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In my career, I have had good bosses and bad, though the ones that take your ideas, steal them and use them to their advantage are the worst of the bunch. Skill at handling people, giving praise where praise is due, and building the confidence of employees is all part of management training, though somehow there are always those that slip through and have their own agendas.

There are many ways of coping with those bosses that take your ideas, twist them around, and spit them back at you as if they thought of the idea, though having a boss like this actually works to your advantage if you have a good understanding of human behavior patterns. People with lack of imagination use other people's ideas to gain status simply because they have no original ideas of their own to offer.

Let's see how it can work for you and discover ways in which you can gain respect or indeed work towards changing the behavior and understanding of bosses that take credit for your work.

If your ideas are better than theirs, chances are you are a pretty astute worker who cares passionately about your work environment and your job. There are of course options to leave, although this doesn't teach that boss to advance in his/her treatment of members of staff. Giving up is one option, though it's the easy way out, and invariably means leaving a job you are good at simply because your work isn't recognized.

You love your work. You come up with astounding ideas and moving on is a negative approach. One of the techniques that I learned is keeping my ideas to myself until a moment of crisis when those ideas have more impact. Waiting until the time is right is hard for enthusiastic people. We are keen on improvements, we are ideas people and the kind that make a difference to the work environment, moreso than those who steal ideas.

Build the idea, have it written down and worked out so that you know it can work, and knowing that the situation is looking bad, ask your boss if you think it may be a good idea to get members of staff together to try and work problems out. He thinks the idea is great, because after all, he isn't the kind of boss to have the original type of ideas to improve the work situation on his own. What he is planning is taking little snippets of people's thinking, putting them together and coming up with ideas that he can pass off as his own.

When the time comes for the meeting, be ready. Have all your research data at hand to back up the idea, and instead of talking it through with

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