The person giving the feedback was the boss's boss, and they clearly didn't have the entire picture of the situation.
That's not gaslighting. The term "gaslighting" gets thrown around far too readily. Assuming malice and manipulation in cases of miscommunication is a quick way to sour any relationship, this one included.
There's no question that communication wasn't great in this scenario, but I don't see any reason to believe it's malicious or manipulative. The OP needs to work on proactive communication, but receiving unfiltered feedback from above is much better than blindly continuing down the same path without ever being informed that something is wrong.
Learn from it, adapt, and move on. Don't assume it's "gaslighting" or manipulation every time two people have different perspectives on a situation due to miscommunication.
Not all manipulation is gas-lighting. Gas-lighting is when you intentionally create a scenario to make another person doubt their competence as a distraction from your own nefarious actions.
If the boss had intentionally given the subordinate a task that was harder than it seemed in order to make the subordinate feel inferior, causing the subordinate to feel at fault for the lateness of a larger project and therefore not report the boss' bad decisions up the chain of command, that would be gas-lighting. But just telling them they are at fault is not gas-lighting.
To clarify, I don't mean to say the boss did something ok, just that I think the term gas-lighting as a term is very useful to describe a particular phenomenon in various relationships, but is less useful if it gets broadened. I think this is something different, not necessarily better or worse.
That was the point of the meeting, to find out more. Since nobody volunteered any additional information contradicting their view, the lead manager had to go with what it looked like: a project was late for no good reason.
The person giving the feedback was the boss's boss, and they clearly didn't have the entire picture of the situation.
That's not gaslighting. The term "gaslighting" gets thrown around far too readily. Assuming malice and manipulation in cases of miscommunication is a quick way to sour any relationship, this one included.
There's no question that communication wasn't great in this scenario, but I don't see any reason to believe it's malicious or manipulative. The OP needs to work on proactive communication, but receiving unfiltered feedback from above is much better than blindly continuing down the same path without ever being informed that something is wrong.
Learn from it, adapt, and move on. Don't assume it's "gaslighting" or manipulation every time two people have different perspectives on a situation due to miscommunication.