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When a coworker taking credit for your work becomes a pattern, it stops being an annoyance and becomes a real professional risk. Your work is how you get promoted, how you get selected for the interesting projects, and how you build the relationships that open doors later in your career. When someone else claims it as theirs, they are not just stealing a moment. They are accruing the professional capital that belongs to you.

Most people wait and see if it stops. The longer the pattern goes unaddressed, the more established it becomes, and every time it happens again, it costs you more visibility and more credibility.

In this episode, I break down three types of workplace credit theft: accidental, opportunistic, and habitual. The type matters because your response needs to match it. Treating every situation like it is malicious will create more damage than the original problem, and I want to make sure you calibrate your response correctly.

I walk you through four concrete techniques you can use this week. The Paper Trail gets your contributions documented before the meeting happens. The In-the-Moment Reclaim gives you additive language to use in real time to reinsert yourself into the record without accusing anyone. The Direct Conversation gives you a specific, neutral, forward-looking script for addressing a pattern head on, including one phrase that uses reciprocity to help the other person feel the weight of what they are doing. And the Visibility Strategy shows you how to loop in your manager in a way that positions you as someone managing their career, not complaining about a colleague.

I also connect this episode to a concept I introduced in Episode 260: the invisible ceiling. If you are consistently giving away credit, your organizational visibility suffers, and that affects promotions, project selection, and how your name comes up in the rooms you are not in.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

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Episode 260 - What to Do When You Don't Get Promoted

How do I deal with a co worker who keeps taking credit for my work? I hear this one a lot, and I want to say right up front, if this is happening to you, you are not being petty. You are not being overly sensitive. Your work is your professional reputation, and when someone else claims it as theirs, that is a real problem worth addressing, and today I want to give you a clear, concrete, professional way to handle it.

Now, what's really going on here? Well, this isn't usually about one person being annoying, your colleague who is stealing your work. It's about visibility, yours, reputation, yours, and the unspoken currency of organizational life. And hint here you're giving your currency away.

Your work is how you get promoted, how you get selected for more interesting projects, how you build those professional relationships that open doors for you later on in your career. And when someone else takes credit that is yours, they're not just stealing a moment or a piece of work, they are accruing professional capital that belongs to you. So I want to give you some strategies for handling this today. So let's get started.

Now, I was at dinner recently, that's where this episode comes from, and one of my friends at dinner was telling me this story, and it went something like this, without getting into the specifics, because I don't want to out this person. But they basically said, Well, my co worker stole my idea. And then later on in the conversation, and this was a bit of a rant that he was having about his job, which is totally fine, when you're amongst friends, you can have a rant about your job a little bit later on, he said, well, and my boss totally thinks it's his idea. And so I pushed back.

Now, I've heard this twice, you know, my co worker stole my idea. Now I heard well, and my boss thinks that it's their idea. And so I said, Well, tell me more about that. Your boss thinking it's their idea.

And my friend says, Oh, well, I was just taking one for the team. I mean, you know, sometimes you have to do that. You have to let your boss take the credit. And I said, Well, does this happen a lot?

Well, more than I would like, he said. And then he thought about it a little bit more, and he said, You know, I really don't want to say anything, because I feel like I'm going to look petty, and I just don't know what to do. But it keeps happening. So it kept happening, and only with his boss, and not just with one other person on the team, but this seemed to be a pretty pervasive team, or a pretty pervasive thing that was happening.

One particular team member takes a lot of credit for his ideas, and then on this other project team that he was working on with other people that aren't on his intact team, but a project team instead, he said it's happening there as well. And again, he said, I just don't know how to say anything without looking like I'm a complainer or that I'm not a team player. And so I gave some advice in the moment, and I'm promised that I would make an episode about this to be able to really flesh this out better and give it some more thought. Now it also reminded me of episode 260 that I recorded, I don't know a few months ago what to what to do when you don't get promoted.

And in that episode, I talked about something called the invisible ceiling when you're needed so much in your current position that they can't afford to promote you or move you into a different role. That's the idea of this invisible ceiling, because they can't imagine how the work would get done if they moved you. And I think if you're letting other people take credit for your ideas, you are putting yourself at risk for this invisible ceiling because you're not getting credit for your ideas, and so your organizational currency suffers as a result. And so when it's time to think of a promotion, and who might be well suited for that promotion, or that special project, or even some interesting committee work, or maybe it's travel for work, well your name just doesn't come up again.

