimidating, sneering at me, and cutting me out of meetings I needed to be in, were just some of the things I experienced. After each interaction, I raised concerns directly with my supervisor, in writing, asking him to cease this behavior and informing him of the impact it was having on me. However, his behavior became more and more intense, demanding, and included mocking information I was providing to him regarding critical situations. He seemed to think that the information re: employment law was “made up” even after I explained the context and methodology, and explained that this is how risk is evaluated in human resources.

Specific dates and events that occurred. This is not all-inclusive but does include the most egregious interactions:

August 2024 - I notified [redacted] that due to previous trauma, if he continued to raise his voice and pound on the desk, that I would need to leave because my nervous system simply cannot tolerate the outbursts. Nor should it have to while I’m at work. He acknowledged the receipt of this email and suggested that in order to “improve communication” that we meet on a daily basis every morning so that he could review my priorities and tasks. This is scrutiny based on my complaint to him about his behavior. This could be interpreted as retaliation.

October 2024 - [redacted] restricted my communication, stating that I needed to send everything through him - highly unusual for a Human Resources dept to have to get approval from the CFO. This is micromanagement based on my complaint, which could be interpreted as retaliation.

January 30 2025 -[redacted] entered my office, and in response to my communication said that people who don’t understand finances often make complaints and that the situation I was concerned about would “work itself out.” When I responded to him, I was sitting down in my office and he was standing in front of me. When I said “Okay, I will not send anymore information about this since I don’t understand it.” [redacted] leaned in to about a foot from my face, squinted his eyes and shouted “I DID NOT SAY THAT!” He then complained that “YOU WANT ME TO REACT TO EVERYTHING!” (indicating he was unfamiliar with the nature of HR work that he wanted to control.) This is hostile treatment, physical intimidation based on me raising concerns. This could be interpreted as retaliation.

January 31, 2025 [redacted] walked into my office, slammed the door and started complaining to me about one of the HR processes that he felt was “out of control.” I responded by letting him know what our legal obligations were under the federal law. He responded “BLAH BLAH BLAH I DON’T WANT TO HEAR YOUR LEGAL B******T!” He angrily paced back and forth in front of me until I asked him to leave my office. This is mistreatment based on me simply informing him what our legal obligation was for that particular law. This could be interpreted as retaliation. Later that day, [redacted] apologized for how he came across. At that point, he asked about how he could get more information about HR strategy. I gave him multiple recommendations from my own bookshelf and articles that I sent him later.

March 3, 2025 [redacted] and I met in his office so that I could show him data from my turnover analysis. [redacted] responded with “You can’t just make up information. You have to prove it.” I showed him the formula. I explained to him that this is how turnover is measured and how risk is assessed. redacted became very loud and animated and started pounding on his desk, saying things like the VPs SHOULD push back on me because I haven’t proved anything. He casually mentioned his own “HR credentials” which included managing a team and doing payroll (this is not human resources) but that “employee relations was his one weak spot.” During his “expression of his feelings” I asked him THREE times to stop the meeting, to take a break, to reconvene later. He completely ignored me. I could not even hear what he was saying at this point. I got up and walked out, right into a crowd of my colleagues gathered around his door, waiting for another meeting. He threw his notebook somewhere as I walked out of the room, as I heard him yell in frustration. This is mistreatment due to me providing the structural documentation of an issue we were discussing. This could be interpreted as retaliation for bringing up a concern.

March 4, 2025 - [redacted] texted me, requesting a meeting, citing his lack of sleep due to the stress I had caused him during the previous day’s events. In the meeting, [redacted] said I stressed him out because I threatened to go to the board. Then he said “I talked to my therapist and we were both really surprised at how quickly you escalated the situation.” This is a well known abusive tactic called DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. By the end of the meeting, I was apologizing for triggering his outburst. He suggested that one of my colleagues who also reported to him, chaperone our 1:1s (inappropriate for HR to be disclosing information in front of another manager without need). I asked him if that was to protect him or me. He responded that it was for him, but that he’s sure it would protect me too. He also suggested recording all of our interactions - also inappropriate for HR.

