My brother, Norm, called to ask my professional coaching opinion on how he should handle a work situation: “One of the guys I work with presented one of my ideas, but did not give me credit for the idea. I want to confront him, and I want to do it professionally.”
Before we could discuss approaches he should take [and he had an outline of what to say], I asked, “Norm which idea exactly did he claim as yours?”
“Aahh”, my brother replied, “He was really clever in what he said. He never directly claimed the idea was his; he strongly implied it by saying “I’ve used this for several teams and…..” If one didn’t know better, they would think he came up with the idea. In fact, when I told my boss (his boss, too) about it, my boss said “He’s always presented the information that way”. Unfortunately for my colleague, there are 2 years worth of his reports with a different way (that no one understands) of presenting the information. So, when my boss and I looked (together) at his previous presentations, my boss saw that I was correct…So, because of what this guy actually said, I can’t say that he claimed the idea as his – that is a false statement. He did imply it, though.”
So my brother’s coworker never came right out and said “This is my idea”, “This isn’t my idea” or “This is Norm’s idea” ….. he bypassed that piece of information.
It isn’t what you said; it’s what they think they heard.
Tell me, what did you hear?
[Look for part 2 … the solution … in a future blog posting.]
