In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People Paperback – April 1, 2010

A covert narcissist worked in my office for awhile. If you are not the narcissist, this can be a job- or career-killer for you, as they will try to kill your hopes and dreams and livelihood. They won't kill you physically but they will drain you of everything positive. It was a scary time. Thankfully my office wised up to the problem and he was fired. Meanwhile 13 months of working with him were the worst of the 25 years of my career.Books like this help you understand. And I think "understanding" is unfortunately about the best you can do. I found learning about the narcissist personality and tactics they will inflict on you help you to build armor around yourself. They will make you think YOU are the problem. You have to be strong and know that you are not the problem. Knowing their modus operandi helps you to counteract it. For example, don't fall for the gaslighting, consciously recognize when it's happening so you can protect yourself.I'm not sure anything can help you solve the problem. Every bit of advice I found said "non-communication" is the only solution. That's hard to do when the narc is a colleague on a small team and you MUST communicate. I found these helped me:-- Do not meet with the narc without someone else present. EVER. Because everything said will get twisted by the narc and make you look bad. You need someone else (a non-narc and a non-friend of the narc) so someone else can corroborate your side of the story. Believe me if you don't want your professional reputation ruined, DO NOT EVER MEET ALONE with a true narcissist. ESPECIALLY a covert narcissist. Also the narcissist will say negative things and use body language (eye rolls, scrunched up face) that may likely make you emotionally upset. Getting upset and recovering from it is very distracting when you have work to do. This treatment might be less likely to happen if there's someone else in the meeting who is your ally and not the narc's ally. And if the behavior does happen, someone else can corroborate your description of what happened. My workplace has a team environment, so it was easy in our culture to be sure someone else was always at meetings with our "office narc." Usually several people are working on a project together. If you don't have a team environment, you may have an office best friend who might be willing to help you by sitting in on meetings with you.-- Definitely do not ever meet behind a closed door with only you and the narcissist. Keep that door open, especially when there's people working outside the door who can overhear. You want them to overhear. If you meet with the narc alone, everything will get twisted, it's your word against theirs, and if you are not also a wolf, they will make you look bad. They're better at that game than you are. Keep the office or meeting room door open. If the narc wants to close a door, tell a white lie like the temperature isn't comfortable, you need air (who would argue with that?) etc. If the narc closes the door, get up and open the door again while saying this. It's not likely they will try to close the door again, unless they really are ridiculous. And yeah I think it's ridiculous that you have to get into games like this, but this is the destruction of reasonableness by narcissists.-- Instead of talking, communicate through email. You will have documentation of every instruction you give (that typically isn't followed, understood or it's argued with unprofessionally). And you will have documentation of every word the narcissist writes to you. You will likely see some really unprofessional behavior come from the narcissist. They can't help themselves. You will then have this documented. You want this. Usually they are so full of themselves that they will be unable to see that what they wrote is unprofessional. They will try to frame you as unprofessional. But you will have it in writing, in black and white, and any reasonable boss or HR rep will be able to see the truth. I did this and it helped other people see the true nature of the communications between me and our workplace narcissist. I can't emphasize the importance of this enough. DOCUMENT. Try to not discuss important things verbally. When things go wrong, it will become them vs you and you will have no documentation if communications are verbal.-- They may figure out what you're doing and accuse you of not talking to them. Our workplace narcissist did this to me. I responded very frankly (because the person's boss and a VP were in the meeting where we discussed my non-communication) that I had to communicate by email because when I didn't, the narcissist forgot things or didn't follow things. And they seemed to do better when instructions were given in email. And, to be honest, I wanted to create a papertrail about this. You can call it exactly what it is first, so they can't blame you for making a papertrail. There is nothing wrong with papertrails. Many office procedures are specifically designed to build papertrails. Our workplace narcissist's problem with following instructions was known to many. I stated a fact, I didn't get emotional in response to hist attack, and actually he admitted he had a problem remembering things and following instructions and he would try to do better. So ... know that you may get attacked for following these steps. Be prepared to defend yourself with a rational explanation. Documentation and papertrails are very rational and appropriate for the workplace.-- If the narc is your boss, look for another job. I'm sorry but having dealt with this personality, that is your only option to save yourself, your career reputation, and your livelihood. Wise up to it fast. It hurts but the situation won't change. Face reality and take the actions you need to get out.-- If you want to attack the narc, be prepared for their attack back at you, and be prepared that they will be very good at what they do when they attack you. They may attack you behind your back and you won't see it coming. This is why I recommend DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT.-- Have good people in your personal life who can help support you. Focus on building and maintaining your good reputation at work with others. Get professional counseling if you must. You need to protect yourself. Work out your frustrations with exercise, try not to use too much alcohol or reality TV shows. :) I admit I wasn't so great at this last bit of advice -- bad TV is so good!! :)This review went way beyond the book - but this was what worked to help me, and I expect you are here because you're having a problem. My advice relates to workplace narcissists because I haven't yet run into one in my personal life. I hope my advice helps you! I wish all the best for you!

