my employee takes credit for the whole team’s work

by Alison Green on October 22, 2024

A reader writes:

I’m a fairly experienced manager, but I’ve only been managing my current team for a few months.

I’ve been in a couple meetings with one of my team members that I’ve asked her to take the lead on, and she reports out at every meeting. Twice now, as she’s reporting I’ve heard her change her sentence from “we’re doing…” to “I’m doing…” But she’s not! The whole team is pitching in ideas and support, and sometimes they or I am actually doing the things she’s talking about. It seems like a really low-stakes thing, but we’ve had to have a couple of other conversations about working on a team, like making sure she’s not getting out ahead of my direction and being aware of how she talks about workload around her teammates. It’s been a lot, so I also don’t want to be focus unnecessarily on something that could really be minor. But she’s taking credit for other people’s work, and that’s not fair to them, and I don’t know if it makes her look particularly good, either. Should I bring it up or let it slide?

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

  • Can I ask my colleagues not to mime shooting themselves?
  • Do we have to offer the job to the only applicant?
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{ 48 comments }

{ 48 comments… read them below }

  1. polly*

    Similar to #1…The nature of my job is quite collaborative. When something went wrong at work, I had a colleague who would say “you guys [insert thing that went wrong].” Drove me nuts. This individual was certainly also responsible for things going not as expected, but the choice of pronouns felt accusatory.

    I’ve always felt working was a being part of a team; winning together and losing together.

    1. Venus*

      Wording has such an impact. I worked for someone new and at first they would say “Why didn’t you do it this way?” and then wouldn’t wait for my explanation of why it wasn’t possible in our context or that it had been tried and failed. After a while I finally explained the pattern, and said that it would go much better if he just asked if I had tried it. When I told him his wording he looked surprised and felt badly, because he agreed that it sounded bad. Then, a couple weeks later, he said “Why didn’t you do it this way?” and I responded “I think what you meant to say is ‘Have you tried it this way?'” and he stopped, repeated my words, and after that everything was much better! It’s human nature to feel criticized when people say something that could be critical, and LW1 needs to address this.

    2. Media Monkey*

      i normally call it the Corporate We. We (the company) when it’s external or We (the team) when it’s internal. I have talked to more junior people about it being partly a way to borrow the authority of the company (since we work with clients who are paying for a team of experts) and partly a way to cover your own backside (since if something when wrong, you wouldn’t want to be the one in the firing line for someone else’s mistake). that tends to make people realise that they don’t want to take full responsibility for everyone else’s work which comes with taking all the credit for it!

  2. Hendry*

    I appreciate the second question and answer. I could easily see myself saying something like “Ugh, if boss slacks me again I’m going to shoot myself” or something similar, without really thinking how that might come across.

    1. Jezebella*

      I have a colleague who does this and a history of similar events in my family. She’s been doing it for so long I feel weird about asking her to stop, but I flinch every. single. time.

      1. So I says to Mabel I says*

        You know, I really think it would reasonable to say “hey, Jane, I have never mentioned this before but can I share something with you? The truth is, it really bothers me when you make references to suicide in a jokey way.” (Adding “for personal reasons/because of personal experiences with this subject” if you felt comfortable).

        Yes, Jane might be mortified that she’s been causing distress for such a long time, but also, unless she’s a pretty unpleasant person, she would surely want to know.

  3. DisneyChannelThis*

    Related to #3, I’ve seen it so many times where there’s like a disconnect in the hiring teams thought process when the whole pool of applicants is crappy. The thought process should be how do we attract better candidates, are we describing the job right, is the salary in range, are the benefits good, are we advertising the job in the right spaces.

    But instead the hiring team seems to think only crappy applicants exist, better snatch one of them up before they too are gone oh no! and hires with urgency someone who only lasts a few months if that. Revolving door of crap.

    1. Kevin Sours*

      I suspect that HR may be under pressure from higher up the chain to fill positions. You put enough pressure on people to get something done without any clear guidance to doing it it’s going to get done one way or another.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        This, possibly complicated by higher-up’s lack of understanding of the limits of the situation. “Very rural” is often a tough sell if applicants have qualms about the distance, the local culture, or job and school opportunities for a partner and kids. And maybe they’re offering a “very rural” salary, as well, which might be adequate for the area but may not look great on paper.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          Not to mention that it can be 70 miles over a mountain pass to any decent health care, which can happen even in a blue state.

  4. hello*

    LW2, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask people not to pretend they’re shooting themselves in the head. You can just say that it’s not appropriate for the workplace in a matter-of-fact kind of way and then move on.

  5. Yes And*

    In #1, I find the employee audibly changing her sentence from “we’re doing” to “I’m doing” so strange. I wonder if she’s consciously working on being assertive and taking credit in the workplace (not a bad thing in and of itself), and doing it wrong?

