When a peer presents your team's work as theirs

This week's conversation

You and another team lead spent six weeks on a joint project. Your team built the pricing model. Theirs turned it into slides. On Thursday, in the quarterly review with leadership, your peer presented it. They said "we" and "my team" throughout, and your analysts were never mentioned. A director asked a follow-up question, and your peer answered with a number your team produced.

You were in the room and said nothing. The moment passed, and correcting someone in front of the leadership group felt worse than staying quiet. Your team noticed. Afterwards one of them asked you, carefully, whether leadership knows who did the work.

Now you need to talk to your peer, someone you will work alongside for years. The moment you dread is the first ten seconds, when you say it out loud and they look at you as though you are being small.

Why it goes sideways

Two identities are under threat at once. Yours: raising credit feels like vanity, so you either swallow it or arrive sounding like a prosecutor. Theirs: being told they took credit implies they are dishonest, and very few people can hear that without defending themselves. In Difficult Conversations, Stone, Patton and Heen call this the identity conversation. It is the quiet question underneath everything: what does this say about me? While it is running, nobody hears the facts.

Clinically, this is a threat response. A peer who feels accused reaches for a story that protects their self-image. It was a joint effort. They were only presenting. You are overreacting. If you argue about their intent, the conversation becomes a trial, and they will defend themselves to the end. So stay with what you both saw, describe the impact, and ask for a specific repair. You do not need a confession. You need the record corrected and a different habit next time.

What to say

"I want to talk about Thursday's review. When the pricing model came up, it was presented as your team's work, and my analysts weren't mentioned. They built it, and they noticed. I'd like us to fix that."

When they push back:

"I'm not saying you set out to take it. I'm saying the room left thinking it came from your side, and that has a cost for my people. What matters to me is what we do about it now."

To close:

"Can we agree that you'll send a note to the group this week naming who built the model, and that on joint work we split the presenting from now on? I'm happy to draft the attribution line."

• Instead of "You took credit for our work," try "It was presented as your team's work."
• Instead of "It's probably not a big deal, but...", try "This matters to me and to my team."
• Instead of "Why would you do that?", try "What can we do about it now?"

Two-minute drill

Say your opening line out loud three times, timing yourself. Aim for under twenty seconds. Listen for the places where you soften, apologise or add a little laugh, and cut them on the next run. The third version should sound plain, steady and slightly boring. That is the tone that keeps the other person's defences down.

Practice it

Before you have this for real, rehearse it on the free practice page: pick the Workplace domain and the Aggressive Peer persona, and describe the situation in a sentence. If you have an account, open Taking Credit for Your Work from Workplace → Peer Conflict in the app's library. Practice this conversation

Name the work, not the motive.

— Dan