There are difficult supervisors. There are demanding supervisors. There are supervisors who are disorganized, supervisors who communicate poorly, supervisors who micromanage, and supervisors who simply should never have been promoted into supervision in the first place. But there is another kind of supervisor who can make your working life particularly miserable: the supervisor who takes credit for what you accomplish but blames you when things go wrong.
That may be one of the worst kinds of supervisors to have.
It is also one of the worst kinds of supervisors to be.
The worst – I mean the WORST – kind of supervisor to have or to be is someone with high ego need and low self-esteem because they cannot stand to see anyone else succeed.
I have seen this kind of behavior in public agencies, for-profit businesses, and nonprofit organizations. The setting changes, but the behavior is remarkably similar. When something goes well, the supervisor is happy to tell others about the accomplishment. When something goes wrong, however, the accomplishment suddenly belongs to someone else, and the responsibility for the problem belongs to you.
The situation becomes even more difficult when the supervisor seems threatened by the success of people working for them. You receive recognition, and instead of being pleased, the supervisor becomes uncomfortable. You receive a promotion, and the supervisor becomes less supportive. Someone compliments your work, and the supervisor finds a way to diminish it. You develop a good relationship with someone important in the organization, and suddenly that relationship becomes a problem.
In my experience, as I noted above, the worst kind of supervisor is often the person with a high need for recognition and a low tolerance for seeing someone else succeed. I don’t mean that as a psychological diagnosis. I mean someone whose behavior demonstrates that your success seems to threaten their position, reputation, or sense of importance. They need to be the person who gets the credit, and they don’t want anyone else becoming more visible than they are.
So what do you do when you find yourself working for someone like that?
You don’t fight fire with fire. You don’t begin a campaign to convince everyone that your boss is a terrible person. You don’t gossip about the supervisor, recruit coworkers to your side, or try to embarrass the person who is making your life difficult. Those things may feel satisfying for a moment, but they generally make your situation worse.
Instead, you protect yourself by becoming very good at documenting your work, communicating what you have accomplished, and making sure the appropriate people know what is happening.
Consider a public agency. Perhaps you work for a city, county, state agency, or public safety organization, and your supervisor gives you responsibility for developing a new procedure. You do the research, talk with the people who will actually use the procedure, write the first draft, make the revisions, test the process, and eventually produce something that works. Your supervisor presents the new procedure to senior management and receives much of the recognition for it.
That can be frustrating, but there is a constructive way to handle it.
Keep a professional record of your work. I’m not talking about creating a secret file called “Evidence Against My Boss.” I’m talking about doing something every good professional should be doing anyway. Keep copies of project assignments, important emails, drafts, meeting notes, decisions, reports, and results. When you complete something significant, communicate it professionally.
For example, you might send your supervisor an email saying, “Here is the revised procedure based on our meeting Tuesday. It incorporates the three changes we discussed, and I will begin testing it with the field staff next week.” You have just established what you did, when you did it, what decisions were made, and what you plan to do next.
You aren’t building a case against your supervisor. You are creating a professional record of your work.
The same principle applies in a for-profit business. Suppose you develop a process that saves the company money. Your supervisor presents the idea to the owner or executive and receives the recognition. You may not be happy about it, but you can still make sure the results of your work are documented.
This is where measurement becomes particularly valuable. If your process saves the company $25,000, document it. If customer complaints decline, document it. If processing time falls from three days to one day, document it. If you improve retention, increase sales, reduce waste, or shorten delivery time, document the result.
Numbers are often much harder to argue with than opinions.
Rather than walking into the owner’s office and saying, “My boss keeps taking credit for my work,” you can provide something much more useful. You can say, “Here is what we changed, here is when we changed it, and here is what happened afterward.” You aren’t asking the owner to choose sides. You are providing information about the performance of the organization.
That distinction is important.
The nonprofit environment can present the same problem in a slightly different form. Imagine that you work for an organization serving families in your community. You develop a new outreach program, recruit volunteers, establish relationships with community partners, create the materials, and make the program work. Your supervisor reports the success to the executive director or board and describes it as something “we” accomplished. Your individual contribution may never be mentioned.
