Quote from John Freeman on September 14, 2023, 8:30 pm

Hello TPM community,

this situation is when a peer or a subordinate thanks you for your work. I think this is reserved for superiors as you work "for" your superior or at least your superior is the official judge of your work, not your subordinates nor your peers.

Context

Since I arrived 4 months ago I launched and completed a few projects in my new hospital. The biggest one currently is a guide for the redaction of discharge hospital letters. The resident are responsible for the first version of the letter, a document sent to each hospitalized child's pediatrician. Then the attending physician correct it, then the staff physician corrects it and it gets sent to their pediatrician. Currently, there are different styles and the residents sometimes get contradictory messages regarding the correct content/style of a letter. Some attending says they should write it like that and another one says differently.

So I made this document that I got corrected by one of our staff physician. Gerard, the power-player attending made 1 single remark (on a 3-page document) about it. Going with tit-for-tat with forgiveness, I forgave him for past power moves. So I gave him credit by acknowledging his contribution in an email where I sent the latest corrections with his remark, asking if more corrections were needed. I could actually have made the changes without acknowledging him.

His email back (to all, including staff physicians):

Good evening John,

thank you for this work that will allows us to have a good consensus on writing the reports.

Just a few remarks on my contributions:

[correction on a misunderstood from me on his feed-back]

For the rest, no worries. Thank you again for the work.

So to me there are a few power moves here:

1. Thank you for this work: not too bad, but still as said above it usually come from a superior
2. That will allows us to have a good consensus on writing the reports: summarizes, to me it's also a power move.
3. My contributions: credit inflating
4. No worries: power move as if I did something wrong
5. Emphasizes again with a second "Thank you again for the work.": to hit the nail on the head in case it was not clear.

I would say it's not red level. But still he tries to put himself above me I feel. Feel free to disagree of course.

My answer (to all):

Super, thank you Gerard for these remarks,

Available for more comments,

Good evening,

John

Here I did my best to re-empower myself with using a light judge power move. Also going for low investment. I did not want to play too many games in order not to go in a turkey spiral. And our bosses are not blind to power moves. So my strategy is: I prefer to be seen as a straight-taker teamplayer and him as a game player. So it's kind of a "show me the hand" by contrast.

I'm happy to know if you guys have any comments on this topic.

If I'm being too "power-sensitive" about this topic, I'm happy to know about it as well. Sometimes we see things that are not there.