Territorial manipulative peer

[goldenlady25]

Hi

Wonder if anyone has any advice, I've worked for years with all sorts of people but not come across this before

Basically moved to a new team a year ago. Mid level position responsible for more junior collegaues. Work is split 3 ways between myself and 2 peers

Anyway, one of the peers refused to share info, literally manipulates activities behind my back, speaks to my team directly without me knowing what's asked and is now taking my work and blocking things I've set up via more junior colleagues

I've told my boss but they reacted by taking work off me and giving more to her. Since same boss is on leave, 2 more land grabs have happened. It's making me very stressed. We all wfh and I can't work around her in the same way as I don't know the people as well as she does as new to the team

I've sent the condemns to a higher boss who is going to speak to her but imagine again it's going to look badly on me

Anyone had similar? I'm on the verge of leaving. Thanks in advance

Log the behaviour. Every time it happens, write down what happened and date it. It’s really easy for managers to dismiss incidents like that because they don’t know the full picture, whereas presenting them with a clearly evidenced pattern of behaviour is much harder to ignore

l'm on the verge of leaving
Do you think this is what she wants? Is yours a new role to the team?

Thanks for the advice

Yes will log it today starting from Jan

Yes she does want me to leave. I'm quite clever with parts of my background have been reviewing work like hers and that seems to have meant she immediately decided to make my life as difficult as possible. I also have technical skills she does not have but needs to develop.

In the meeting yesterday she even claimed work I had done, she had set up, but I argued it back. Takes real cheek to lie in front of a peers face to senior leadership.

I don't know how much more of this I can take

I had this from a colleague for years.
She withheld information, encroached on my role by going off and doing actions that were allocated to me in meetings, spoke to my team and higher management behind my back, blocked things and downright lied about certain things to try and make me look bad.
She was incapable of collaborative work, always used “I” instead of “we” and was adept at taking credit for others' work.
She also had favourites amongst her staff and bullied certain others to the point of breakdowns.
She would always speak disparagingly about my team and our work, and indulge in”banter” or thinly disguised put downs. I began to log all of these.
Finally, she went too far and got up some kind of belittling joke on me at a large meeting, when I walked out and made a complaint about abusive and unprofessional behaviour. Nothing much was done about it, but it was enough to stop her trying it on with me, although she continued her behaviour with colleagues and her staff.
I came to the conclusion that she was a malignant narcissist and in the absence of decisive action by the organisation, there was no other action open to me but to take on another job within the organisation where our interaction was at a minimum.
Nemesis finally descended, around 12 years later, when it affected the work and the service users, and she was got rid of, whereupon a lot more came out from staff who had felt too cowed to speak before.

Sorry that this tale of woe doesn't really carry a solution. I'm not sure there is one with a person of this type, other than avoid, do not interact and if you can, out them.

Thanks very much for that story
God how horrendous for you
Are you ok now?

I kind of am OK, although there is some residual hyper awareness about this sort of thing at work now.
I am a bit damaged by it, but not to a PTSD extent, which some are by this stuff.
I got a lot of info from anti bullying at work websites, including info that withholding of info, etc is bullying behaviour. It helped give me the concepts and vocabulary to identify and name it, which made her back off, knowing I would go public.
Framing it loudly in those terms also scared our HR department, so they did just enough to shut her down, but without disciplinary, which it should have been.
They only did that when it was so public and so blatant that they had to act, which illustrates that people like this escalate, if they aren't dealt with.

Thank you for asking, it is sweet of you. 💕
I wish you luck in your forthcoming battle.
I wish I'd acted sooner. 🙂