March 7, 2025 - I woke up in the middle of the night with a violent nightmare - one of the things that happens when I am triggered in abusive situations, because of my history of trauma, which [redacted] was extremely aware of and had been notified of more than 7 months prior. I began having panic attacks. At this point, I wrote to [redacted incoming president], mistakenly thinking he would be an objective party who would be concerned and could possibly help me. While he acted sort of compassionately in the moment, his response was to forward my email to [redacted], who then emailed me to say that she had spoken to [redacted] a couple of times, told him to stop yelling and he reportedly agreed to stop yelling. If things didn’t get better, she said, I should do what I needed to do to take care of myself. (This is a common thing companies say when they do not intend to address toxic behavior.)

March 28, 2025 - [redacted] told me that all communication between us going forward would only be in writing. This is restricting methods of communication in response to me reporting his behavior. This could be considered retaliation.

June 26, 2025 - I wrote to [redacted] again, asking him to please consider looking at the reporting structure when he started.

July 3, 2025 - [redacted] called me into his office, with his face red and hands shaking as he yelled about my employee rescheduling a meeting to include the new president, without consulting [redacted] first. Then he said "YOU WENT BEHIND MY BACK AND ASKED FOR ANOTHER SUPERVISOR." He then told me: "YOU WILL BE REPORTING TO ME. PERIOD. THAT WILL NEVER CHANGE." I responded to him by asking him if he said that to emphasize his power. He said yes. He gave me a performance improvement plan, very poorly written and included things that should not be included in a performance improvement plan, such as to stop feeling superior about my credentials and thinking I am better than everyone else. He forbade me and my team from communicating with the President (very poor practice for an HR department), and demanded that I inform him of the contents of each HR meeting that I have (violation of confidentiality, trust, etc.) He criticized my inability to meet a deadline that had never been established. He interpreted pivoting with new information to "changing my mind" all the time, presenting it as a weakness. This entire document was an exercise in the kind of systemic misogyny that exists in higher ed. Why did he say I felt superior? Because I had reposted an article on LinkedIn about the challenges of HR reporting to finance, and because one time, in one meeting, I said I was a subject matter expert. In what world would a man be written up for any of these things? Let me help you out here - they wouldn't. Especially at [redacted].

I was explicitly told in writing in the performance improvement plan that my role was to enact decisions made by the CFO, regardless of professional disagreement. [redacted] did not provide reasons for the restrictions imposed. [redacted] repeatedly verbally stated that it would be a very long time before I would be given autonomy or authority, without explanation. He also referenced my leaving a meeting due to his behavior, after he ignored three requests to stop the meeting, as an “inappropriate reaction to feedback”, and my leaving early due to his physically and emotionally threatening behavior as “unacceptable.”

Because these disagreements involved my entitlement to respectful treatment, my request for accommodation (to stop the raised voices and pounding on the desk) due to a disability (my previous trauma, which he was informed of on August 1, 2024 and frequently reminded after that) and concerns regarding the CFO’s competence within the HR domain, I escalated the issue once again to [redacted] and specifically requested an investigation. He declined to investigate (directly against practices and policies when someone makes a complaint) and instead retained an executive coach, who was reportedly going to do mediation for us after meeting with us each separately a few times.

After five weeks of work with the coach, I asked about joint sessions and “mediation” and found that the coach had only been working with me and reporting on my progress to [redacted] and that there was not actually a plan for a mediation, but rather one meeting “to discuss communication guidelines.” Once I discovered that the coach was only working with me and that [redacted] was not actually having any discussions or meetings about HIS behavior, I asked questions about what the intent was to move forward. [Redacted] responded to my inquiries saying I needed to focus on my own work, not [my boss’], he said. He did not consider the PIP to be retaliatory and that he had the PIP to look at if he needed to. [Redacted] stated I would be reporting to the CFO permanently. I expressed that reporting to the CFO would severely negatively impact my mental and physical health. [Redacted] did not respond.

