How to deal with kiss arse colleague

[kissarsecolleague]

I started at the same time as my colleague, a man.

He's really lovely and I actually feel bad about how I describe him in this post.

When we meet with any other teams or people, as we often do- he always has to talk first and last and always has to overly praise everyone for every meeting they've set up.

He's also constantly vying for our managers approval, even over dinner- all he does is big himself up. He just always seems to get there first.

I don't mind that much in a sense, I'm learning-getting used to how things are done and I want the results I bring to speak to themselves. I just worry about other's perception of me, because I'm not as loud and more of a ' learn and then show ' type of person. It doesn't mean I'm not a ' go getter ' and sometimes I do want to ' show off ' a bit to my manager too, but colleague is always there first.

I know it's my own insecurity, but I'm just worried people think I'm rubbish compared to him.

How to deal with this ? I don't want to act the same way he does and start competing for attention. I just do my thing. But I do worry about how I'm perceived, because I'm not as loud. Any advice ?

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”.

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.

He's really annoying guys. He is always looking at my screen at what I'm doing. Always looking at what I'm saying to people and who I'm talking to.

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”.

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

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.

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".

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.

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