Working With Coworkers, Not Sidelining Them — Part 2

This piece follows my prior piece, titled “Lead by Collaborating With People, Not Sidelining Them — Part 1,” and discusses the detrimental effects of sidelining your employee by taking over their idea and preventing them from participating in it.

Try to have empathy for a co-worker who came up with a proposal you like. It took courage for them to make their suggestion, so reward them for their idea, rather than sideline them by not allowing the individual to assist in development of it. Since you very well may not like to be treated in such a way, do not treat others in that fashion.

Take note that this behavior could have negative consequences for your colleague, yourself and your office. Adverse effects on your coworker include that they may:

• Be upset. They may be hurt by the exclusion because they came up with the suggestion that you like.
• Be confused. They may feel your marginalization does not make sense. They may feel that since they thought of the idea, it is logical that they would help (if not take the lead) on implementing it and do not understand why you boxed them out.
• Be irritated if you change their idea. They may have had a reason for their exact idea and may not like your adjustment, which may go slightly against what they had in mind.
• Be frustrated if your end product is not what they had in mind. The individual may feel that if you had involved them, their participation would have improved the final deliverable.
• Be triggered, especially if they are members of groups that sometimes have been marginalized, dismissed and/or excluded in the past.
• Lose self-esteem. The person may feel that you excluded them because you are not confident in their ability to successfully do the work. They may begin to worry that you do not like their work in general.
• Lose trust in you. They may no longer believe that you want to include them in other work.
• Be less willing to want to share their ideas. The colleague may worry that you will act the same way if they make other suggestions in the future. You could lose out on their creativity, which you already showed that you like by accepting their suggestion.
• Not feel appreciated and potentially want to leave. The individual may feel that if you had appreciated them, you would have not excluded them.
• Feel bad for causing you to do extra work. They very well may have wanted to do this work.

Detrimental consequences to you and/or your office include:

• People not wanting to work with you. They may hear about what you did and worry that you may sidelined them also.
• Disengagement. Employees may become less focused on their work because they do not feel adequately appreciated.
• Decreased productivity. Employees may work less as a result of being marginalized.
• Turnover, which costs time and money. Ultimately, employees who feel underappreciated may want to secure new employment.

A related note is to publicly give credit to your coworker for their idea and people’s work in general. Do not take credit for yourself. You very well may want to take credit, especially if you usurped the implementation. Realize that the resulting work would not have happened if not for your colleague.

Resist the potential urge or desire to unilaterally take over someone else’s idea. Collaborating with the idea’s originator may benefit all.

Miriam Edelman, MPA, MSSW, is a Washington, D.C.-based policy professional. Her experience includes policy work for Congress. Miriam’s undergraduate degree is from Barnard College, Columbia University, with majors in political science and urban studies. She has a master’s in public administration from Cornell University, where she was inducted into the national honorary society for public administration. She has a master’s of science in social work (focusing on policy) from Columbia University. She is a commissioner of the DC Commission on Persons with Disabilities. Miriam aims to continue her career in public service. She is especially interested in democracy, civic education, District of Columbia autonomy, diversity, health policy, women’s issues, and disabilities.

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