A manager or co-worker taking credit for your work is incredibly demoralizing. A simple technique can help counteract it, while strengthening your network, as well.
The only thing worse than a manager (or co-worker) who doesn’t support you is a manager who undermines you. That can come in many forms, from throwing you under the bus to not getting you the resources you need. One more subtle version is a manager who takes credit for your work. It feels like a double whammy of not being recognized yourself and seeing someone duplicitous earn the credit you deserve.
This is where office politics come in. We often think of politics, the government election kind, as ineffective, dirty, or unpleasant. But politics is always how you can get more funding for your kids' school, have those potholes filled, or get the county to create a community center. When used correctly it can bring about good things and doesn’t need to be slimy. The same is true for office politics. While it can be dirty at times, just as governmental politics can be corrupt at times, it doesn’t always have to be.
At its heart, office politics is about a relationship-driven approach, making sure people get to know the real you. There are two ways you can get credit for something. The first is to have your name associated with it. It could be having your name on the report, winning an award, or having someone send an email mentioning the work you did. The second is to have people (figuratively or literally) see you do the work.
At larger organizations (and large is relative, the company may be just a few dozen people), we can’t always see what each other person is doing. We rely on those secondhand signals like names on a report. If you’re being cut out of that process, then you need to make sure people are seeing you do the work directly.
This doesn’t mean you should be streaming your keystrokes on Twitch. Rather, you need to convey your work directly. Most people hear about the work being done at the end of the project by reading the email about it or hearing it mentioned in the meeting. The problem is when your manager is the one whose name is mentioned with it, or who sends out the email announcement and takes credit. Imagine if the person for whom you want your work to be visible to (perhaps the manager of a team you want to transfer to, or a person with influence on year-end bonuses) was someone you had coffee with once a month. During those coffees you might mention what you’re currently working on. You’d talk about the milestones and challenges, what you're currently thinking, and most importantly what you’re actually doing. You’d convey over many months of coffee conversations that you’re the one doing the key work (or maybe all the work in an extreme case). When the manager’s name goes on at the end, this person would know who did the actual work.
Obviously, you can’t have a monthly coffee with all the people who you want to see you; but now we’re just haggling over the price. It may not be monthly, or coffee, but there will be some frequency and level of interaction. For example, it may be elevator conversations, not coffee. (An elevator pitch doesn’t have to be about pitching a project; it could be about pitching you as someone to watch or with useful information.) You could bump into people in the hallway, or head out to lunch as others get theirs so you may walk a few blocks together. You can’t guarantee serendipity, but as Louis Pasteur once said, “chance favors the prepared mind.” It may not be everyone you want to reach, but it will be some.
You can think of this as personal PR, internal networking, office politics, or in some other way. At the end of the day, it’s short circuiting the credit channels which are hiding your efforts and making sure your contributions are known by going directly to the people who need to hear about it.
When you meet, don’t simply drone on and on about how great you are. Instead, it should be real conversations; ask about their work, too, but make sure your project comes into the conversation as well. Don’t worry about trying to tell them everything, this will be one of many conversations. Like networking, it’s not a one and done effort, but something that is built over time.
This isn’t bragging (or shouldn’t be). When your work does come up, it should not simply be self-promotion. Rather, it should be information sharing, the way co-workers naturally talk about the work that’s going on. Keeping abreast of different projects in the company, even ones not directly related to you, is always a good idea (and senior leaders know this). Talk about the work matter-of-factly. Your abilities and achievements will naturally come through as part of the conversation; you can use “I” when appropriate to make it clear this is your part of the work. Someone who actually did the work will get into a level of specificity that the plagiarist can’t match; the latter will only be able to speak vaguely about the details, and that will become clear to people over time.
It should be noted that your manager probably does deserve some credit. In academia, the professor's name typically goes on the paper, too. This is because she guided you and gave you feedback. Even if it was minimal (or felt like she did less than that), there’s an argument that she created the team and gave you the opportunity. The quarterback in American football may make the pass but he can only do so because the offensive line is giving him the time and space to do it by keeping him from being tackled. On the other hand, if she’s adding her name and taking yours off, or claiming to have done the majority of the work, that’s a different story. Note the term “majority of the work” not “majority of the credit.” In some companies the culture may be that the manager does get significant credit even if not doing much of the work. In such places as long as people know that you did the work, you’ll be known for what you can do. (And if that doesn’t sit well with you, it might be time to find a different place to work.)
Having a manager or co-worker take credit for your work is incredibly demoralizing. A good manager should always know who is doing the actual work including the efforts of people at least two levels below. (And a great manager should be promoting the visibility of people below her.) Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. When you’re not getting the credit you deserve you should take matters into your own hands and make sure you promote your efforts. Sharing details of your work is good practice in most organizations, even one where your manager isn’t trying to steal credit. If making sure you get recognized for the work you did and realizing it may take a little internal PR to get it, doesn’t feel icky, then welcome to the world of office politics, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
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