When your workplace turns on you

My feature on the Voice from the Edge podcast

I had the pleasure of being featured on the Voices from the Edge podcast with Tom Bourne to speak about scapegoating at work.

In workplaces, scapegoating functions as the organisational immune response. Just as a biological immune system identifies, isolates, and eliminates what it perceives as a threat, the workplace immune response identifies an individual who is seen as disruptive to the balance and begins a process of isolating and exiling them. The group redirects its attention to this person and gradually positions them as the source of the disruption. Each step restores a sense of control and reassures the group that the original order has been reasserted and the disruption contained.

This process can draw in anyone within a social order or hierarchy. Scapegoats are often people who are competent, engaged, or newly visible, whose work or presence exposes fractures in the system, yet who were never the chosen ones to address those issues. The experience is confounding because the scapegoat is often recognised and rewarded early in their tenure, a form of grooming that encourages them to fall into line with expectations. When they eventually defy unspoken norms and cross invisible boundaries, they’re seen as a threat to stability. They begin to notice their exclusion from meetings and decisions within their remit, that their role is reinterpreted, and that narratives about their performance shift in ways that rationalise their eventual removal.

The purpose of scapegoating is to shield the system from confronting its own neglected faults and disowned collective shame. When someone’s presence or actions expose these vulnerabilities, the system experiences the exposure as a narcissistic injury that threatens its ideal self-image. The response is retaliatory and directed at the person who triggered the wound. By concentrating the group’s unresolved shame and new found instability on this individual, the system avoids deeper accountability and proceeds as though the problem has been solved. Their removal becomes a symbolic act of purification that restores the group’s sense of order and reinforces its preferred perception of itself.

The impact on the scapegoated person builds over time and reshapes their entire experience of work. Their credibility is chipped away through repeated, seemingly minor acts that collectively undermine their standing. They often respond by working harder and trying to prove their worth, unaware that trust has already been withdrawn. This effort places them under closer scrutiny and reinforces the view that they’re the problem. As the process continues, their professional identity is gradually eroded until leaving is the only option. Recovery doesn’t end with the exit as they’re left with the work of rebuilding confidence, restoring their credibility, and deciding how to re-enter professional life on their own terms.

The group is also reshaped by the process. Colleagues notice what happens to someone who crosses invisible lines and assimilate to protect themselves. They stay quiet, align with dominant views, and distance themselves from the target. Some might even start repeating the narrative about the scapegoat to signal that they’re safely on the right side of the issue. These choices might appear self-protective in the moment but strengthen the unwritten rules of the system and ensure that the cycle will repeat with someone else.

Scapegoating hasn’t been given the same attention as bullying because it’s so subtle, gradual, and mostly covert, hidden beneath ordinary workplace interactions. It differs from bullying because it serves a collective purpose rather than an individual one. Bullying is usually driven by one person’s urge to dominate and assert authority. Scapegoating often begins with a single person’s frustration but evolves into a group process that enlists others, many of whom are convinced that the target is the problem. Its function is to stabilise the system by directing pressure onto one person so the group can regain a sense of control without facing the deeper problems that caused the disruption in the first place.

Identifying the features and stages of scapegoating allows people to stop internalising the blame and see the process for what it is: the system’s way of restoring equilibrium at their expense. Recognising the early signs gives them the ability to act deliberately rather than remain trapped in confusion. They can reduce their exposure, withdraw their energy from a process that has already cast them in a role, and prepare a considered exit that preserves their credibility.

Seeing the pattern clearly allows a person to respond strategically and leave on their own terms before they are exiled.

This podcast episode goes deep into scapegoating at work and why it continues to occur. I have little hope for any institution to stop casting scapegoats because institutions behave like narcissists, existing to protect their ideal self-image. They are there for themselves — for reputation and revenue — not for you.

Listen to the episode at the: Voices from the Edge Podcast

For a complete map of the eight-stage process and practical strategies to interrupt or exit it before the final stage, order The Scapegoating Playbook at Work.

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I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.

While activists focus on fighting macro issues, I believe that activism also needs to focus on the micro issues - the narcissistic traits that pollute relationships between you and I, and between each other, without contributing to existing injustice. It’s not as exciting as fighting the Big Baddies yet hacking, resisting and overriding our tendencies to control others that also manifest as our macro issues is my full-time job.

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