Combatting leaders who steal

One of the things that used to irk me the most as an employee was seeing a leader repeat a colleague's idea back to the room and collect the nods and credit that the originator never got. 

Everyone witnesses this behaviour, yet hardly anyone says anything (including me at the time), which is how it carries on.

Research found that employee anger and the sense of loss of having an idea stolen dropped significantly when a leader or colleague publicly named the original creator.

So in the absence of leadership attribution, the rest of us have a job to do. ‘It’s a great idea, I think Priya mentioned that last week’ is a four second intervention and will do nicely.

Do it often enough and people will start stealing the intervention instead.