Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (10 page)

BAITERs do this because it works, not because it doesn’t. One complaint I constantly hear from people with office jobs is that someone they work with has the ear of their boss and is always “working it.” “Oh, she is such a suck-up, but it’s so transparent. The boss
has
to see through her like a picture window.” But based on the research I just shared, you know that, in fact, it may be working—big time. Maybe the boss
is
susceptible to her flattery. People’s favorite topic in the whole wide world is, take a guess, wait for it…themselves! They want to talk about themselves more than they want to talk about you or anything else. They want to talk about their attitudes, their opinions, their beliefs, their experiences. They are like opera stars warming up for the big performance: “Me, me, me, me, me!”

So, the manipulative trifecta just may be talking to the boss about the boss, listening to the boss talk about the boss, and being a really good audience no matter what the boss is talking about. It’s flattering for people to be so interested in you and whatever you have to say, hanging on every word. Plus, the person who is doing those three things is getting a lot of face time and may well be monopolizing the boss’s time. And when you have the boss’s ear, your story is going to get heard, first and loudest. BAITERs know this all too well.

Although BAITERs don’t have much in the way of empathy, they are keenly aware of other people’s vulnerability and the popularity of the “sport of gossiping.” If they discover that their target is willing to gossip, they have found an “in.” They exploit this by fostering “conspiratorial relationships”—an “us against them” mentality. You’ve encountered these people time and again. Everything is a “secret.” They can be really obvious, even in terms of body language. They tend to lean in really close, put their hand up by the side of their mouth, presumably to guard the sanctity of the message, and even speak in low tones. Many statements begin with “Did you hear…” or “I’ve got to tell you something, but you cannot tell a soul.” What they’re doing is trying to define a relationship on an intimate-disclosure level because they are smart enough to know that they can rely on your “reciprocity.” If they engage you in what seems to be an unguarded and private manner with delicate and sensitive information, then you are very likely to accept that definition of the relationship and respond in kind with your own sensitive disclosures. And these BAITERs are correct because we tend to engage people at the level they engage us, so we’re likely to respond as
they
intend.

How do they do this? They bait you with
seemingly
intimate life details and experiences in order to suck you in and get you to do the same. For example, someone in your office may tell you about inadvertently seeing your boss having a fight with his wife in the parking lot. “I was surprised,” he might say. “I never saw that side of him before. Have you?”

He’s baiting you with his conspiratorial sharing. You might respond by engaging him at the same level and telling a story about something your boss did to you. Or you might say—
confidentially
, of course—that you actually witnessed the same scene in the parking lot but didn’t want to say anything about it to anybody.

At that point he’s got you—you are “dead meat.” You have become a partner in crime! By engaging, you have violated a boundary
with a partner
, a partner who will throw you under the bus at the first opportunity. You have put your well-being in his hands, and he is about to crumple it up and throw it away. He’s like a cat with a dead mouse waiting to take it back to its owner—the boss of both of you. So the next time he’s in a conversation with your boss, he lets slip that
you
were gossiping about the boss fighting with his wife in the parking lot. Or maybe even, to curry both favor and credibility with the boss, he might say something like, “I hate to bring this up, but if there’s one thing that I just can’t stand, it is disloyalty and vicious backbiting. You need to know that this woman in our department”—
you
—“is spreading poison about your relationship with your wife and your abusive nature. I’m sorry, I’m not one to carry tales, but that just makes me sick to my stomach. Please keep me out of this if you even think it’s worthy of your response, because I just don’t want to be sucked into this. I love you, and I love my job and this company too much.”

So the boss is now furious with
you
, of course. But how are you going to deny that you were gossiping? You actually
were
talking about him behind his back. And now you’re toast. If he asks you point blank, “Have you been talking about me and my wife and my abusive nature?” you’ve got nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. And if you now try to point a finger at your co-worker, you’re fighting an uphill and defensive battle because your co-worker got to the boss first.

Another word of caution: People who take an extreme position, such as being your new best friend forever, your most passionate ally, your greatest supporter, and your biggest fan and conspiratorial confidant, can be very dangerous. People who occupy one extreme of the emotional continuum are the very ones who tend to flip-flop to the
other
emotional extreme. If someone “sort of” likes you and then changes their mind, that person is likely to “sort of”
not
like you. By contrast, people who put you on a pedestal and hold you in such high esteem, even if it’s phony, can have a radical and extreme change of heart. And you and I both know that none of us belongs on that pedestal to begin with, so we are guaranteed to ultimately disappoint and thus wind up with an overzealous enemy. These are often the very people who try to enter into these conspiratorial relationships with you. So do not take the bait. Do not get sucked in by the hero worship, because it is just a matter of time before those roses they are throwing turn into daggers.

When I was in clinical practice, one red flag that got my attention was clients who were too concerned about what I thought rather than finding a solution to the problem that brought them into my office. If you have a problem and are sincere about fixing it, you want to focus on it: You’re depressed, your wife has had an affair, or your son is on drugs. You’re not trying to impress your counselor; you don’t care whether he likes you. You want help with your problem. So you should be looking for action steps, not watching the therapist out of the corner of your eye to see who’s winning favor and who’s getting blamed.

