Bossy co-Worker
I started a new role in a marketing department where part of my responsibilities includes managing our social media and marketing communications.
For context, there used to be another employee handling social media, but she left. Her responsibilities were transferred to a coworker (I’ll call him “Max”). During the year he was responsible, our social media accounts were basically inactive. Whenever anyone asked why nothing was being posted, he blamed other stakeholders 3rd party agency, saying they were slow with approvals and that the process made it impossible to publish content.
When I joined the team, I discovered that wasn’t really true. I started taking ownership of the social media accounts, and month by month we’ve been consistently publishing content. The stakeholders have actually been very cooperative, approvals come through quickly, and the work has been going smoothly. The quality of the content has also been well received.
Here’s where the problem starts.
Ever since the social media became active again, Max has started acting as if he’s my manager, even though he isn’t. He regularly comes to my office asking for detailed updates about my work, the status of campaigns, and everything I’m working on. Now he has the audacity to call me and asks me to come to his office so he can review my work and give me “his opinion” on work and marketing materials. The problem is that many of his comments aren’t even accurate or helpful because he doesn’t really understand the work.
He also insists that I communicate with him through WhatsApp instead of email, which I don’t like because it leaves less of a formal record.
Another thing that bothers me is that following up with stakeholders for approvals is officially part of my job. However, there’s was an important marketing deliverable, he suddenly insists that he will handle the follow-up instead. My manager doesn’t help the situation. He’s generally not very supportive, has had issues with several team members, and when I raised concerns, my manager simply told me to do whatever Max wanted.
Recently, I found out that marketing deliverable was important enough to require follow-up with the CXO That made me wonder a-lot.
What confuses me is that he showed almost no interest in social media or marketing communications for an entire year. The accounts were practically abandoned under his responsibility. Now that everything is running well, he’s suddenly heavily involved, wants updates on everything, wants to review my work, and wants to control communication and approvals.
I’m trying to understand what’s going on here.
how would you deal with a coworker like this when they have no managerial authority over you, but your actual manager isn’t willing to step in?