That's the invisible ceiling, which could potentially be a result of not getting credit for your work. Now the real question here is, how do I protect my professional reputation without, like, blowing up a working relationship, or without looking like I'm playing office politics or like I'm complaining about everything? So the reframe here is to you know, your instinct is, of course, to wait and see if it stops. That's what most people will do.

They wait and see if it stops, and then every single time it happens again, it's a sting. It stings and hurts even more. And the real risk here is waiting so long that the pattern becomes firmly established, and again, that could lead to that invisible ceiling that I was just talking about. Okay?

So I want to give you a reframe, and the reframe is that you can absolutely address this in a professional manner, without making it feel like a professional attack or like a personal attack. I should say we don't want it to be a professional attack. Either we don't want it to be an attack of any sort, but we want you to address it professionally, without it feeling to the other person, whether that's your boss or whether that's a co worker, without it feeling personal or like an attack or a personal attack. And in fact, the most effective responses don't look like conflict at all.

So let's talk about why it keeps happening, and then let me give you some very, very actionable advice for what to do about it. Okay, so if you want the technical name for when a colleague steals your work, or when a colleague takes credit for your ideas, the technical term for that is called workplace credit theft. So yes, somebody is conducting thievery. They are stealing credit from you.

So workplace credit theft is the technical term behind this. And there are, in my estimation, three primary reasons why it happens. Now, there could be some other reasons, but these are the primary three reasons for why it happens and how you can respond. Okay, the first one is accidental credit theft.

The other person just genuinely does not realize they're doing it. They summarized your idea in a meeting, and they noticed that everybody looked around and thought that was a good idea, and so then it felt like it was their idea. Again, they didn't intend to steal your idea. Maybe they forwarded your analysis based on a conversation you had with them, and some senior leader replied to them and said, What a great, you know, analysis it was.

And again, they're not being malicious with this. They're just not being proactive about attribution. And in fact, it might not even occur to them at all that attribution should go to someone other than them, because they're, you know, they're oblivious about it. They're benignly oblivious.

Now, in the keynote speaking world, this happens a lot, and it's something we have to really be attentive to. And we have to watch our own behavior and check ourselves, and we also have to call each other out when someone steals a piece of our intellectual property, or maybe it's a story that we regularly tell. In fact, I heard a Hall of Fame speaker talk just the other day at a professional development event that I was at where he was the guest speaker about this one particular piece of is an intellectual property, and it's a funny bit that he does on stage, and he doesn't like other people. Don't realize that that funny bit belongs to him, and it easily could work for any speaker.

He said he was recently on a plane, and he saw another speaker who was also like Hall of Fame caliber, and that other Hall of Fame speaker came up to him and said, like, hey, you know that whatchamacallit bit, and I'm not even gonna say what bit it is, because people will be recognizing who I'm talking about here, and I don't want to out anybody, but they said, Hey, that whatchamacallit bit, man that slays on stage every time. And the Hall of Fame speaker who I was at his professional development event where he was the guest speaker. He was just like, I could not believe that this peer of mine is using my bit. And like laughing about it and like saying how well it works well, of course it works really well.

The person whose intellectual property it is spent a lot of time crafting that specific bit. Now here's the thing for us speakers, is, we hear that bit we go, Oh, that's really funny. I should use that. And then if you ever hear yourself as a professional speaker, thinking to yourself, oh, that was really funny, or that was really clever, or that was whatever, I should use that.

No, that's where you need to catch yourself. And like, what I will do in situations like that is I will write that line down, and I might put a big star asterisks next to it in my notes, and that star asterisks means for me to come back to it and go like, Okay, that was really clever, that was really funny, that was really poignant, whatever it was. How is it that that works so well? How can I understand the thinking behind it so that I can use that thinking to create something like that for myself, whether it's a funny one liner or whether it's something more poignant or thoughtful, a lesson from a story.

Why is it that that works so well, and how can I use what I learned from observing it and apply it to my own material, so that I come up with something that's as poignant or as funny or whatever it might be. Now, again, we have to watch ourselves. I am a certified speaking professional. That means I have a level of certification in the industry, and I am held to different standards.

