Copyright theage
What I love about your letter is how your resilience and fortitude shines through. You were able to use what was an incredibly unfair and painful chapter to build your life now which is soaring. Please don’t let this piece of history do any more damage than it has. You can hold your head high and feel proud of all you have achieved. My work life is being made miserable by a fellow EA. She seems determined to undermine me. She won’t coordinate diary requests and has cultivated a friendship with my manager which she uses to make me look bad. It’s clear she’s spreading lies – and my manager believes her. I’ve had no chance to respond, and the stress is taking a real toll on my health. Apart from quitting, what can I do? Don’t quit, but start to reassert yourself and demonstrate your high levels of competence with your manager every single day. When she won’t coordinate a diary request, make sure your manager knows you have tried and explain what is causing the block. Whenever you agree to something with this EA, confirm it in writing so it is clear who agrees to do what. Document everything. Avoid making this disagreement personal – focus on process and outcomes. If you are not already having regular catch-ups with your manager, set them up. Make sure you keep your manager abreast of everything you are working on; if there are tensions with the EA, stick to the facts. Make sure you have documented all the ways a particular challenge has been dealt with at your end and obstructed at the other. It sounds like the other EA either feels threatened by you or wants to be the only EA in the team. Your best way to overcome that is to become indispensable to your manager and others.
