I’m 6 months into a role where I’m an expert in charge of a team of slightly junior experts.
My colleague used to be a junior expert under another ‘head of’ who had the role before me, but before I was given the job my colleague took a sideways step into a facilitation role which, although requires him to have some knowledge of my area, no longer requires him to get involved in the day to day.
Anyway, since I started, this colleague has struggled to maintain distance from the specialism and is dictating to me how to do said specialism on a daily basis.
It all came to a head over the last 2 days. He asked me to proof read an email and give feedback before it went to a client. I read it, and asked him to make a minor change because he was promising something in the email I’m not prepared to deliver. It was a minor thing: basically he promised to report to them daily which would be untenable from a commercial perspective and would put pressure on my team for no additional benefit. I asked him to change this to weekly reports and adhoc check ins with the client, he argued back and I clarified that as it’s my team delivering this, it will be weekly not daily.
He sent the email promising daily reporting.
I feel patronised, undermined and really bloody cross.
His role is to facilitate, not to dictate to me how to do my job and I’m now going to have to phrase this in a way that’s diplomatic and I’m struggling.
WIBU to basically tell him to back the fuck off and let me do my job? If so, how on earth do I phrase this??