You could think of it as like, well, this might be a little bit of antiquated, but like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, or Consumer Reports stamp of approval, because I've been through a rigorous process where my work has been checked by my peers to make sure I'm not stealing anybody else's material, to make sure my work is as the quality that I say it is, and so forth, and that I've had that I've literally been doing this for years and years, and I've put in hundreds of, if not 1000s of reps now, we are upholding a certain code of ethics at this level of the profession where we cannot steal other people's material for, I mean, for obvious reasons. But also we could get our CSP, our certified speaking professional designation taken away as a result of stealing other people's material. So again, and I think in my industry, in the professional speaking industry, this idea of accidental credit theft happens a lot, and it's something we really need to be mindful of, and in the workplace as well, I want you to just be thinking like this person's intent was probably not to steal somebody else's work. It was just a good idea.

They repeated that idea. They read the room and saw people light up, and then they ran with it, and they did not think, Where did this idea come from? Oh, this idea isn't mine, or isn't fully mine. Needs to be you know, the credit needs to be shared or given to somebody else.

They're just not proactive about attribution. They're, you know, living in the moment. They're running with it. It is benign.

Now it doesn't mean it doesn't do damage to you. It certainly does potentially do damage to you, but it is accidental on their part. Now let's move on to the second type, opportunistic credit theft. Okay, this is where somebody saw an opening and they took it.

It was not necessarily a pattern, but also not an accident. So the first one was bit more of an accident. This one, they're paying more attention to what lands well in the room, and they're positioning themselves accordingly. So it's not just that one idea, but they're going to take that idea and they're going to run with it.

So this is where it gets a little bit more opportunistic. Now, I also think there might be a bit of benignness to this in that they didn't necessarily mean to steal your idea. They weren't like, going like, I have no ideas of my own, so let me look around and see what I can steal from others. I don't think it is that malicious, but I think it is a bit more opportunistic.

So here is where you might see a pattern of somebody doing this on the regular and perhaps doing it to you, because maybe you have great ideas, and their work is adjacent to yours, or they are on your intact team, or on your project team, and it becomes easy to take your idea, especially if you are not standing up to that other person, to claim what is rightfully yours, or to claim credit for what is rightfully yours. And so then it becomes more opportunistic. You know, it's a bit like taking candy from a baby if the baby's not protesting that, you know, older sibling is going to keep taking the candy from the baby. So if this is happening on the regular by the same person on your team or on your project team, this could be then opportunistic credit theft.

They saw an opportunity, they took it, and especially if they didn't get any pushback, they're going to keep taking it well, or keep taking it well, it's there for the taking. And again, they're going to position themselves accordingly, because when they see that room light up after they share that idea. Again, if they regularly see that, that's a bit of a dopamine hit for them, they're going like, Hey, I'm getting some attention here. I'm getting the positive vibes.

And so they're going to keep doing it all right. Now the third type, this is habitual credit theft, and this is a pattern, and it's intentional, and that's where the difference lies. So with opportunistic there might have been a pattern developing, but in habitual credit theft, this is very intentional. They know exactly what they're doing, and this requires a different response from you than those first two.

And I think you know, when it is more on that malicious intent because that person, it feels more undermining. And I think if you just like, let the vibe land with you for a moment, these first two that I talked about, the accidental credit theft and the opportunistic credit theft. In both cases, the person's intent wasn't malicious. The intent was was, you know, assume, you could just assume positive intent in both of those cases, even though it's like annoying and irritating and so forth.

But in this third one, there is malicious intent. This is a pattern. It's intentional. They know exactly what they're doing, and they're trying to steal your ideas.

Okay, why does this matter? Well, your response to an accidental situation like those first two is going to be different because the habitual one is going to create more damage to your career and needs to be addressed differently in conversation, so that it doesn't take the original problem and make it even bigger. So I want you to calibrate your response to the type of credit theft that it is. Now let's get into what to do about each of these.

I want to give you a framework that you can follow to address each of these. So technique number one, I call this the paper trail. So this is where you may need to get your ideas and your contributions into writing more often now that could be in Slack channels, that could be in teams, chats, that could be in email documents or even briefings or written reports, and getting that writing in, you know, getting your ideas codified in that writing, and then getting that into a distribution channel before the meeting happens, before there's time to discuss it. So if you know that this idea is or that this topic is going to be on the agenda, and you have already been working on it, then it is totally fine in advance of a meeting, even if nobody reads what you send to send.

