First time this has happened to me in 20 years as a consultant.
Client is weirdly micromanaging and adversarial.
He’ll explicitly give directions to do something, I summarize the action items, send it to everyone on the call and proceed to work on them.
Then at the next call, in front of the team, he’ll say he never said to do that and talk to me like a child.
I’ve never been talked to like that at work so I know my facial expressions on video were priceless.
Now it’s happened 3 x. The meetings are recorded and I can confirm, I sent correct action items out to everyone. I don’t need to know why he does this but I would like a few responses when he’s berating me.
The other gaslighter is the SME. He keeps saying “stop stressing”
I’m the PM. It’s literally my job to worry about what can go wrong and then mitigate it.
Again, I don’t care why. I don’t even want to engage but I sure would enjoy having more than a dropped jaw when this happens again.
Please share your “go to” phrases for dealing with gaslighters, micromanagers or dismissive folks at work.
Thank you!