During the period of time I was meeting with the coach, [redacted] and [redacted] solicited feedback from members of the executive team regarding issues that had already been addressed or had never been raised with me. These were later presented as “long-time performance issues” that I had failed to address. This was completely made up.

Impact on Health and Ability to Perform Duties

The conditions described above resulted in significant personal harm during 2025, including weeks of not eating, not sleeping, panic attacks, violent nightmares, and an inability to perform my duties. These impacts were characterized by senior leadership as my personal issue rather than a direct result of the institutional environment. This gaslighting was another form of retaliation that I experienced.

Because I know it's likely that [redacted] and [redacted] will attempt to discredit me and my account of things, let me just say one thing: what I experienced was the worst experience of my life. I was not believed. I was not helped. I was not listened to. I was not apologized to. I was punished and seemingly retaliated against quite openly and with the blessing of the new president. I left my job without another one to go to. WHY ON EARTH WOULD I VOLUNTARILY GO THROUGH THIS BY MAKING THIS UP? Why would anyone? The amount of harm done and disruption in my life, well-being and mental and physical health is significant. How many other people are going to be harmed before you all do something about this horrific culture?

Again, I send this to support documentation to the Board about [redacted]'s behavior, the dereliction of duty to investigate by [redacted] and the general nauseating culture of an old white boys club they have nurtured and maintained. Many people heard [redacted] yelling at me. They were just never asked about it. This is not a secret. But it doesn't matter. Power protects power, money protects money. I don't expect the board to act any differently. But now I have a record of informing you that this is a problem. It's your choice what you decide to do next.

Thank you.

When I went to bed last night, I felt a huge burden lifted. I knew polite and professional would not even be a blip on their radar. I had to write in a way that would get their attention. I knew that what I had written was unhinged and probably not eloquent. But I also knew the cathartic nature of telling these people in power that I do not have their backs in the future. I smiled as I fell asleep.

When I woke up this morning, I was expecting to feel that pang of regret. You know, the one that you wake up to after being dysregulated and sending an email that was of questionable value and tone? But it wasn’t there.

It wasn’t there because I was regulated when I wrote it. I knew what I was writing. I knew the stakes involved. I knew why I had to write it harshly. I knew how it would be received. I was genuinely outraged that I had to put up with this kind of behavior, AND be punished for it. I wanted to board to see what kind of impact this abusive treatment has on people. I may be regulated, but I am still definitely enraged by workplace abuse. And I hope I was pretty clear to the board that I still felt that.

So no, I didn’t follow my own advice to wait 24 hours before sending a fiery email. But I did follow my gut. And in the end, I needed to show myself that I could trust myself to do the right thing in a way that would get their attention, without needing to see a positive result from it. Because change is definitely not happening in that institution.

I have not gotten any responses, in case you are curious. I don’t expect to. But I don’t need to hear anything. I already knew they were going to disregard the letter before I started writing. Now, I can move on. I have told everyone that needed to know. I have helped where I could to protect others. My conscience is clear, my soul is at peace. I know I did the right thing. And that’s pretty much the best feeling I’ve had in a while.

Thanks for reading.

For more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com.

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When you are in a place that you want to leave, but you can’t - you have to figure out a way to stay in your true identity, your authenticity - because that frustration can deeply impact how you feel, what you say, how you interact with others - and yes, even the future of your own career.

The phrases below can be repeated daily to make job hugging easier on your nervous system. This isn’t all-inclusive - comment with your own phrases that help!

Take a deep breath before each one, and a deep breath after.

“My work is at work. My home is at home.” Repeat this in the morning a few times. It gives a sense of light at the end of the day - that you can leave work at work. Truly. You don’t have to bring it home with you every night.

