Told to let someone else lead on my work

[Dawevi]

I am a specialist in my workplace, and the only one in our team with this specialism, however I work in a particular field with trained professionals and I'm not trained in that field. This is relevant because I think I and other non-industry colleagues are generally seen as lesser.

For over a year now I've been doing a piece of work all about my specialism working alongside another member of the team who is also not industry trained.

Some months ago, our boss decided that an industry trained member of the senior leadership team should be involved and so she joined our discussions. However, she has only really turned up to things rather than got involved and I have continued to lead on all discussions and events. She hasn't asked to present anything or be involved in any meaningful way and has been happy to just turn up almost as an observer.

We have a final event coming up which is basically all about my specialism and will then feed into the industry specific work. Therefore, I am mostly leading the day and my colleagues are generally helping with practicalities.

I have just had an email from our boss saying that this colleague is the "industry lead" on this (which is news to me, I thought she was involved to keep an eye on things and ensure SLT input and knowledge) and that the agenda for our event needs to be changed so that she can run a number of the sessions on the day.

This is a problem because she doesn't have the knowledge and experience in my specialism that is needed to run these sessions and there is very little else that she could take over because the entire day is about what I do.

There was also an event recently that should have involved me and my specialism, but I was completely excluded from all planning and was not involved on the day except as an attendee so it feels there are some double standards at play.

I don't really have any option but to include this person and give her some sessions to run even though she will basically be presenting my work. But I am rather annoyed about it because I am expected to create the slides and use all of my work from the last year to create them and then hand them over to my colleague to present as though it's hers.

I think I'm venting more than looking for advice because I don't think there's anything I can actually do.

@Paganpentacle I had asked whether people put their name all over the slides, as this is what you had suggested (which is wildly unprofessional).

I'm glad someone else understands! In our team we have three of us who are uniquely qualified in different specialisms and we would always bring them in to speak on their specialist subject rather than have others speak on our behalf.

In our work we are a team, we collaborate - it's not your work - you are paid to create that work and you don't own it. The leadership would be involved for two reasons - firstly getting the messaging correct - this is always vital and not always completely understood by non decision makers as they aren't aware of the conversations taking place on a national level.
Secondly - to give the presentation weight it would have the sponsorship and involvement of a member of the leadership team. They would probably speak first and introduce you, but it's unlikely someone at your level would hold the floor all day.
But all industries are different - you'd clearly hate to work in ours because no one owns anything except the company. You get recognition for your contribution but ownership - no.

Sounds like you will both have different things to present? You’ll cover the aspects related to your specialism and the other person will cover the industry specific work ( which I think you said she is trained in and your not). Doesn’t sound like an issue, unless
I've misunderstood.

To give some context - I do this - present others work. I always make it very clear who the work was done back and credit the throughout. I'm pretty senior and everyone knows I didn't do the detail/specialist work.

The reason I do it is because the work is rarely a stand alone project and is always part of a larger strategy - but I am solely responsible for and it's my job to put the work in the larger context and how it impacts/links with other part of the business.

That's my job. That's SLT. Collating work of specialists and translating it to a bigger whole.

It's no shade on you - it's just... how work works the whole over.

And as many have said before.... it's not "your" work unless you are freelance (and even then).

It's the organisation's. That's the basic trade off of employment. They can do with it as they wish.

Good employers will give credit but come on think of all the things/processes/data/structures you use every day at work. All were someone's work at some point.

Are you going to thank the people that built the building, keep the laptops running, booked the meeting rooms? Of course not because that's just people doing their jobs.

Same applies to you I'm afraid- though that's not always nice to realise.

If you are a consultant and you have been paid to do a piece of work - the client decides how it is going to be presented, unless you have agreed otherwise in advance - the company will have paid the consultant a lot of money for that work.
We work directly with CEOs - we do the work asked of us and the CEO presents it as their thinking, they use our consultants like they use any other person who works for them. When they are presenting their new company strategy...it's never all their work - but they have commissioned it, approved it and put their spin on it - it's the way business works. We won't even publicly acknowledge that we have worked with companies without getting their agreement.
You'll find many well-known people don't write their own speeches - they rarely acknowledge the writer.

I'm guessing it's something like your boss is an architect and you are something like an architectural restoration specialist. You work for a company that's doing the significant regeneration of a listed building and you have been responsible for the authentic reconstruction of the gargoyles, ceiling roses, architraves, and several of the the other period features. She has been part of the team responsible for the overall redevelopment. In that case, she presents the context and you present the works. This is a win win if you can work with her.

I've realised I didn't update this. In the end, the boss came and introduced the work then left, then the SLT member then spoke a bit but credited me fully and took a back seat the rest of the day and let me lead. Boss never checked. I wrote the whole thing up afterwards and submitted the final report.
However, subsequent stuff showed me this had been all about politics and whatever the female equivalent of dick waving is, and I decided the team wasn't a good environment so I've left and feel much better for having done so!