Think Your Boss Is Envious of You? It Might Be a Good Thing

This post was co-authored by Sandy Wayne, Harshad Puranik, and Jingzhou Pan.

When Sam realized that their supervisor was envious of Sam’s superior technical skills and work achievements, the discovery was initially unsettling. Subtle shifts in tone, guarded feedback, holding back of useful information, and hesitation in giving Sam credit for their skills and work accomplishments all pointed to a complicated mix of envy and insecurity on the part of the supervisor. Many employees might have interpreted these cues as a major threat, bracing for the relationship with the envious supervisor to deteriorate and pulling back to avoid further tension. Sam didn’t. “I saw it as proof that my work and my skills truly mattered and were valuable,” Sam reflected. “If I handled this carefully and showed that I still supported my supervisor and that my skills and work were not a threat to their position in the workplace, I felt it could actually create an opening for more trust and collaboration between us.” So instead of retreating from the envious supervisor, Sam leaned in, initiating small check-ins, offering partnership rather than competition, and signaling genuine respect and willingness to help the supervisor achieve their goals. What could have become a source of strain and unease between them instead became a surprising catalyst for a stronger, more trusting relationship as time progressed.

Both practitioners and scholars often warn that a boss’s envy is a red flag. Envious supervisors are typically associated with deteriorating communication, reduced support, increased interpersonal attacks, and ultimately strained or even damaged working relationships with their envied subordinates. Yet, Sam’s experience suggests that this may not be the complete picture of facing one’s boss’s envy and that something more complex may be at play here. It naturally prompts a bigger question: What explains why a supervisor’s envy undermines some supervisor-employee relationships but unexpectedly improves others? In other words, why are some envied employees able to turn their envious boss into a friend, while others end up turning them into a foe? As Sam’s story may tell, the key lies in how the envied employees appraise the meaning of their boss's envy and respond to it.

What the Research Shows About Navigating Boss Envy

To explore how a boss’s envy toward their employees can impact the relationship between them, we recently conducted two studies involving experiences of more than 600 full-time employees in China, the U.S., and the U.K., using both survey and experimental data. Our findings were published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. In this research, we found that envy from a supervisor reflects a fundamentally ambivalent emotional state. On the one hand, supervisors admire and value an employee’s exceptional abilities, expertise, and knowledge, which are the source of their envy, because these strengths can help enhance the supervisor’s own leadership effectiveness and the team’s success. On the other hand, supervisors simultaneously feel a sense of inferiority and pain due to their own relative shortcomings if they themselves lack these attributes. Envious supervisors thus tend to view their envied employees as both an asset and a potential threat. These mixed feelings, often expressed as the envious supervisor’s oscillation between positive and negative attitudes and actions toward envied subordinates (e.g., seeking advice first, followed by aggression next), can bring uncertainty to the relationship between the envious supervisor and the envied employees. Since their relationship with the supervisor can influence their workplace experience and success, employees are generally very attuned to the emotional cues of their supervisors, and hence, in the case of supervisor envy, they can readily sense this uncertainty creeping into their relationship with their supervisor. Indeed, facing one’s supervisor's envy is a complex and delicate social situation.

Our research shows that what happens next depends greatly on how employees make sense of this delicate situation. When employees interpret the supervisor’s envy as a sign that their relationship is threatened by potential negative actions from the supervisor, they experience anxiety about the future of their relationship, which prompts them to pull back. They may avoid both interactions and engagement with the supervisor, a retreat that only deepens the rift and further deteriorates their working relationship. In contrast, when employees interpret the supervisor’s envy as evidence that their competencies are strongly valued and desired, they likely view envy as an opportunity to strengthen the relationship, as Sam did in our opening example. They begin to feel hopeful and use their strengths to support the supervisor’s leadership goals. The relationship thus improves, marked by greater trust and respect.

So, what determines whether envied employees interpret a supervisor’s envy as a threat or an opportunity for their relationship? Our findings suggest that the key factor is the employee’s sense of power in relation to their supervisor—that is, the extent to which they feel they are able to influence their supervisor’s attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors at work. We show that a strong sense of power helps steer employees toward a more constructive pathway for navigating the supervisor envy situation, increasing the likelihood that they can move their relationship with the envious supervisor in a positive direction.

How to Manage Boss Envy

The key message is clear: Facing an envious boss does not always doom the relationship. When navigating the relationship appropriately, employees can transform the relationship into a stronger one. Given that supervisor envy toward talented subordinates is not uncommon, what can employees, supervisors, and organizations do to manage these dynamics effectively?

One practical way for envied employees to shift the relationship with their envious supervisor in a positive direction is to engage in small but visible helping behaviors. By offering help, sharing information, or showing support on work initiatives, employees communicate that their strengths and their enviable work advantages are not a threat but a resource the supervisor can rely on. These gestures show that the employee’s strengths and skills are not meant to threaten the supervisor’s standing but to contribute to their shared goals. Over time, these small acts can accumulate and reshape the supervisor’s narrative about the employee, replacing “This person makes me look bad” with “This person makes our team stronger.” In doing so, employees can create an opening for more constructive, trust-based interactions with their envious boss.

For supervisors, envy toward talented subordinates can be emotionally taxing. Yet responding by withholding opportunities, limiting access, or subtly undermining the employee is almost always counterproductive. It may drive talented employees to disengage or leave, depriving the team of valuable skills. A more constructive approach is to consciously reframe the situation. When supervisors acknowledge an envied employee’s strengths and view them as assets, they signal openness. This shift enables more productive interactions. Inviting the employee into important conversations, seeking their perspective on complex challenges, and collaborating with them on high-stakes projects are practical steps that transform relational uncertainty into shared success.

Organizations can shape the broader context that makes the supervisor envy dynamics manageable. Supporting supervisors through emotional-regulation training can help them recognize and channel envy productively. More broadly, cultivating a culture that prioritizes collaboration, such as by emphasizing team accomplishments in evaluations and recognition systems, can reduce the zero-sum thinking that fuels downward envy in the first place. Organizations can also empower talented employees by giving them influence over their supervisors’ evaluations and promotion processes—for example, by incorporating their feedback into supervisor performance reviews or promotion deliberations. This added voice can strengthen employees’ sense of power, which can prompt them to navigate the relationship in a positive way, supposing supervisor envy arises.

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Ultimately, boss envy in the workplace doesn’t have to be a fault line—it can be a turning point. When employees, supervisors, and organizations each do their part to interpret and channel envy constructively, a potentially destabilizing dynamic becomes a platform for growth. With the right mindset and practices in place, what begins as tension can end as transformation.