    2. amla*

      Yep, I’d bet this, too. Especially if she might be interviewing for other roles, since common advice is to make sure you’re using ‘I’ and not ‘we’ when describing experiences in interviews.

    3. Marshmallow*

      We have one at my workplace that does this routinely (and has for years) also… it’s super annoying but not one manager she’s ever had will do anything about it so people mostly just roll their eyes about it. I don’t know who taught her to do that, but now it seems so ingrained I think it will be hard to fix, and she also seems like sometimes she believes how she’s saying it even though it’s not true. Someone in authority over her should have brought it up years ago. Now she has a rep and it’s not a great one (although there seems to be very little consequence for it other than maybe not climbing the ladder at any sort of normal rate).

  6. Orora*

    LW #3 Your HR is kinda bananapants. Sure, there’s the possibility that someone could sue you for not hiring them because of their protected class status, but anyone could do that anyway. In this instance you have very good reason for not hiring this person. All HR had to do was document why.

    1. Arrietty*

      Yeah, you’re not just allowed to discriminate against people for being bad at their jobs, that’s what you’re *supposed* to do at the interview stage! That’s the whole point!

  7. Meep*

    Not defending her, but I have a boss who hates the word “we” and much prefers “I”. Maybe she was trained on it in the wrong direction? (For the record, when presenting, I use the person who did the name’s work to get around it.)

    1. Pizza Rat*

      In a presentation, I would consider that a good thing and there’s ways to do both if you wanted. “Thanks to Juan Espinoza accomplishing X, the team was able to complete Y.”

    2. Allonge*

      There are many situations where ‘we’ is not a good thing to use. It can be a way to deny responsibility, e.g. fudge lines on who made which decision.

      If a manager says ‘we’ will do this, it’s also often not clear yet who exactly needs to act.

      There is no easy right or wrong here, the situation determines if I, you, we needs to be used.

  8. SunnyShine*

    LW 1: Is she new to the business field/office? I had to work on this when I first graduated college (as do a lot of new grads) because when I presented, I was used to saying “I”.

    Certainly keep coaching her on on it. Since she is making changes, keep it positive. “I know you aren’t intending to take credit for people’s work, but when you said ‘I’ instead of ‘we’, it comes across that way for others. Will you give credit where it’s due?”

      1. SunnyShine*

        It’s probably not that personal as it sounds like someone is figuring out workplace norms. Nothing strange.

    2. Literally a seashell*

      I’ve found the opposite… I’m a postdoc and I had to train myself to say “we did this research” and “our findings show” despite the fact I was the only one working on the project and my supervisor barely looked at it.

      1. amoeba*

        Haha, yeah, in science, you definitely get that drilled into you. At least in writing – also, all the papers are written that way (because at least in my field, a paper basically never has only a single author), so actually writing “I did” just sounds extremely wrong for me! It was actually a bit of a struggle when writing my PhD thesis, because that one very obviously does have a single author – myself – so who were those ominous “we” people I kept wanting to refer to?

        1. Nina*

          I’m in a science where using ‘we’ in a paper is basically unthinkable.

          ‘We mixed two chemicals and observed an explosion’? Absolutely not. ‘Two chemicals were mixed and an explosion was observed’. Yes, even at conferences.

    3. Blue Pen*

      I don’t think the issue is so much her using “I” as it is she not giving credit to anyone on her team for their contributions. Although I still prefer the “we” delivery, I can see someone saying “I worked on W, while Sally did X, Jane accomplished Y, and Mary achieved Z.” If you balance “I” while recognizing everyone else, I think that’s OK.

  9. Ann O'Nemity*

    LW #1 Taking credit for someone else’s work is an integrity problem and a red flag. I wonder if the employee is deceptive in other ways.

    1. Crencestre*

      Good point – the LW should watch out for that!

      And that employee should remember an old saying: The best way to get credit for doing something is to give it away!

    2. Peanut Hamper*

      It’s happened twice, so I am inclined to give this person the benefit of the doubt. It’s not like she’s scratching someone’s name off and writing hers in instead.

      As some other people have pointed out, it could just be an employee trying to figure out how to be assertive in the workplace. Based on the other issues OP mentioned, I think this is someone who is trying to figure out workplace norms at this particular workplace more than anything else.

      A good manager would assume good but misplaced intentions on the part of the employee before jumping to the conclusion that they are faking expense reports. Good managers ask questions before assuming it’s an integrity problem (or any other sort of problem) and throwing out the red card.

  10. A Simple Narwhal*

    Re #3 I know it’s hard to have a job open for a long time, but sometimes having a role missing on a team causes less problems than having it filled with the wrong person. I’m sure some jobs can work with a less than stellar applicant, like it’s better to have someone who can only make 50 widgets a day when you really want someone who can make 100 a day, but it’s better than the 0 widgets a day you currently have.

