What to Do When Someone is Taking Credit for Your Work

People looking to advance their careers in the organization might try to curry favor with key stakeholders and influencers. This can mean taking credit for your ideas as their own.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Jockey for position

People looking to advance their careers in the organization might try to curry favor with key stakeholders and influencers. This can mean taking credit for your ideas as their own. It can make them seem more indispensable if they’re working on really important projects. They may even try to freeze you out of visibility opportunities by not inviting you to key meetings.

I worked with one senior director who got a new boss. When this VP came in, he wanted to impress the C-suite. This VP took over roles on key steering committee meetings and uninvited this senior director. The VP did this even though he had no expertise in the area. All he wanted was visibility. He actually uninvited this senior director from steering committees he had led for three or four years. The VP also took credit for the senior director’s work, and when things went wrong, that VP deflected blame to other parts of the organization.

The senior director asked me, “What do I do here? I’m being uninvited from these meetings, this person’s taking credit for my work, and I’m really concerned that people are going to start wondering what I do.” He actually went out and sought out mentors across the organization. He asked them for their input on key projects he was working on. In doing so, he was letting these influential people know that these were his projects. After major meetings or progress milestones on the project, the senior director sent out recap emails to other parts of the organization to let people know that he was the one driving the efforts.

If you deal with this type of situation where somebody is jockeying within the organization and freezing you out, a technique you can use is building those mentoring relationships across the organization. It’ll help make sure that people know what you’re working on, and if you’re leading a project where there are milestones, send out recap emails after a meeting. Again, you’re letting people know that you’re driving the work. The nice postscript to that story about the VP was people eventually figured out that all he was doing was jockeying for position, and he eventually got fired from the organization.

It’s tough when you’re in these types of situations. It’s going to require you to be patient and be diligent about making sure people know that the value you deliver is the value coming from you and your team, and it’s not somebody else’s project. Find those mentoring relationships, and get the word out about the great work your team is doing.

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