Here's the pre work I've been doing on this or I see on, you know, tomorrow's agenda for the meeting that we're going to be discussing x. Well, I've already been working on x, and here are my notes so far. And put those notes out there. Don't wait till in the meeting to take credit for it, or at least to get a date and time stamp on your work.

This is a bit of a cya move, but when you say, Hey, here's my analysis ahead of tomorrow's discussion, a discussion attaching the proposal that I put together, or my notes that I put together for the team, this creates that timestamp record that makes it visible to multiple people and makes it harder to steal or to claim attribution for something by on the part of somebody else, because it's already been documented. Okay? And it's also more likely that somebody will stand up for you and be like, Oh, isn't that the thing that Janel distributed yesterday, if somebody is taking credit for your ideas in the moment. Okay, so number one, very cya move, but also gets you out there with your own intellectual property, date and time stamped the paper trail.

Move, all right. Technique. Number two is the in the moment, reclaim. Okay, so when does this happen?

In a meeting, on a call in real time, you are going to reclaim credit without attacking. You are going to be you are going to exhibit the utmost professionalism, and you're going to use additive language, not corrective language. Okay, so instead of saying something like, well, actually, that was my idea, or actually, I've already been working on that, instead of something like that, because that is corrective, and that's going to put somebody on the defensive immediately, even whether they were being malicious or accidental, but it's going to put them on the defense. So instead, you're going to say something like, Hey, I'm glad that landed.

That came out of the research that I did last week on such and such topic, and we were just discussing it yesterday in this other meeting. Okay, so you are acknowledging that this is a well accepted idea. You're acknowledging that you know that, that you're part of it. It might also sound something like this, yes, and to what Brian just shared, which actually stemmed from my work on the Acme project.

And then you continue, so you're agreeing. You're noting what the other person said, and I'd call him by name, what like, what Brian just Yes, and like what Brian just said, which came out of my work that I have been doing on the Acme project. Okay, so you're acknowledging that person. You're acknowledging that the work started and was initiated with something that you worked on.

You're not accusing them, you're just inserting yourself into the record. Okay, so those two work great if it's accidental, even if it's accidental and kind of has become a bit of a pattern, you certainly must be doing those two things to help correct. Okay, so that first one was the paper trail, and the second one is in the moment reclaim. Okay, so in the moment reclaim.

Now. The third one is when you have to have a direct conversation. And if you've listened to any of the work that I've done on having difficult conversations, you know how important it is to address something directly and to address it calm and with the person who is involved, not around you're not skirting the issue, but you're going to go straight to the person who's stealing your ideas, who has that malicious, perhaps malicious intent. Okay, now this is the one that most people will avoid because they're afraid how it's going to land.

So again, I want you to follow patterns and frameworks that I've shared on difficult conversations in the past, so you may be familiar with those already, but I'm going to give you the shortcut version in this particular case, because I want to make sure you know exactly what to say. So you're going to use neutral, specific, non accusatory opening to the conversation. Hey, I want to talk to you about something that came up in yesterday's meeting. Okay, just like, neutral, I go, Oh, okay.

And then you're gonna say when, insert specific thing that happened when we were discussing the Acme project and you presented the go to market strategy. Okay, like, boom. That's what they did. Then you say my part of that didn't get attributed, or my contribution to that wasn't acknowledged, and I wanted to flag it so that we can figure out how to handle this kind of thing going forward.

I'm sure you'd want to address the situation if it were reversed. Okay, so let me go through that last part again. Let's bring let's break it down again. Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something that came up in yesterday's meeting when the go to market strategy for the Acme project came up.

Okay, so whatever it was, I'm calling it the go to market strategy for the Acme project, my contribution didn't get attributed. Okay, so you're stating exactly what happened, and then you're stating that you want to take some action on it, and you're flagging it for the future. I want to flag it so we can figure out how to handle it going forward, or how to handle this sort of thing going forward, especially if it's a pattern. And then this next piece is priceless, I'm sure you'd want to address it if the situation were reversed.

