The previous article was about the reframe, attribution rather than praise. This one is about the question that comes before you do anything.
Here is the situation. You spend weeks on a proposal. Your manager hands it to someone else to present. The room praises that person. Nobody names you.
Two different things could have happened, and to you they look identical.
Someone actively passed your work off as theirs. Or the audience simply assumed it was theirs, because nobody in the room said otherwise.
One of those is about a person’s behaviour. The other is about how visible your work is. The responses are different. Treat a visibility problem as theft, and the real problem goes unaddressed.
So before you have any conversation, get one thing straight. Did anyone actively claim ownership, or did the room assume it because nobody, including your manager, said otherwise?
If it was claimed, you have a specific incident with a specific person, and it needs a correction. If it was assumed, you may have a visibility problem, and correcting one meeting may not be enough.
There are four more questions like this. I use them to tell those situations apart before anyone says a word to anyone. One of them is “Did your manager know the extent of your contribution, and what did they communicate about it when the work was presented?”
The five questions, and the exact words to use with your manager, are in the full guide.