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If higher-ups are going to you directly or responding more enthusiastically to your ideas than your boss's, he can indeed feel threatened by you, but it's not always as straightforward as him sitting up nights in his BarcaLounger downing gin and wondering when management is going to kick him out of his nice big office and award it to you. What he may experience instead is a seeping discomfort or irritation. Even if he feels totally secure in his position, your talent and energy can make him question his own, making him feel like an imposter who may one day be exposed.

How does his fear manifest itself? He may keep you out of meetings you should be part of, co-opt your ideas, cut you down to size in front of your peers, and limit your access to those higher up. A thirty-four-year-old friend of mine has recently had this problem with her fifty-four-year-old boss. She took over an area in the company that he only loosely supervised and as soon as she started to shine, he began to reduce her power and steal her thunder. She was due to make a presentation of her department's accomplishments to top management and her boss suddenly announced that he would give the first half of the presentation. My friend had no choice but to go along, and they rehearsed together over the next week. The day arrived and the boss delivered his half of the presentation. My friend started to rise for her portion, and then watched, with jaw dropped, as her boss simply barreled along, giving her part of the presentation as well. Later, when she asked for an explanation, he told her he wanted to spare her the stress.

A boss can also sabotage you with his incompetence. A bozo boss casts a halo that can make you appear incapable, too. A boss who is talented in his field but lousy at delegating will threaten your chances of developing expertise you critically need.

The Subordinate Saboteur

In many respects subordinates can be the most dangerous saboteurs because we are less likely to suspect them or worry that they endanger us. After all, we have “authority” over them, and thus we shouldn't have to be concerned.

The most obvious danger is from incompetent players on your staff. They, of course, not only jeopardize matters by making mistakes and mishandling critical situations, they also suck the energy out of you and force you to pick up the slack they create. Good girls seem to have a special blindspot for incompetent employees because they hope for the best with people and then don't want to do anything “mean.” I once had a good girl on my staff who hired a person under her who turned out to be a disaster, and in the end I lost as much faith in the good girl as I did in her hire. First there were the months of denial, in which the good girl kept saying that she knew her staff member would blossom as she became more familiar with the process. Then, once the problem had been acknowledged, there was the procrastination, I think because the good girl didn't really warn to do the dirty work. By the time the incompetent member had been transferred to another area, the good girl had sustained almost as much damage in my eyes.

Your subordinates can also feel threatened by you, though that's something we rarely think of. There are a few obvious situations. You take over a department and everyone there seems to hate you for what you might do to the status quo. But your employees will also feel anxious and threatened if you fail to give them adequate responsibility and autonomy or you offer no sense of direction. They will then sabotage you by performing poorly, complaining about you to one another as well as other people in the company—or resigning in the middle of your biggest crunch.

The Peer Saboteur

Peers, to me, are the trickiest saboteurs because our relationships with them are less formalized and we don't have any real control over what they do. Unlike with subordinates, you lack the right to challenge their behavior, and unlike with bosses, it's not expected that they might tell you what's on their