Every industry has its own version of emotional hazing, but corporate creative departments have elevated it into an art form.
Discussing the worst manager you’ve ever had in public still feels vaguely gauche, however. Like bringing up an ex at a wedding, or describing a humiliating moment to someone who only asked where you bought your shoes. Professional adults are expected to describe even their most psychologically bizarre workplace experiences as “valuable learning opportunities,” preferably while updating LinkedIn.
And yet nearly everyone who has spent enough time in a creative department develops the same slightly dissociative expression when certain former managers are mentioned. Not rage exactly. More the look of someone recalling a minor flood or an electrical fire.
The most difficult manager I ever worked for belonged to a particular species of creative executive whose management style seemed to remove most of the psychological safety from the room and then wonder why nobody was producing breakthrough work. Feedback rarely felt collaborative. It often arrived more like a verdict. Routine creative discussions carried the emotional ambience of being called into the principal’s office at fourteen.
At one point, the entire team was asked to numerically rate the quality of our own creative output. People answered cautiously, in the way hostages might answer questions about morale. Sevens. Eights. We were then told the work was actually closer to a two or three. No framework was provided for what a ten looked like. This was apparently meant to inspire us.
Another time, during a meeting ostensibly about my professional growth, I was told that one of the problems with the company was that people assumed years of contribution should naturally lead to career advancement. In the same conversation, I was told that none of my work over the previous months had been particularly strong. The timing was especially surreal as some of that exact work had just received major industry recognition, which my manager had happily taken credit for.
One of the more disorienting changes was the quiet reclassification of who was permitted to have opinions out loud. Before this shift in leadership, part of my role involved contributing directly to discussions and giving feedback during review. Over time, art directors were increasingly removed from those conversations. Feedback became more centralized, then filtered back through layers of management, like classified information.
In hindsight, I suspect being neurodivergent amplified the experience for me. Ambiguity, inconsistent expectations, and performative criticism create an extraordinary amount of unnecessary cognitive load.
Creative departments often speak reverently about merit while functioning, like most workplaces, through a complicated mixture of talent, hierarchy, timing, relationships, and opaque social dynamics. Titles can appear mysteriously. So can exclusion. Approval becomes a kind of atmospheric resource people unconsciously compete for. Poor leadership tends to make that atmosphere even harder to read.
What stayed with me most was not even the criticism itself. Creative people, perhaps more than most, learn early to welcome constructive criticism. It was the sustained implication that inclusion was conditional. That having an opinion could be mistaken for arrogance. That visibility could be granted or withdrawn depending on how well you understood rules nobody had clearly explained.
One of the lonelier aspects of workplace intimidation is how individualized it feels while it’s happening. Only afterward do people begin quietly comparing notes. Years later, several former colleagues shared experiences that felt remarkably familiar.
Ironically, almost everyone I know who has worked through an environment like this became a significantly better leader afterward. Once you’ve experienced management built around fear, opacity, and ego preservation, basic emotional competence starts to feel almost radical.
You learn that clear feedback is not softness. You learn that psychologically safe teams are not teams without standards. And you learn that people are far more willing to take creative risks when they are not spending half their energy trying to determine whether taking one will be punished.
Companies love to talk about innovation. What they mention less often is that people tend to do their least innovative work while bracing for impact.