How to deal with a difficult team supervisor? I m in the fourth year of my PhD in veterinary sciences in North America. My Research project involves a lot of farm/team work. I have to work with technicians, farm staff, research associates and other students in the team as well as my advisory committee. I attended in many leadership workshops but still find it hard to deal with negativity, anger and control issues from one of my superiors. She in managing students as a research associate and has quite an influence on my advisor. She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions. What should I do? How can I keep myself safe from anger, control issues and related stress?
Being mean and humiliating anyone, let alone subordinates, in the workplace (academia or otherwise) is inappropriate and should not be tolerated. I would suggest you informally talk to whomever is in charge of harassment claims at your university to let them know what is up. Depending on how bad the situation is, you could either file a formal complaint or go talk to the person directly. By having the informal talk with HR you will be protected if your one-on-one discussion blows up.


  She told me herself that she has chosen to be mean to people and has been humiliating others and me in various occasions.


It seems you have talked to her, but did you tell her that her attitude and behavior is making it difficult to do your job? Maybe you can work something out where she is less abusive to you or that your work environment is more structured to prevent the harassment. Hopefully that will resolve the issues, if not, file the complaint.

University's do not kid around with complaints about harassment. These types of formal complaints make promotion much more difficult and will often be reported in any reference written by the department head. They often will require the individual to receive training and monitoring. Once the possibility of a formal complain is on the table it is in the best interested for the colleague to do everything possible to prevent the complaint. Once a formal complaint is raised any escalation by the colleague will likely be dealt with swiftly and harshly by the University.