Dear Padawan:

You are welcome. Reads to me like getting an office is a good idea, a step in the right direction, for the practical reasons of improving your effectiveness as an employee in the company, putting your knowledge gained over years of experience, your skills to maximum use.

As you aim at getting an office, you can work on becoming more assertive in other ways, in your personal life and at work. You wrote: “It is hard sometime to know if I am being bullied or if I am lacking confidence”- it will get easier as you pay attention, learn and assert yourself, over time.

Let’s look at the behaviors you listed in your last post:

1. “they can tell me what to do”- once an employee who is not your superior tells you what to do, you can ask: “are you telling me what to do?” If he/she says “yes”, ask: “what authority do you have to tell me what to do?” And wait for an answer (if you can imagine a challenging answer, let me know, I might figure out what you could say next, if you so choose)

2.  “jumping in conversations I have with other colleagues about my projects, with a sense of entitlement”- You can say to the person: “you jumped into my conversation. That is quite rude. Next time wait until I am done with my conversation before you start your own”.

3. “and challenging my decisions and opinions”- you can say to the junior employee doing so: “It seems to me that you are confused about my position and your position in this company. I worked here for X number of years and am very qualified to do my work. You worked here for Y number of years and have yet to learn to get to my level. Try to learn from me, not to challenge me.”

anita