WOLVES IN SHEEP's CLOTHING!I bought this right away as an Audible to listen to since I didn't want to forget it. I happened to be perusing another book that I can't remember the title. I was reading reviews and someone whose review was impressive to me mentioned two titles which were life changing and I purchased this based on her review. I knew if I didn't buy it at that moment I would forget it. It's a shame because I forgot the other title since I didn't buy it and now I'm disappointed since I forgot the other recommended title and don't remember what book I was reading reviews and don't think I'll find it. I am more of a visual person so I prefer reading than listening to a book. I had 33 Audible credits that I have to use so I bought the Audible version. I don't think I need to explain what this is about since the title is explicit. It's only five hours which I plan on listening to soon. I will come back and update this review with my personal biggest takeaways from this book. I think it won't be for everybody but since I know that I will gain something I could tell by the review that this would be useful. I wish I had bought the other one right away and I might go looking for it when I have time. I never review something that I haven't read so that I can share my thoughts, but this title being non fiction gives a general idea of whether it's beneficial to explore.

I liked the book- I read a lot of reviews before I bought it and also noticed it is referred to often on websites that explore sociopathic behaviors. I think the book is good for people that are just beginning to explore this personality type. I like the way some things were worded to make it helpful for a regular person to understand. As I have already read quite a bit of material about character disturbed people, I found a few nice tidbits but nothing really new (for me).Simon tries to seperate the overt/covert aggressive personality trait from other traits it may be mixed with, since some character disturbed personalities are really a "recipe" of dysfunction with lots of "flavors", if you will, and deal with that trait in an isolated way.This is fine I suppose but the problem is, in real life, manipulation is often not the only trait you must deal with from a character disturbed person. Many of the situations in the book seemed quite mild to me. Honestly I was hoping for something that wouldn't concentrate on the most severe cases- like Robert Hare's book "Without Conscious" does by focusing so heavily on murderers and people in jail, but at the same time, not be so "mild" like these examples. I do appreciate his clarification of those behaviors, though, and how to react.I guess there is never really a distinction made that there may come a time when someone should "disengage" from their manipulator. The word "disengage" was mentioned one time that I can recall, but in a way that many people could blow right over it, and not really get that this means- end it, no contact, over. It was mentioned quickly with something else, and then, nothing to follow up. I think he does mention that some people will never change, that past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior, but I think it should be emphasized somewhere, as the focus of that section. I think it's very important to get some people to realize that you can try till your blue in the face to change your behavior to adapt to this personality, but, be prepared to be continuously fending off new, stronger, escalating attempts by your manipulator to break you down once they see that old methods no longer do the trick. I think you could possibly be setting yourself up for even bigger power struggles and therefore bigger stress. What's the answer? Don't know because this possiblity was not explored in the book.Also- I am having a hard time finding information on what to do when it is someone's child who is the sociopath/manipulator. There is a child mentioned in this book, and it was a somewhat good example, but again, I felt it was fairly mild compared to the personal experience I've had with a character disturbed, highly manipulative child with seemingly no conscience that has now become a character disturbed adult with a child of her own. I think some attention should be put on the confusion and pain that parents go through when it is their child/grown child who is the abuser/manipulater, because parents feel a certain kind of obligation to that child that is entirely different than what someone may feel about a coworker in the workplace, or a boyfriend of 6 months.Simon admits that some people won't ever change- but doesn't tell you how to handle it if that turns out to be your case. He does offer techniques to help not be manipulated, but, then you stand confused as to how long you need to keep fending off "manipulation tactics". As shown in the one example, the husband used a lame suicide attempt (not enough to hurt himself but enough to look pathetic in a hospital bed) to manipulate his wife to stay. Well- maybe the answer would be to get away from this jerk, rather than employ tactics to try and thwart a never-ending barrage of attempts to control you. I guess I was hoping there would be some kind of line, some kind of clear boundary. But I guess I know the answer. I guess we have to draw our own lines and boundaries and know when they have been crossed. Still, it's hard to find that line, which is how many people end up under the control of a manipulator in the first place.At the end of the book, I was rather surprised to see Simon give his own take on politics, and I was agreeing with him fully until he began to talk about how we don't really need more rules and regulations in society or industry because they aren't going to actually stop anyone from harming others in order to gain their power. I was with him until I saw the influence this "opinion" could have on many people reading his book, and in a way, I felt that was manipulative in and of itself! (Hey, if that's what Simon thinks, maybe that's the right thing to think!) I for one feel that rules and regulations are necessary for the exact reasons he stated- that people are power hungry and will stop at nothing to gain what they desire. When a person decides that they will try to get away with gaining something while harming someone else, they can be fined and get jail time. When a psychopathic corporation decides it will sacrifice many people's health or quality of life for it's gains- you bet I want rules and regulations. I'm not going to twiddle my thumbs waiting for these "psychos" to have a change of heart. I have to admit, the end of the book was a downer for me because of his take on politics. I feel almost as if the book ended with an unrealistic fairy tale ideal for our country, because obviously- things are as they are and we aren't suddenly going to go back to having people with more integrity. Still worth reading.