Love Bombing at Workplace

Have you ever felt like someone at your workplace has been showering you with endless praise or flattery to the point where you start believing that it’s too good to be true? This is commonly known as love bombing and usually occurs in romantic relationships but also manifests in professional settings. 

Read More – Love Bombing in Romantic Relationships

What is Love bombing?

Love bombing is a manipulation approach or tactic employed by a person to bombard another person with lavish affection, intense attention, gifts and compliments to dominate them. While this can feel flattering or enjoyable in the beginning, it can easily become a means for emotional or coercive forms of mistreatment. 

What does Love Bombing look like?

When people think of love bombing, they tend to visualize intense romantic gestures where one partner showers their significant other with extravagant praises, ostentatious gestures of affection and immense attention only for the target of the love bombing to realize the manipulative intentions once the “honeymoon phase” comes to an end. When these controlling behaviours occur in professional interaction, especially between a boss and their colleagues, it can be confusing and unnerving.

Love bombing is categorized by a set of behaviours that are usually meant to cause a person to feel emotionally dependent on the one love bombing them. It is especially problematic as their behaviour is targeted to make you feel endlessly valued or praised. How can such positive things make you feel unpleasant? It’s because their behaviour is disingenuous and aimed at creating a false sense of security to make you feel an instant companionship or connection with them.

Why is Love Bombing Harmful or Abusive?

As humans, we are particularly susceptible to being allured by encouragement, praise, or other positive things said about us. This makes love-bombing especially effective on individuals who are vulnerable to excessive praise or ego boosts. However, as the relationship progresses, the target of love-bombing often finds themselves grappling with emotional turmoil.

Red flags to keep an eye on:

• Restricting a person’s contact or access to friends or family and isolating them from others.
• Manipulating the target person by blaming, denying the truth, dismissing the needs of others, doing harmful actions in the name of the bond/relationship/love/friendship/career advancement, gaslighting, etc.
• Using jealousy or other emotions as an excuse to cause harm or control a person’s interactions with others.
• Escalating to abusive behaviours like intimidation, physical harm or coercion.

Love bombing during the Recruitment

Can love bombing happen during the hiring phase at a workplace? Yes, it happens more often than we think and occurs when the hiring managers or recruiters of companies continuously flatter, praise, or give unnecessary promises to the candidate to influence them to stay interested in a job position. This is motivated by their desire to create a sense of emotional attachment or dependency towards the company, and also by the commitment that a candidate usually holds to secure a job. 

Examples of love bombing done during the Hiring Process:

• Unwarranted praise such as, “You’re exactly whom we’ve needed,” or “You’re the most perfect one for this role.”
• Despite uncertain markets and with no basis, they promise or lure you with unrealistic opportunities like promotions, raises, rapid growth in your career, and exclusive and exciting projects.
• Rushing the candidate through fast-track interviews, offering instant opportunities or positions to make them feel like they have to urgently apply to secure the position. The entire hiring process might seem too smooth or finished too quickly. 
• While it is common for recruiters to communicate and keep in touch with their candidates, recruiters who are aiming to love bomb will try to blur the line between professional and become overly familiar by bonding almost instantaneously and creating an emotional connection which they use to gain control over the candidate’s decisions or actions. 

How do you handle love bombing in the Recruitment Phase?

• Ask them for detailed and concrete information about job roles, growth opportunities and the company culture to avoid unrealistic expectations. 
• Do your own research about the position or the company and also read employee reviews on career-related sites like LinkedIn or Glassdoor to get a better idea about the work environment or work culture. Contact former or current employees to gain further insights and perspectives.
• Pay attention to any contradictions in the way the recruiter sells the company or the job position and look for ingenuity or a lack of transparency when you ask them relevant or probing questions.
• Don’t let the recruiter pressure you into making quick decisions and evade any inappropriate emotional appeals that might give you a false sense that you are special to them.
• If they mention that their company is like a family and welcome you stating the same, that’s a definite sign of blurring the professional line.

Stages of Professional Love Bombing

Similar to romantic relationships, love bombing at the workplace occurs in phases, where someone often in a position of power or hierarchy influences their target with constant attention, high praise, and professional favours to gain control and cause a professional dependency. 

1. Initial Phase: Idealization

In the starting stages of the bond, the manipulator (usually a colleague/ boss/ manager/ recruiter/superior) begins showering the target with a lot of unsolicited compliments and praise that may feel disproportionate or incongruous to the actual work performance of the target. The superior or colleague will also make it a point to send you emails or texts praising you for minor accomplishments and even give you undue public recognition.

Example: A superior at work might often exaggeratedly mention that you’re perfect or the most valued team even when your contributions are not so high.

2. Second Phase: Personalization

Once the target feels enticed by the initial love bombing, the manipulator seeks to involve themselves more deeply in the life of their target. They offer unsolicited help, take on the target’s assignments or projects and give career-related advice that might seem helpful on the surface but has an intense layer of manipulation. They keep a substantial stream of communication going to further allure their target. 

The manipulator may also start questioning the target’s personal life and seem interested in their career or personal values and goals. The superior might also attempt to share their details to make the target feel a false sense of closeness or bonding.

3. Third Phase: Control 

After they secure their close bond with their target, they may begin to create a sense of dependency on them. They would assure salary raises, promotion opportunities and other career advancements to keep the target loyal to them. From there, they will isolate their target from the others and use control tactics to keep the target solely focused on the love bomber. Once they establish a secure bond with their target, they may move to more manipulative tactics that involve guilt-tripping for neglecting them, taking on a lot of work, having unreasonable or demanding expectations and also controlling the target’s interactions and decisions.

4. Fourth Phase: Withdrawal

At this stage, the love bomber will withdraw their intense bouts of attention, and leave the target confused and desperate for the approval and recognition that they previously received. When confronted, they may avoid accountability, disregard the target and also sever the bond. During this phase, individuals may realize that the love bomber’s intentions were not genuine and may feel betrayed and guilty.

Example: After weeks of constant praise, your boss abruptly becomes aloof, disregards your achievements, or starts to criticize your work unfairly, making you feel confused, overlooked and anxious.

Connection to Narcissism 

Research related to narcissism suggests that love bombing is also a tactic used by narcissistic individuals to overwhelm their target with relentless communication through phone calls, texts and social media. This continuous flow of attention secures them a place as a significant person in their target’s life and also adds to their narcissistic supply. Once their goals are reached, the narcissist ignores or discards their target thus causing an emotional dependency on attention and love. They bank on the desperation that the target feels to feel worthy or superior.  

Differences between Romantic and Professional Love bombing

In both contexts, the love bomber relies on manipulation to exert control over the target’s emotions, thoughts or actions. At first, the target would feel bombarded or overwhelmed by the attention, but gradually they will realize the true intentions of the love bombing. By then, they’ll sense the incongruence in their own behaviour and feel extremely guilty about their decisions and actions. 

Conclusion

Psychological studies suggest that love bombing can be a form of emotional abuse. It is a vicious cycle where the abuser alternates between disproportionate affection/attention and withdrawal making the target feel disoriented and disregarded. This leads the target to desperately earn back the recognition and approval that they received before they were disregarded by the abuser, thus reinforcing the cycle of abuse.

Over time, this behaviour can severely affect a person’s self-esteem and emotional well-being, as they might feel confined in the relationship. Love bombing is not just exclusive to people in romantic or professional relationships and can occur in any type of bond.