How to deal with kiss arse colleague

Knee pads and breath freshener for his secret Santa gift at Christmas.

From past (and bitter) experience. He will come across as lovely as he wants to know what you are up to. He bigs himself up as he 100% wants his managers job. He will almost certainly try to take credit for your successes and will throw you under the bus for his failures if he can.

Keep at arms length. If your manager is any good he will see through this (as arse licking is not uncommon). Use your 121 to illustrate your achievements. Your manager will also hear about you all from others when you are not there and that usually what matters.

Sadly I've learned over the years that success at work depends not so much on what you do as what you TELL people you do, particularly senior management who often appear to be either too naive, uninformed, inexperienced, gullible, busy, or downright lazy to check what's really going on.

We have someone where I work who dazzles senior management in this way even though they are actually a lying, manipulative, exaggerating, plagiarising fraud, sycophantic in the extreme to senior management and gaslighting and bullying to others they deem unimportant (like their entire team of direct reports who have many years of experience in the sector between them while this individual has less than a year and refuses to take offers of help. It's like being managed by an AI bulldozer gone wrong). I've learned a very useful expression in this thread though - "impression management".

Let him be loud. He’s probably mediocre at best and the loud look at me bravado is to big up his minor accomplishments and embellish his importance.

Apologies, I wasn't getting that from your first post

Mine is like that too - to me it screams that she is paranoid and insecure - seems to always be wondering what people’s opinion of her is and has to be able to control conversations. Will interrupt me speaking to clients with “helpful” inputs that are irrelevant or that have already been covered. Always wanting to insert herself in additional projects / offer help when none is needed or wanted. Doesn’t like others having things going on she doesn’t know about. I suspect most people find it a bit much but as it’s delivered in a sickly sweet little girl voice, she gets away with the “oh she’s such a nice person” narrative. Some people will take it at face value but to me there is an undertone to it, that stems from deep seated jealousy/insecurity and fear of not being thought of as “the best / the nicest”.

I’m considering my options. If I get heat for refusing to backdate records because she has ratted me out to the layer above our direct line manager, I will escalate it as I’m not sure the very top of the organisation will be aware/would have sanctioned this action. It’s a bit of arse covering by the middle layer but it makes me uneasy, even though it is relatively innocuous.

But she’s just stuck her hand up for yet another extra bit of work (that I would have been happy to do and would have introduced me to some new potential clients) before I had even read the email where we were asked to do it. This I am going to bring up with our shared line manager as I’m not going to make a fuss or insist I take the work on, but I will say to him that I feel her putting her hand up for every single thing is detrimental to me and the others who do our role in terms of our own professional development.

I wonder does anyone else on here’s “keen bean” colleagues do the same as mine - when a question is asked of us as a group, even if she doesn’t know the answer, she will reply all and say that. She did it to a whole organisation message from the bloody CEO recently and I did have a laugh as it made her look a right twat, particularly as not one single other person did “reply all” and I know several who just replied directly to the CEO with the info requested.

I worked with someone like this recently. Always with the false compliments during meetings with loads of colleagues. Always bigging herself up, talking about her 17 years experience in the industry. Always bragging about her big new luxury home and her 2 luxury cars.

totally not my type of person. I am a quiet achiever.

anyway, she recently got fired. I didn’t dare ask for details, I was just told “challenging behaviour”
or something along those lines.

the moral of the story is that eventually hopefully people see through that, despite all the “managing upwards”.

If you ask for a 121 with your line manager, go in with a list of your achievements to date. Talk about the impact on the firm. Speak about the links you have made and how you see them developing. Identify one or two areas you are keen to develop. Ask if there are courses that would be useful. Then ask your line manager for their input. Make sure the meeting is confidential. Do not mention Billy Big Balls at all.
I'm sure you already do this. I don't want to patronise

depends.

Volunteering for everything, getting seen and getting a lot done, of course that deserve a promotion! Why would you select someone who does less and is less invested and less involved, and gets less results?

Someone like Dwight in the first episodes of the Office? Less so.