But BAITERs are terribly insecure, so they are always trying to win allies and supporters. They have a need to win you over that goes beyond just forming a relationship as I described earlier. The BAITERs need for you to actually endorse their position, whatever it may be, because they will use you to validate them at some point. Don’t be surprised to hear they have told someone, “Carol agrees with me 100 percent! She thinks you are dead wrong, too.” They’re looking for your approval, constantly checking on your reaction so they can use it to con someone else.

Be very cautious of someone who seems to be “working you” rather than working the problem. You might miss their manipulations because you are so busy working on their problem, trying to help them, while they are busy trying to screw you!

The infiltrating flatterer, the co-conspirator, and the approval seeker I’ve been talking about all have one thing in common. They’re always trying to discover as much about you as they can so they can use the information against you or bolster themselves in some way. They’re testing you the way horses test an electric fence—looking for flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and a way inside.

But this means they’re never genuinely engaged because they always have a hidden purpose and are always at a distance from your interaction, rather than truly being part of it. Constantly thinking this way takes time and energy away from spontaneous human connection. The BAITER can’t engage in the normal back-and-forth of a social exchange, because he’s too busy thinking about what information he can obtain for leverage.

He can give the
appearance
of being engaged, but his flattery, attempts at seduction, and approval-seeking should give him away. With proper sensitivity, you will quickly discern when you are being pumped for information. In fact, if you will pay attention to the areas of inquiry, you may even gain insight into what the “setup” is likely to be. At the risk of making you paranoid, my advice is that you have to be very careful of what information you are giving someone and think about how that information, taken out of context or “spun up” by a manipulator, could come back to haunt you. Sometimes the information they gather can be even more valuable than money. For example, the BAITER will pump you to find out your values and what you passionately believe in so that when the time is right, he can mimic those positions, claiming them as his own in order to bond with you and gain your trust. When he gains your trust, he gains access to you and your life.

And remember, you are potentially dealing with a BAITER, someone with a nefarious, self-serving, and potentially destructive agenda. You may be thinking they have no reason to try to hurt you. But these people don’t need a “rationale”; they only need to believe that derogating or undermining you will somehow advance their cause. They are looking to taint or eliminate competition, and you don’t want to give them the very ammunition that might well bring you down.

People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. BAITERs have plenty to hide, because I am willing to bet that you are not their first target or potential victim. They will frequently avoid responding directly in any discussion that requires them to take a personal position, be specific about their past, make a substantive self-disclosure, or make a commitment that could come at a cost or narrow their options. If they “sign on” to back you or support some position that narrows their ability to flip-flop and jump on the bandwagon of a yet-to-be-determined winner, they will get as nervous as the pig who knows he’s dinner.

Did you ever have the experience of trying to steer a conversation back to the subject at hand while the person you’re talking to seems determined to take it in an irrelevant direction? This is another tactic of the BAITERs. They obfuscate by focusing on irrelevant details and
answering questions that weren’t asked
. This is an easily observable behavior, so be especially on the lookout for it. We have all seen this happen with children who have something to hide.

Mom: “Hey, Billy, what’s up? Are you and your little friend having fun playing out in the yard?”

Billy: “Yes, and we aren’t playing with matches, OK!”

Mom: “Whoa! Hold on there, Seabiscuit! What’s this about matches?”

Busted
. BAITERs do it all the time, just like little Billy.

You’ve been around long enough to know when you are having a genuine and authentic conversation with someone. But until now, you may have just thought other people were scatterbrained or airheads when they just didn’t seem to be able to grasp the heart of the matter. What I’m telling you is that sometimes people like this know exactly what the heart of the matter is, and they know exactly how to obfuscate. Pinning them down is like trying to “sack fog” or nail Jell-O to the wall. You can get close, but you just can’t quite get it done. Now, you at least have a new theory as to why.

BAITERs always want to make sure you understand whose fault it was, and it’s seldom theirs. They do not take accountability or ownership for anything of negative consequence.

But you know better than that. There’s seldom a problem that’s 100 percent the responsibility of one side and zero percent the other. Relationships are mutually defined. Maybe it’s 90/10, 80/20, 50/50, whatever—the question is always, what’s
your
role in this? What’s
your
ownership of the problem? If the BAITER gets a DUI, the cops were unfair, it was a setup, someone must have drugged their beer, the Breathalyzer was wrong. Somebody besides them is responsible for their getting in trouble. If they get caught having an affair, “She came on to me!” (As if that matters to you!) “I didn’t even know what was happening; I was drunk.” (As if
that
matters to you!)

This is a major problem because people cannot change what they don’t acknowledge. The BAITERs acknowledge nothing, so they change nothing. You cannot expect these people to have some moment of insight and begin to hold themselves to a higher standard. It is simply not going to happen, and if you are in their life, you will become a target of blame. They are never wrong, never responsible, never accountable, and never willing to step up and own their part in a negative situation. Guess what? Somebody must be to blame, and since it is
never
them, that leaves you. Enjoy your time under the bus because that’s right where you’re headed when you deal with BAITERs.