Beware of the boss who takes away your credit

Over the years, I have observed a fairly unique phenomenon which somehow escaped me during my career of years.( I was lucky!). Its the untalented boss who takes the credit away from the juniors.

I recently observed that a CEO took in a project/business brought to the company by a junior manager. The project was of immense interest, partly because it could be the sole contributor to pulling this particular company out of a mess. So you might justify the CEO taking an inordinate interest. But this particular CEO made sure that the importance of the junior manager was undermined and struggled to take credit for bringing the business to the company with her superiors, of the fact that the junior manager was wholly responsible for winning the business. In time the CEO was even doing menial tasks ( that were best left to the junior manager ) to push the junior manager away from the limelight. In she managed to make sure that the junior manager was no longer the central figure in the project. The junior manager was keen to be involved because she considered this one her baby. But she was systematically decimated by the CEO. as the project was nearing an end and was certain to become a success, the junior manager resigned and subsequently left the company allowing the CEO to bathe in the glory of the success generated by the project.

Is this case particular only to regular businesses that we are acquainted with?

I have reason to believe that the boss who likes to take away credit is prevalent in all fields including science.

A female astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell was overlooked for a Nobel Prize in of two men who worked alongside her.?

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is famous for having made one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the 20th century, when she detected the first radio pulsar, in the late 1960s,?

Her supervisor, Antony Hewish, and another researcher, Martin Ryle, collected the Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1974, for the discovery. Bell Burnell missed out on the award, of having been the first to observe the celestial and the fact that she was named as the second of the winning paper’s five authors.?

Many well-known astronomers criticised the decision to not to award her, but Bell Burnell continued to break new ground for women, including serving as president of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics.

So how does one stop the untalented boss, who has been lucky to be appointed as CEO or some other senior position and is waiting like a predator to take away the credit from her/his juniors?

1. First of all be careful to notice the first signs. Your boss is most likely to be untalented and waiting to take away credit for something good that you have done. You might first begin to notice this in small things and explain it away as you being too sensitive. Important to the first signs.
2. If you are seeing signs of credit being taken, you need to object strongly your boss and make it clear to him or her that you feel that your contribution and your talent is being undermined. Most bosses like these tend to pull back, although that is not guaranteed.
3. If the last tactic doesn't work, you may need to bring it to the notice of your boss's boss. At this might seem a scary thought but you don't have an option. If you have been unfortunate enough to be in a situation where you have such a boss, your own term in the company is likely to be short anyway. You might as well take the risk of reporting your bosses. If it works nothing like it.

But every manager must make sure that bosses don't take away the credit for what you have done. It's hard to work for a person who doesn't appreciate your talents or just treats you badly. It wears you out and makes you doubt yourself.

When something clicks in your brain and heart and you realize that your awful boss is just an ordinary person, scared and unequal to his or her assignment and more to be pitied than feared, you might soften and stop giving your power away to a person who doesn't deserve it.

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