He's trying to do well at work, what's wrong with that?
He sounds quite insecure frankly, and if he's over-doing it, it will backfire on him.

don't need to sit and tell my manager about how much everyone respects me. I just think it's a bit pathetic. It is! People will notice.

It's one thing to big up your success. It's work, you need to advocate for yourself.
It's another to appear needy and kiss-arse.

It is pathetic but he'll be promoted over you in five seconds flat.

As people have been saying, he knows how to play the game.

If you don't want to play that game, you'll never win.

I would agree that, if he’s not as good as he likes to make out, he will eventually be unmasked.
I also agree with @DrinkFeckArseBrick that a good team needs different kinds of people.
Another thing is that some of the strongest people say the least!

Eek @Dominicains I hope your company have some sort of whistleblowing procedure, that all sounds awful

Will people think he is better? Or will they think he is insincere, kissing arse, and so busy telling everyone how good he is that he probably isn't actually that good?

Wven if everyone thinks he is great, some people are better at self promotion but others including you have other skills - i think managers also like people who 'just get on with it',, and everyone likes people who don't fill up endless meetings with unnecessary chat (as long as they still speak up when relevant).

Try not to compare and remember that (genuinely) successful teams have a good balance of different types of people who bring different skills. The one who tells everyone how great they are, aren't necessarily 'best'. Spending time comparing yourself and looking at what a colleague does (unless you're hoping to learn from them and take some pointers about what they're doing well) is a waste of everyone's time, including yours

This man is clearly moonlighting in your company, when not working with me! My nemesis is a woman who works part time and sound very much like your colleague! My problem is, our manager is based abroad and admits she doesn't know exactly what we do, we have no KPI's, so no measure of productivity!

I agree with asking for a 1-2-1 about your own strengths weaknesses and not mentioning your colleague. He is just the sort to throw you under a bus to suit himself.

It sounds like he's better than you socially and your jealous of that?

Why would he do anything but put himself in the best possible light in a work scenario?

All you can do is improve yourself, or atleast get over your feelings toward him.

If you are recognising it as sucking up, so will everyone else. Don't give it any thought, you keep doing things your way. If you want to highlight your contribution to your manager do it during your own one to one or by email.

With regards to how he is behaving, just let him.

I work with a woman who is totally desperate for head pats and cookies from our managers (to the extent she pastes messages of gratitude from clients into emails and crows in the group chat about receiving literal fucking cupcakes). She is the biggest kiss arse I have ever met, puts her hand up for everything and says yes to any request for volunteers. I said to her recently to stop trying to make the rest of us look like we are not team players by taking every opportunity. Which freaked her out as I think she thinks everyone loves her and nobody has ever criticised her for being too keen before (saccharine sweet goody two shoes teachers pet type personality). The type who is terrified of getting in trouble, unable to think critically and what I would call smooth-brained in that she accepts information at face value, gets very disturbed when I challenge decisions (I’m particularly uncomfortable with falsification of client records and am refusing to do so, she’s already complied with a management request to record safeguarding/risk management conversations with clients that didn’t take place in order to cover their arses - she has “told on me” for not doing the same as she fears getting in trouble with the bosses…) - I fear breaking the law more than I fear the distinctly average middle management of my organisation.

I’ve never met anybody quite as craven before and funnily enough I just asked a couple of friends (ex line managers of mine) if they have any advice how I can be less irritated by her as she’s not going to change. She even talks in a simpering voice - there’s something so inauthentic about her over the top “sweetness”. And people who seek head pats and smoke blown up their arses are always going to annoy me. She’s definitely in a competition with me (in her head) as to which of us is the “best” - the irony is our direct line manager would be hard pressed to give fewer fucks about us, he is the most hands off, trusting and laconic person I’ve ever worked for - but that just seems to make her try even harder to get him to like her and give her cookies… which in turn makes him even less likely to do so - he hates neediness…

Be on hour guard OP - colleagues like this are dangerous

I agree with this actually. Going on and on about himself will eventually get annoying, but in terms of the talking first to other people/teams, he's making sure people will remember him and building his network.

Don't compete with him, but you could always try to learn from him (just ignore the irritating bits!).