In a healthy workplace, pressure is used to motivate, guide, and align a team toward shared goals. But there are environments where stress is not a byproduct of the job but a deliberate tactic. When the pressure feels targeted, inconsistent, or strangely personal, it raises a different question: why would a manager intentionally push someone toward stress?
Understanding these possibilities does not excuse the behavior, but it helps you identify what is happening, protect your mental space, and decide how to respond.
1. To Test Your Limits or Loyalty
Some managers create controlled chaos to see who can handle it. They believe stress reveals character, commitment, and loyalty. Instead of asking for clarity or assessing skills through normal means, they intentionally overload you to watch how you respond. The problem is that this turns your wellbeing into an experiment.
2. To Maintain Control or Authority
A stressed employee is often a compliant employee. When someone is overwhelmed, they have less energy to question decisions, negotiate, or push back. Bosses who crave control may use stress as a method to keep people off balance and ensure their authority goes unchallenged.
3. To Justify Certain Outcomes
If a boss wants to replace you, reduce your opportunities, or eventually push you out, deliberate stress can create a narrative. They can claim you are underperforming, unfocused, or struggling, even though the environment was engineered to create that result. It becomes a self-fulfilling setup that benefits them.
4. To Make You Depend on Them
Some leaders intentionally create problems and then swoop in with solutions. This creates a dependency cycle. Stress is used as leverage so they can position themselves as the only person who can “save the day.” This tactic feeds a sense of importance, influence, or ego.
5. To Increase Output Without Increasing Costs
When a boss knows an employee is reliable, they may exploit that reliability by giving them more work than is reasonable. Stress becomes a strategy to maximize productivity without offering additional pay, resources, or support. It is a shortcut that benefits the organization at your expense.
6. To Divert Attention From Their Own Weaknesses
Overwhelming employees can distract from a manager’s own shortcomings. If you are too stressed to notice the missing leadership, flawed planning, or poor strategy, their mistakes stay hidden. The chaos serves as camouflage.
7. To Create Division Within the Team
Certain leaders thrive when team members are too stressed to communicate clearly or support one another. By overloading individuals, they prevent collaboration and unity. A fragmented team is easier to control and harder to organize against poor management.
8. To See Who Will Break First
In competitive or toxic work cultures, some bosses believe that the “strongest” employees are the ones who survive extreme pressure. This mindset treats people like disposable resources instead of humans. It attempts to create a hierarchy through endurance rather than skill.
Recognizing the Signs
If stress feels intentional, look for patterns: impossible deadlines, mixed messages, manufactured urgency, or criticism without guidance. These are not signs of leadership. They are signs of manipulation.
How to Protect Yourself
Document everything. Create clarity through written communication. Set boundaries where possible. Strengthen your network inside and outside the company. And most importantly, remember that being targeted with stress does not mean you are weak. It means someone else is misusing their authority.
Stress should never be a tool for control. When it is, the issue is not your ability to handle pressure. The issue is the environment you are being asked to endure.