“This is temporary until the economy gets better. This gives me time to move strategically.” Reframing the situation as strategic instead of stuck can be the equivalent of visualizing an open door. You are not there by force. You are not stuck. You are strategic.

“I am the most important part of this employment equation.” Reminding yourself that you made this choice for yourself, and that you are centered in that decision can help you distance from any guilt you may feel for not overperforming or taking on more than you can do. Caring for yourself in a toxic situation is mandatory.

“I am using this time to prepare myself for my next move.” Reinforcing the messaging that this is a time for you to learn and grow will help your brain identify more opportunities that align with the direction you are going.

“I can leave any time I want to - and being thoughtful and prepared to leave is the most compassionate thing I can do for myself.” Repeating the idea of exiting makes it more real. This guides your brain to solutions oriented towards that eventual exit. It also calms the nervous system from feeling trapped - a big trigger for most people. Repeating the idea that you are kind to yourself - it reinforces your self-love, self-awareness and self-care.

Listen, it might get harder before it gets easier. But by thoughtfully centering yourself, your well-being, and in particular, your mental health, by regulating your nervous system, you give yourself the gift of calm, the gift of perspective and the gift of strategy.

Be kind to yourself. It’s rough right now.

For more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com.

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“Should I stay in my job until things get better?” I mean in this economy? The answer is probably yes. But that doesn’t have to be a dead-end. Here are five things to consider as you enter into this informal agreement of staying in your job for now.

* It is non-binding. You can always change your mind. It’s not a trap. It’s an option that you are currently exercising.

* This can be an opportunity to learn different ways to do things. In an economy where most people and small businesses are struggling, we are going to need to be scrappy. Play MacGyver at work. Solve problems with what you have around you. Learn about the ordinary tools more deeply. Always wanted to learn pivot tables? Now’s your chance.

* Be wary of being given the work of 2 or 3 other jobs in addition to your own duties. If you are the survivor of layoffs, be prepared. To be frank, most companies don’t actually live the “do less with less” platitude, even if they say it repeatedly. They are usually trying to do more with less so they can get ahead. As we all are. So. Be wary. If you do get handed tasks from other people’s jobs, thoughtfully explore your priorities list and determine which tasks are directives, which ones are “If you can get to this, great.” and which ones are “there’s no way I’ll be able to get this done.”

* Remember that all you can do is all you can do. And you are the owner of that measurement.

* Try to emotionally detach from happenings in rooms where you are not present. Decisions you can’t control. People who do things you don’t agree with. Policies that are control focused. If you can’t control it, let it float around you. Don’t internalize it.

I am not an economist and I don’t know how things will turn out, but it seems hard for most people right now. Layoffs are happening hourly in almost every industry. AI is coming in to replace people but with a mediocrity that can only be explained by overconfidence in a genius that does not exist.

The LLMs that most people are using - they can’t count. They lie. They blackmail. And lawyers are using them to create real arguments in court, with fictional cases, trying to make things happen that shouldn’t happen. People are using AI as if it is the highest standard, but I’m pretty sure it’s not even a bronze standard, let alone gold.

The chaos that is being created by overdependence on a tool that was prematurely released to the world will need to be cleaned up if our society wants to continue. What can you do in your current space to prepare for that cleanup? What human processes need to be documented and saved? What are the human parts of processes that will likely be written out in the future to the detriment of the consumers? Write it down. On a computer. On paper. On audio. Write down your ideas for human processes, using AI to automate the non-human parts. Our society is changing rapidly and while there is an AI “boom”, it’s not rooted in stability.

If you do plan on hugging your job - remember to keep yourself at the top of the priority list. You can get through this without losing yourself. This is your journey. No one else’s.

Deep breaths. You’ve got this.

For more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com.