Then something goes wrong. A volunteer makes a mistake, a community partner complains, or an event doesn’t go as planned. Suddenly your supervisor tells the executive director that you were responsible for the problem.
Again, the temptation is to make the situation personal. Resist that temptation.
The mission of a nonprofit organization is more important than your personal battle with your supervisor. Keep doing good work. Keep your communications professional. Keep track of what you are responsible for and what you accomplish. When reports are prepared for the executive director or board, accurately identify the work that you and your team performed.
You don’t have to diminish your own contribution in order to be a team player.
This brings up an important question: Should you keep your supervisor’s supervisor informed about your accomplishments?
Yes, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.
The wrong way is to go around your supervisor because you are angry with the person. The right way is to participate appropriately in the organization’s normal communication process. If senior management asks for a project update, provide it. If you are asked to prepare a report, prepare it. If there are regular management meetings at which project results are discussed, make sure your accomplishments are accurately represented.
And if you have accomplished something significant, don’t hide it.
There is nothing wrong with telling your supervisor’s supervisor, “I wanted you to know that the project you assigned to our team has been completed. We finished two weeks ahead of schedule and reduced processing time by 30 percent.”
That isn’t going around your supervisor.
That’s reporting organizational results.
The important thing is how you communicate those results. Don’t make the conversation about your supervisor’s shortcomings. Make it about the work.
Instead of saying, “My supervisor never gives me credit,” you can say, “Here is what we accomplished.”
Instead of saying, “My boss keeps blaming me for things that aren’t my fault,” you can say, “Here is what happened, here was my responsibility, and here is what I did.”
Facts are your friend.
This approach also protects you when something does go wrong. If your supervisor later tries to blame you for a decision you did not make, your professional record can establish what actually happened. If the supervisor approved a particular course of action, your communication can document that. If you warned about a problem, your communication can establish that as well.
The objective isn’t to catch your supervisor.
The objective is to make the facts available.
There is another important reason to handle the situation this way. A supervisor who takes credit for your successes and blames you for failures can tempt you into becoming part of the same problem.
Don’t take the bait.
Don’t start gossiping. Don’t recruit coworkers to your side. Don’t send angry emails. Don’t confront your supervisor in front of other employees. Don’t try to embarrass the person. And don’t sabotage your supervisor because you believe your supervisor is sabotaging you.
You don’t protect your career by becoming the kind of employee you are complaining about.
You protect yourself by doing good work, documenting what you do, communicating clearly, giving credit where credit is due, accepting responsibility for your own mistakes, and refusing to accept responsibility for things that aren’t yours.
Eventually, however, you may have to make a decision.
Documentation and professional communication will not fix every bad supervisor. Sometimes the behavior continues. Sometimes the supervisor becomes even more hostile because your accomplishments are becoming visible. Sometimes the organization knows exactly what is happening and chooses not to address it.
And sometimes the best decision is to find another position, another department, or another organization.
That isn’t necessarily failure.
Sometimes the problem isn’t your performance. Sometimes you are working for someone who has decided that your success is a threat to theirs.
You cannot control that person’s behavior.
You can control your own.
Do good work. Keep records. Communicate your results. Give credit to others. Don’t accept blame for things that aren’t yours. And don’t be afraid to let the people above you know what you are accomplishing.
You don’t need to shout from the rooftop.
But you don’t need to hide in the basement either.
Your work deserves to be seen.
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Author’s Note: The content provided in this article is designed exclusively for educational and informational purposes, reflecting opinions shaped by decades of leadership training and organizational consulting experience. It should never be interpreted as formal professional advice. By reading or engaging with this material, you acknowledge that no professional-client relationship is established and that these insights do not substitute for tailored guidance from a qualified professional familiar with your specific circumstances. Consequently, readers are strongly advised to seek independent counsel from licensed legal, financial, medical, or other appropriate advisors before implementing any strategies or making decisions based on these perspectives. Ultimately, you assume full personal responsibility for any actions you choose to take or omit as a result of reading this material, releasing the author and publisher from any liability for outcomes arising from your reliance on the text.
