Help! My teammate keeps stealing my ideas and takes all the credit. They have just celebrated a promotion which they achieved by leading one of my initiatives. I’m not going to progress in this current team dynamic, but I’m unsure how to handle this situation without confronting my manager or leaving the team entirely!
These types of people are the worst. My unprofessional opinion is to corner them by the coffee machine and adopt your inner Liam Neeson in ‘Taken’, but I fear that threatening to find them and kill them for stealing ideas from you would probably get you sacked…
My professional opinion is that you need to start standing up for yourself, otherwise this isn’t going to stop and you’re going to continue to be dissatisfied. There’s a fine line between an idea coming together betweeen a team and one person voicing it and someone completely jumping the gun and taking your idea entirely. It’s often difficult to prove that an idea was yours, and no one wants to spend their time consistently collecting evidence to prove themselves. Nor would I suggest that because I think it’s a waste of your time.
There are three simple solutions for this:
Call me harsh, but to take ownership of your work you need to work on speaking up in meetings and making yourself heard. If you don’t, someone else will speak for you.
If someone hasn’t credited you on a piece of work, don’t assume that they’ve done it maliciously (even if you know that they have). Instead, take them to one side and say hey, I know this probably wasn’t intentional but you forgot to credit me recently. Can you make the effort in the next meeting to include me. If the person then doesn’t do that - you then have grounds (without sifting through tons of evidence) to go to your manager and raise it. Correcting people doesn’t have to be confrontational, just do it face to face and have a calm tone, then follow up with an email thanking them for the conversation (summarising what you’ve said) so you always have a paper trail.
I <3 CC’ing to ensure that I get my credit. Some people are against CC’ing, but I say bring it back. Start copying senior people on emails when discussing an idea, clearly indicating who was responsible. Keep meeting notes of brainstorming sessions, summarise the ideas, and forward them regularly.
In meetings, speak up by saying things like, “We all loved X’s idea and knew you would too” or “We want to show you X’s idea ASAP.” It’s easy to give credit where it’s due if done swiftly and transparently.
Finally, just know people like this won’t get away with it forever. People that consistently steal ideas, don’t give credit, and create unhealthy dynamics in meetings simply won’t last long term. So don’t sweat it - stand your ground, know your worth, and get comfortable with speaking up.