To be a keep raising this with my boss? Experiences of colleagues undermining you welcome!

[Norfoal]

Please cheer me up with stories of your annoying colleagues!

This is about dave.

At Christmas I was recruited for a management position of the same team I was already working in

The post has previously been filled by Dave, then there was a period where it was vacant the someone else for a short period (who relocated) and now me.

Dave used to be my manager, then took a sideways move out of the role where he was at management level in my team but wasn't my direct line manager.

Dave is generally a very lovely, kind and helpful person if a bit inefficient

However I'm beginning to feel that dave is undermining me. Im not sure if its because I've begun to highlight some things that aren't going well? As an example

Daves team works side by side with mine, and 4 weeks ago I sent a request list of things that his team needed to do. I've sent multiple follow up emails, including one checking if it was appropriate to try and check if the work had been done (it hadnt). Eventually a cc'ed in our mutual manager and he replied to our manager only. He has asked that we try and not send tasks via email and just chat, but this makes me nervous as its hard to then show things are getting lost on his end not mine

I'm stuck between the approach of wanting to be a squeaky wheel and highlight whats happening or trying to just get on with my work and ignore his side of things.

I've removed as much as possible of the middle ground between our roles. As I believe it possible that the jobs he volunteers to take off me, are being explained to others as a "helping out OP as she's struggling"

Eg. In a wider meeting, I asked for some information and he replied it was all uploaded and he was suprised i hadn't seen it. I asked him to "help me find it" (knowing it hadn't been) and he then aknowledged it wasn't there

Does that sort of behaviour make me a complete pain?

I work closely with people from other teams. We have a biweekly meeting where we run through everything we need to. We send mails afterwards if theres anything major.

Would that satisfy both your work styles?

All of that would annoy me greatly.

Do your teams work together in general...? I’d find it odd to have a ‘request list’ suddenly sent over without at least a meeting about it.
If it’s a list of knowns tasks and they haven’t responded to first email have a chat , and then send a follow up to confirm you’ve spoken and the promised actions.

Dave sort of has a point with the chat (although he’s not coming across very well). People get inundated with emails and some don’t read them so when you’re not getting a response you should always pick up the phone and have a chat. You can always send an email confirming that you spoke (‘Following our chat earlier today...etc etc)

If your two teams work closely together and there are lots of interdependencies then it actually would be good practice to have a meeting on a regular basis to discuss these and where things are up to on both sides.

I agree with him on this. It prevents multiple emails flying around and encourages a collaborative approach.

However it's also good practice to email out actions (for both sides) from these meetings and this covers your worry that speaking instead of emailing will allow issues to go untracked.

This should sort out most things - you'd only raise things to your boss if you and Dave can't sort something out between you in the meeting or if Dave continues to miss deadlines in a way that has a genuine impact on your team and it's outputs (I.e. more than just being annoying).