How to avoid workplace scapegoating with relational intelligence

Strategies to navigate complex workplace dynamics and reduce your risk of being targeted

The modern workplace is full of people carrying unresolved conflicts from past jobs, betrayals by former colleagues, and wounds from systems that were meant to protect them. Some arrive ready to collaborate while others act like they’re still in a battle. Narcissistic leaders, psychopathic CEOs, politically skilled but ethically bankrupt managers, and HR leaders who protect the brand instead of the people are part of the everyday scenery.

There are also leaders who use their position to help others flourish, but those stories rarely get airtime without the obligatory self-congratulatory virtue signal. Dysfunction is louder, harder to ignore, and frankly, way more interesting. No one is writing a LinkedIn post about the meeting where everyone acted like adults, which is why the stories that spread tend to involve conflict, questionable ethics, or a public loss of credibility that ticks every schadenfreude box in the algorithm.

If this is the environment you’re operating in, technical skill and emotional self-management will not keep you safe on their own. What often determines whether you are heard, dismissed, or targeted is your ability to navigate relationships in a way that lowers your perceived threat level, earns trust from the right people, and protects your credibility in politically volatile settings. That skill is relational intelligence.

This piece is a step away from my usual spot the Cluster B/narcissistic behaviour breakdowns. Exposing those patterns has value, and I will keep doing it, but there is also value in exploring approaches that make you harder to target and better equipped to deal with people whose behaviour is difficult, self-protective, hostile, or politically driven. These approaches take willingness, skill, and more patience than most of us like to admit we have.

Before you roll your eyes, this is not some corporate leadership hack that I’ve picked up from an organisational psychologist influencer on LinkedIn or the latest take in HBR. As you’ll see, relational intelligence is more than the next buzzword and can be the difference between becoming overlooked or sidelined to being seen as an authority who can influence others.

I also ask that you read this in good faith. I’m not suggesting that if you had done all these things, you could have avoided being scapegoated, bullied, or ostracised. The blame for scapegoating sits squarely with the institution and with every individual who participates in or enables it. I don’t excuse or minimise harmful behaviour or shift responsibility away from those who have the power to hold others accountable.

My aim is to highlight where each of us can take control early in our engagement with someone new in ways that can shift the trajectory of that relationship, especially if you have been scapegoated or bullied before and want to lower the risk of it happening again.

What is Relational Intelligence?

Relational intelligence is the capacity to read trust levels, power dynamics, and informal influence with precision, and to act in ways that protect credibility, lower perceived threat, and keep relationships workable in politically complex environments. It draws from evidence-based relational practice, particularly the Working in Partnership model by Davis and Day (2010)¹, integrating its trust-building, sustaining, and restoration skills with discernment about when to engage, when to adapt, and when to withdraw. It addresses conditions before open conflict arises, and it operates at the individual level in systems where decisions and influence often sit outside the formal hierarchy.

My approach to relational intelligence was shaped over more than a decade of facilitating and learning in partnership with Dr. Paul Prichard, who mentored me in relational practice through years of working with the Working in Partnership model. Over time, I have adapted and applied this model in organisational settings to develop a clear set of relational intelligence criteria for politically complex environments, especially those with fragile or performative trust. This integration of strategic, discerning intelligence with threat reducing, restorative, trust-building practice is my original contribution to the concept. Unlike generic treatments of the topic, my definition and criteria are specific to organisational politics, asymmetrical trust, and scapegoating risk, and cannot be lifted out of context without losing their meaning. This work forms the foundation of my relational leadership coaching practice and publications.

Relational intelligence is the capacity to read trust levels, power dynamics, and informal influence with precision, and to act in ways that protect credibility, lower perceived threat, and keep relationships workable in politically complex environments. It involves knowing when trust can be built, when it can be repaired, and when genuine collaboration is unlikely. It also means noticing how power actually works, how people are connected, and what unspoken histories of betrayal or loyalty might be shaping the present moment. Relational intelligence also requires status literacy, which means being able to see how status games shape behaviour even when you choose not to play by them.