Okay, I'm sure you'd want to address it if the situation were reversed. So what we're doing here is we're being specific. We're grounding this in facts, in things that were actually said, No accusations, no conjecture. You're being specific, calm, forward looking, and you're tagging it with reciprocity.

That is the part that says, I'm sure you'd want to address it if the situation were reversed. When you do that, it puts them in your shoes, so that they can feel the sting a little bit, because somebody who is habitually stealing your ideas does not want credit stolen from them, and they need to feel what it feels like, even with a light touch like this. Okay, so that is your third technique, and that is directly addressing the person who's stealing the ideas, and then the rest of the conversation can flow from there. And if you're not sure how that that conversation should go.

I've got lots of episodes and a whole book on difficult conversations, so we'll make sure to drop some of those in the show notes. This is episode 2692, 69 so show notes can be found at Janel Anderson, comm forward slash, 269, again, we'll link that up in the show notes. So if you need to involve your manager. So if you've tried the three things that we've talked about so far, the three moves were the paper trail, the in the moment, reclaim and the direct conversation with somebody, and you need to involve your manager.

It's because you've tried all these other path, these other attempts, and the pattern has continued. Now it's time to loop in your manager, but I want you to think about it as a conversation that's documenting what's happening, not a complaint against your co worker. So I want to make sure of the work that you that I'm doing. I want to make sure that you know about the work that I'm doing on the go to market strategy for the Acme account, I've been the primary driver on X, Y and Z, and I want to make sure that that visibility is there when you're thinking about the team, or when you're thinking about this project or when you're thinking about this client, whatever it is.

So this is positioning you as someone who is managing their own career, not someone who is running to their boss to complain. Now it's okay to add on to that. Yesterday in the meeting, when Brian presented the go to market strategy for the Acme account, he didn't mention the work that I've been doing on that, and I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it. Okay, it's neutral.

You're not complaining. You're not throwing Brian under the proverbial bus, anything like that. You're just saying like in this conversation, my contribution wasn't mentioned, so I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it. Again, this conforms to my advice on managing up, which is, you bring your boss a problem and a solution, and in this case, the solution is just like I just wanted you to be aware of it.

If you're not sure of the solution, you bring your boss the problem and multiple solutions, and you say that one of these three ideas or something that we come up with together. Now, if this does become an issue that goes on consistently, you may then go to your boss asking for advice and saying, Brian is consistently taking my ideas. Here are the things that I've attempted, here's the ways I've tried to solve it. I'm looking for some additional solutions in my toolbox.

Can you help? Okay, that's different than complaining about Brian taking your ideas. So just wanted to make sure we have that clear. Now, let's just close this out with a recap of these actionable takeaways.

Number one, the paper trail move this is putting your contributions in writing before the meeting. And number two, the in the moment reclaim using additive language to reinsert yourself into the record without accusing anybody of anything. Number three, when this is feels malicious, then you need to address the patterns privately, specifically and calmly and with that sense of reciprocity. If the situation were reversed, I know you'd want to address it.

And then number four, the visibility strategy. This is making sure that your manager knows what you're working on proactively, and when there is a situation that is pervasive, that you eventually could go to them and ask for some advice. So now this week, I want you to identify one place where your work is not getting the credit that it deserves, and I want you to pick one of these four moves to try start with the easiest one, the paper trail, or maybe it's an in the moment reclaim if you didn't get ahead of it with the paper trail because you didn't know you needed to now you don't have to confront anyone. You just have to start making your contributions visible before someone else does it for you and doesn't give you credit for it.

Okay? So that is your call to action for this week. Start with the easiest one and chime in on your own behalf so that your work is not going unacknowledged. Now, if this episode reminded you of somebody else who maybe gives the complaint to you, like, hey, someone's stealing my ideas at work, then here is a second call to action for you.

I want you to forward this episode to them. This is episode 269, of the working conversations podcast. You can find it on YouTube. You can find it on Apple podcasts and Spotify and Amazon podcasts, and all the places that you listen to Amazon music, I think it is but all the places that you listen to podcasts, so share it with a friend who might be experiencing this same thing again.

The show notes and resources for this episode are at Janel anderson.com forward slash 269 episode 269 go out there. Take some credit for your work, and I will see you back here next week for the next episode of Working conversations. Be well, my friends you.

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