I (32M) am working on a project that was a stretch of my abilities, but I wanted the challenge. I’m supposed to be the lead (but not the project lead) for a project with two coworkers, one (24F) who I have worked with a lot in the past. I have mentored her before in a project and we published a paper together. Not only that she and I at one time would play games together outside work and during happy hours we would talk with each other a lot. She recently switched from her old division to my division and now is in the office next to mine.
But on this project I have found her hard to work with. The problem is that I feel she crowds me out of the work I want to do. She has worked on this series of projects before, while I was less involved for the last iteration (not my choice, and I was upset about it). She’s said things to me that make me feel like she discounts my ability to be a lead on this project, and I’ve delegated tasks to her that I did not want to delegate because I felt like she was trying to compete with me and perhaps if I assign her more prominent roles I could dispel some of the friction I’ve felt. But that didn’t work. Frankly, I wonder if she knows me too well, and our relationship seeming strange; one of the other teammates described us as acting like “siblings” (an analogy she pushed back strongly against).
One instance where she seemed especially rude to me prompted me to have a talk with her about how she was making me feel, and I asked if I was doing something that was making her upset with me, but she basically denied that anything was going on. As time has gone on, I’ve become very demoralized by this project, often going home unhappy even though I’d say we are on track to meet our tasking, because I did not achieve what I wanted out of this project: a chance to take a more prominent role, do work that interests me (again, I delegated that away), and develop a relationship with the sponsor. I plan to leave the project as soon as the next major phase of it is complete in a couple weeks.
The other two teammates, including the one I’m having trouble with, said they don’t want me to leave this project since they don’t like who would replace me. And the teammate who I’m having friction with, I’ve had harsh feelings toward her. But I mentioned today that I may end up leaving our division, since my task leads are saying I may be happier in a different division, and they may be right.
I was surprised when that coworker said to me “Wouldn’t it be funny if we got assigned neighboring offices again?” To my knowledge she was not planning on joining the new division and she said today after hearing me say I may leave that she’s not sure whether she’ll go with me to the new division or not. So now I’m feeling confused. It seems like despite the friction I’ve felt, which has distressed me (partly because I thought that my relationship with her was good prior to this project), she still wants to be working with me, maybe closely.
I’m now very puzzled and not sure what to think. How should I handle my relationship wth her? Maybe she wants to work with me but more like a partner than with me as a lead. (I have a more senior title than her but I’m not her “boss” and do not control her salary; even with this project, I’m not the project lead.) The last time I tried saying there was a problem she listened to me but basically said that aside from me being stressed and perhaps projecting that stress onto her, nothing was wrong. If I were to talk to her again, how should I approach it?