Welcome

If you’ve ever been in a leadership role and suddenly found yourself on the receiving end of subtle digs, quiet resistance, or full‑blown sabotage, you already know this: upward bullying is real. It’s just been hiding in plain sight for decades. Most people understand bullying as something that flows downward or sideways, but very few talk about what happens when the pressure comes from below—when the people you supervise turn their energy toward undermining you. I’ve spent years watching this play out in different workplaces, and the psychology behind it is far more complex than “someone didn’t like their boss.”

Upward bullying first started showing up in research back in the late ’90s, but even then it wasn’t called that. It was buried inside studies about “aggression,” “conflict,” or “retaliation.” The behaviours were there—rumour‑spreading, nitpicking, withholding information, dragging feet on purpose—but nobody had the vocabulary to name it. It wasn’t until the mid‑2000s that researchers began calling it what it is: bullying that travels up the hierarchy. And once the term existed, people started recognising their own experiences in it. Leaders who thought they were “imagining things” suddenly realised they weren’t alone.

Over time, more stories surfaced—especially from nursing and higher education. These sectors became the canaries in the coal mine. Nurses wrote openly about being targeted by students, colleagues, and even entire teams. Universities saw faculty turning on department heads, students challenging instructors in ways that crossed the line, and administrators quietly absorbing hostility that no one outside the institution ever saw. What struck me most was how often these behaviours were dismissed as “personality clashes” or “miscommunication,” when in reality they were coordinated efforts to destabilise someone in a position of responsibility.

As more research accumulated, one thing became clear: upward bullying isn’t just retaliation against a bad manager. Yes, poor leadership can trigger frustration, but that’s not the whole story. Sometimes the bullying is strategic. Sometimes it’s political. Sometimes it’s a group dynamic—mobbing—where one person becomes the target of a collective effort to push them out or strip them of influence. And sometimes it’s triangulation, where individuals manipulate others into joining the conflict, creating confusion and isolating the leader. These behaviours thrive in workplaces where boundaries are weak, accountability is inconsistent, or the culture quietly rewards resistance.

What makes upward bullying so difficult to spot is that the tactics are subtle. Missing deadlines. “Forgetting” to pass on information. Skipping meetings. Withholding expertise. Gossip disguised as concern. These actions don’t look dramatic on their own, but together they create a slow erosion of a leader’s credibility and confidence. And because the behaviour comes from below, many leaders feel embarrassed to speak up. They worry they’ll be seen as incompetent or unable to “manage their team.” That silence is exactly what allows the behaviour to spread.

The truth is, upward bullying is a long‑standing workplace problem that has simply gone unnamed for too long. It’s tangled up in power dynamics, organisational politics, and group psychology. It shows up in unionised environments, in professional programs, in corporate offices, in hospitals, in classrooms—anywhere people work in hierarchies. And because it’s so widespread, the solutions can’t be surface‑level. We need to understand the motivations behind it, the structures that enable it, and the ways bystanders get pulled into the process.

Upward bullying isn’t just “bad behaviour.” It’s a pattern. It’s a strategy. And it’s a sign that something deeper is happening in the culture of a workplace. The more we talk about it, name it, and recognise the psychology behind it, the better equipped we are to stop it before it destroys teams, careers, and the wellbeing of the people who step up to lead.