    But a lot of jobs done poorly mean that they’re worse off than not being done at all. They make more work for others struggling to fix their mistakes, not to mention the time and energy it takes to train a new person/bring them on your team. And the fact that this person was fired multiple times over something that is apparently a major part of the role?? Yikes on bikes.

    My guess is that the HR person was getting pressured/incentivized to have the role filled, and since they weren’t going to be working directly with them didn’t care if the person was going to be successful or the headaches it would cause others. Or I suppose incompetence is always the simpler solution – we did have a LW write in about a friend in HR who thought it would be illegal to fire someone for being horrifically racist on their first day and it turned out they were just really badly trained on how to HR.

    2. Artemesia*

      HR is often the weak stick in an organization; I have so often heard or read about HR insisting on ridiculous stuff like this — it is ‘illegal to give a bad recommendation’; ‘it is illegal to not hire the only applicant’; it is illegal to talk to references not listed by the applicant etc etc.

  11. Pizza Rat*

    If people aren’t applying, it’s time to take a hard look at the job description, the market, and the salary being offered.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      This. “very rural” jumped out at me. People with partners and/or kids might worry about opportunities for the rest of their families, or the general quality and logistics of life in a remote area.

      1. Artemesia*

        You are probably better off in a rural area without an applicant pool to plan on hiring a promising person and then training them. Maybe there are women who are well educated and smart who followed their husband’s to the area for example. they might not have the skills you need, but they might be able to acquire them. (obviously depends on how complicated the skills involved are — you don’t train a pediatrician on the job, but lots of rolls can be developed.

        1. AcademiaNut*

          I have relatives living in small towns, and it’s common for them to be doing jobs that they wouldn’t be considered to have the qualifications for in a larger city. The hard one is when it’s a trained and certified speciality, like radiologist, that absolutely cannot be trained up locally, but has to be filled.

          And in a really rural location, lots of money can help with the applicant pool, but you can’t buy career opportunities for a partner, a compatible dating pool, a local religious/cultural/racial community, specialized medical and educational services, etc.

  12. Hendry*

    It sounds like you asked her to take the lead on these projects, so it could just be she’s taking that too literally. It seems unlikely that she’s actually saying she did all the work, especially if it’s clearly a team effort.

    Without knowing the details it sounds less like she’s trying to take credit for others’ work and more like she used the wrong pronoun.

    1. mm*

      I agree. I wonder who is she making these reports to and in what capacity. Is she representing the team to the client or vendors?

  13. Alexis Rose*

    LW 1: I used to be like your employee and would describe projects I was working on with me-centric language.

    My manager kindly pointed it out to me and asked me if I didn’t feel valued. I was horrified that that was how it was coming across. In reality, I had changed jobs and had gone from working on projects that were solely mine from start to finish to working on things that were more collaborative with multiple contributors.

    I think there was also some “black and white thinking” going on. When I was speaking about putting the report together or doing the analysis, those were tasks that I had actually done personally so I spoke about them that way but was oblivious to the fact that it sounded like I was taking credit for the whole thing and deliberately sidelining the other collaborators.

    There was no intention on my part to take all the credit or exclude the others, I was just so stuck in this speech pattern that I needed someone to point it out so that I could start to make a conscious effort to change. I’ve gotten this under control now, but it took some dedicated effort to get there!

  14. Serious Silly Putty*

    My general policy:
    If X did something good: “X did a Good Thing”
    If I did something good: “We did a good thing.”
    If X did something bad: “We screwed up “
    If I did something bad: “I screwed up.”
    Praise publicly, celebrate publicly, correct privately.

  15. Saturday*

    Seems like the issue in letter #1 has more to do with failing to acknowledge others’ work than taking credit for it. Still not good though.

  17. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    You NEVER have to hire someone, even if they are the only applicant, as long as you are not hiring them for legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons. Sounds like you had very valid, non-discriminatory reasons for not hiring this person, and have been proven right in the long run.

    I am a senior level HR Director, and I can tell you there is a LOT of bad Human Resources out there. People will get told something is true (when it’s not) at one company, and then they carry this bad information forward to their next job. I know many HR Practitioners wish this would stop, but we are jousting with windmills.

  18. Coyote River*

    For LW2, I might recommend you go with “this is uncomfortable for me” rather than “this may be uncomfortable for some people”. I feel like people are more likely to be empathetic if they can see it’s having a real rather than hypothetical impact.

  19. WS*

    For LW2, I joined a workplace where miming shooting yourself and/or saying “Kill me!” on busy days was very common. I asked people not to do it because it was upsetting (without giving further details) and they stopped! There were some slip-ups with apologies but it really turned out to just be habit and it’s no longer a problem.

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