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I am working in team, where there is a guy who has same experience as me. However he has joined project few months before me.

The person is acting like he is my manager as well as project lead.

How can I handle such person?

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    What's the problem here?
    – Gregory Currie
    Aug 28, 2019 at 3:08
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    You can handle it by doing your job?
    – さりげない告白
    Aug 28, 2019 at 3:22
  • Unclear what you are asking. Does this person offend you, bother you, or speak down to you, or have a difficult personality? Would you rather be the one on the weekly conference call giving your own status?
    – selbie
    Aug 28, 2019 at 3:48
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    Possible duplicate of How to handle a coworker pretending to be my boss?
    – gnat
    Aug 28, 2019 at 7:05
  • You don't indicate how long you've been there, only that your colleague has been there longer. This could just be you not knowing the processes yet and they are trying to keep things going while you come up to speed. Have you considered that this might actually be a good thing?
    – Julie in Austin
    Aug 28, 2019 at 22:23

2 Answers 2

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I have seen this happen. On top of my mind, I can think of two possible scenarios:

  1. No one else is interested in giving an update. Some people are happy that someone else is doing the updates for you and they don't have to speak up. In this case, one of the senior person has been asked or taken upon himself to give updates for the entire team.

  2. The person giving the updates wants to hog the limelight and project himself or take credit for getting the entire work himself. He may be thinking of getting better appraisal or promotion.

First I would suggest you determine which situation you are in. If it's the first, it's very easy. If it's the second, you will have to be more assertive.

My suggestions would be following:

  1. Offer to provide updates once in a week or every alternate day. Now the person may agree if its case 1, he will also be happy some else is stepping up. If its case 2, you will have to push him to get this.

  2. Prepare. A common pitfall would be someone would set you up for failure. This can be by providing you incorrect or incomplete status and let you report wrong, only for him to jump in and correct.

  3. If you don't get opportunity, start joining the call and giving your status. This can be done by adding details to your status. e.g. you can say - in addition to this, the piece I am working on had a small problem - and I / we solved it using this. Or better still, ask a question on something you have been working on.

The idea is to start speaking a little in the call. Once people recognize you, you can insist on providing your own status on the call.

  1. When the other person is on vacation, do his job. Collect all status and be a reliable back up.

If you follow these steps, slowly you will also form your own place and people will start looking up to you to get status. And you will get the visibility as well.

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  • Great answer. Especially suggestion 1.
    – Stephanie
    Aug 28, 2019 at 6:53
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You have not articulated what the actual problem is here.

This person was on the project 6 months before you. Management are going through them to get updates. This was probably the case before you arrived.

It is irrelevant that you have the same amount of experience. Experience is not the sole characteristic when used to decide who takes on reporting capabilities.

Teams usually have strong characters that, in the absence of designated leadership, will attempt to steer the project and ensure things get done.

If the team doesn't have any designated leadership, and your sole interactions is a weekly update with stakeholders, that is something that needs to be addressed.

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