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Video companion #1 to Fridays Off the Record - May 8th, 2026. Read the whole post:

Fridays Off the Record: Absorbing Emotions, Developing Leadership Skills and Prioritizing When Everything is Urgent

Elizabeth Arnott

·

11:59 AM

Welcome to Fridays Off the Record! Every Friday I’ll be answering a few questions from readers. Have a question to submit? Send an email to [email protected].

Read full storyFor more resources and information, please visit https://unmanagedpeople.com.

Join the Workplace Navigation Lab! (https://withme.so/unmanaged)

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Video companion #1 to Fridays Off the Record - May 8th, 2026. Read the whole post:

Job hugging is a newly identified trend where people hold onto their dysfunctional jobs as long as they can because of the instability of the job market.

It makes sense. Our world is changing rapidly and it seems like there’s not a day that goes by without a life altering piece of news.

So how do we do this and not lose our minds? We are still dealing with the same people in the same dysfunctional environment who are also holding onto their jobs with a death grip. So we need strategy - and that’s where I come in. Unmanaged, where we build the skills to navigate workplaces that aren’t working, is getting more strategic too.

Going forward, I will be posting at least twice weekly: One post introducing a concept, strategy or technique on Wednesdays and then on Fridays for Fridays Off the Record to answer questions from readers. This gives me more time to develop the resources this moment actually calls for.

In the coming weeks I’ll be rolling out more ways to get what you need, without it costing more than you have. Workshops, email courses and a support group are some of the things I am working on. If you have ideas or feedback that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear about them. Please email me at [email protected].

I can’t wait to share more with you!

For more resources and information, please visit unmanagedpeople.com.

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We’ll be working through the Unmanaged methodology all week, discussing where the systems fail, the importance of regulating yourself and how you can protect yourself, whether you are a manager or an individual contributor. Today, we are talking about emotional intelligence.

Today we covered a lot of ground — what emotional intelligence is, where it breaks down, and how to use it deliberately before high-stakes conversations and decisions. Tonight I want to bring it into the most personal part of that practice: self-awareness and self-regulation.

Because knowing the framework is one thing. Knowing yourself inside it is another.

We all have people who are harder for us to communicate with. People who activate something in us before we’ve even said hello. That’s not a character flaw — it’s information. And the more clearly you can see it, the more choice you have about what you do with it.

So let’s work with that tonight.

Find a comfortable position. Feet flat on the floor.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Bring to mind a person — or a type of situation — that you feel anxious about walking into. A conversation you’ve been putting off. A person whose name in your inbox makes your stomach tighten. Just bring it forward. You don’t have to fix anything yet.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Now ask yourself: how do I feel when I’m in an interaction with this person?

Anxious? Defensive? Small? Reactive? Strangely calm in a way that doesn’t feel safe? There’s no wrong answer. Just sit with whatever comes up.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Now ask: why do I feel that way?

Is it because they react with volatility and you never know which version of them you’re getting? Is it because they question your authority in front of others? Is it because something in how they treat you reminds you of a dynamic you’ve been in before? Be honest with yourself. No one else is in this room.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Now think forward — to the next time you’ll be in that conversation. If it goes sideways, what do you do?

Does this person need a moment to absorb difficult information before they can respond to it? Is there a way to build that pause into how you approach them? Is there a phrase in your usual script that you already know lands badly — and a way to say the same thing that might land differently?

You don’t need a perfect plan. You need a better one than walking in without thinking about it at all.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

And if the conversation still doesn’t go the way you wanted — come back to visualization. Run it again from the beginning, the way you wanted it to go. What did you learn? What would you carry into the next one?

This is the work. Not a single perfect conversation, but a practice of getting to know yourself well enough that your reactions stop running ahead of you.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

You can only control what you bring into the room. Your words, your steadiness, your preparation. That’s not nothing — that’s everything you actually have. And it’s more than most people are willing to work on.

Keep going. You’ve got this.

For more resources and information, please visit unmanagedpeople.com.

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Contact Elizabeth