Your boss has a certain amount of power over you as you do over your subordinates, but it's supposed to be different with your peers. You're supposed to be on the same level. You're supposed to pull together as a team and help each other. In the real world, some colleagues just pretend to do this.
These coworkers are so concerned with getting ahead and looking good, they do not want to admit that some of their acts can make you look bad. Sometimes they misinterpret your actions, believing that you're looking down at them, and move to get back at you. Others, knowingly and unknowingly, use your brainpower to generate their copycat proposals.
For the time being, you're stuck with the daily headache of dealing with deceitful colleagues. Your concern is keeping their underhanded behavior from interfering with your career.
Milkers
Milkers pick ideas from your brain, stealing credit for and profiting from them.
Milkers are phony office friends who pretend to care about you, but only care about the information they can extract from you. Instead of suggesting that you team up and brainstorm some idea or activity to which you both contribute and claim credit, they probe your mind with delicately worded questions. Then they take your brainchild and adopt it or adapt it as their own.
You thought once you left the street and entered the office you were safe from thieves? Just as pickpockets steal your wallet, Milkers steal your ideas. Because these con artists do not use guns, you did not even know you were being robbed.
I'm thinking that this is not just my imagination. Chris pumped me for information about the best way to organize the program so that we'd have the cooperation of all the agencies under one roof. Now I find my ideas in this memo from my boss, lauding Chris for coming up with the plan that can help the department achieve better coordination. I can not decide whether to quietly knock out Chris' lights or loudly expose him for the thief that he is. How can I prove that the ideas were really mine and not Chris's?
Meanwhile, Chris is thinking that was a great memo that his boss sent out praising him for his coordinating ideas. He'll add this to his list when it's time to hit the boss for a raise.
I will not gain anything from a confrontation. The Milker has already convinced himself that your ideas came to him as divine inspiration. I will learn from my mistake. My objective now is to separate my concepts into those I want to present as my own proposals and those that need the collective wisdom of a group to be properly developed. Then direct the flow of my ideas.
oPlug the leak. Once you've fingered the folks who want to drain your brain, be polite but tight-lipped. Just stop supplying the information.
oWelcome discussion when concepts affect other units. You do not want to work in a vacuum, not when you need the cooperation of your coworkers. Do not limit yourself to a one-brainpicker audience. Enlarge the group. Call over other colleagues or bring up these matters at lunch or at staff meetings.
Okay, so the Milker duped you. Be glad this happened to you now. You'll be wiser in the future when you come up with a really brilliant gem. Then you'll know how to nourish, protect and present your prize-winning idea.
Back-Stabbers
Back-Stabbers are nice to your face, but very critical of you behind your back.
These colleagues stab you in absentia. They are bad-mouthers, telling lies or being critical about you when you're not there. When you're with them, they act like they're your friends. But out of sight, the phonies betray your trust, revealing some disclosure you confided about your personal life or opposing some action you've taken.
They keep trying to outwit you or get some measure of control over you. Maybe they misinterpreted your action. Maybe you did something that angered them, but you can not imagine what it was. You're scratching your head while you're pulling the blade out of your back.
You're thinking that you find it hard to accept that Susan would say anything bad about you behind your back. But three people heard the same thing, so it must have really happened. You guess in an office you can not have any really close friends because the competition is too keen. From now on you'll keep details about your private life to yourself. But how do you stop Susan from bad-mouthing you again? What made her do it in the first place?
Meanwhile, Susan is thinking that Kristi has been bragging so much about the progress her staff had made. She's making the rest of us look like a bunch of loafers. I'm really sick and tired of everyone thinking she's perfect and using her work as the standard we should all follow.
Your objective is to stop the back-stabbing. If criticism made about your work is legitimate, that has to be aired and resolved.
oConfront Back-Stabbers. Simply report what you heard. Do not start swinging. Ask them to specifically spell out whatever accusations they allegedly made. Speak up firmly, without showing any anger or voicing any blame.
oIf the mistake was yours, apologize immediately . Sometimes you become a victim of Back-Stabbers if they perceive you were insensitive to their feelings. If, for example, they believe that you meant to put them down by elevating yourself, you could have made them feel insecure and want to strike back at you.
oProvide a graceful way out. If Back -Stabbers accuse you unjustly and then deny having made the reported statements, let them off the hook. Once they know that you know they've attacked your reputation and you will not sit still for such immature behavior, Back-Stabbers will back off. But if you create an emotional scene, a tip-off that they got a rise out of you, they may keep it up.
If you allow the back-stabbing to persist, it can eventually harm your reputation. Such actions are childish and it takes your calm, no-nonsense demeanor to make the culprits behave as adults.
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