The Stress of Micromanagement

That’s literally how this industry works… can’t imagine any analyst sending an email where it doesn’t make sense for the associate to be copied.

Understood; I'm not an Analyst, I'm a high level admin in the industry. Why does the present supervisor need me cc her on everything? Totally unnecessary. Last time it was WMP's requesting this. Tiresome micromanagement. But how can you push back on it?

Can just try to talk to them, but think you aren’t likely going to change your superiors working style, so might want to think about finding another team or something.

Not too familiar with how admin reporting structure works, so can’t really say for sure.

IMO there's nothing you can do, or say, that will change the fact that she's a micromanager. You have to manage up, make her look good, and just go with the flow. Complaining will only cause it to be worse, in most cases. People know who's doing what, so while you might not be getting the direct credit it doesn't go un-noticed. Keep your head down, continue the amazing work you're doing, treat this as a learning opportunity on how to navigate politics and managing up, then move on to another role.. It's better you deal with it now than when you're higher up and it's career limiting.. good luck.

Understand it's frustrating, but there's a reason for the chain of command just like there is in other industries. To address a few of your points below:

• "Need to cc her on my email exchanges"
  • While it might seem annoying, this is common practice to keep the whole deal team informed of what's going on. If you don't cc her she may not know when certain tasks have been taken care of and would likely have to micromanage you further to always know what is getting done. Overcommunication drives efficiency.
• "My work is almost error free"
  • Great, but the thing you have to understand is based on the way this industry is set up the deliverables need to be error free when they get to the MD so they can focus their time outward facing to clients vs. inward facing correcting your work. Because of the chain of command common to banks, any mistakes your MD finds will get blamed on the VP for not catching, which will be blamed on the Associate for not catching, which will lower their trust in the analyst. While it may feel like your associate is micromanaging, they have to cover their ass cause they're responsible for anything that the VP sees.
• "What is the deal with these ppl in this industry always having to look like the star rockers in front of the upper ranksters? Takes credit for my work." 
  • Obviously there's an element of internal politics that can sometimes seem more cutthroat than other industries. There are shitty associates out there who do this so I'm not saying you're wrong about her, but would add from her perspective she probably thinks she gave you direction on the deliverable, edited and QC'd it and managed the process so it was done on time. Again maybe that's not what happened and every analyst deserves more credit than they get, but it's not uncommon.

All that to say, it sucks to get micromanaged and you will a lot in this industry. The best way to get it to stop is to perform well and get your middle managers and seniors to trust you and focus more on other people / tasks. Barring that you should ask to get staffed with a different associate cause some will always just be difficult people to work with.

*Edit to add based on your comment regarding being on the admin team. This really all still applies, just change the job titles to your current reporting structure. It sounds like you're still pretty new to this team. You likely need to continue to build further trust of your middle manager before they'll start to let the leash out more.

Thank you all so very much for your feedback. Super helpful and outlines a much clearer path for me than the one I was on. Makes great sense.

This has also stopped me from what i thought the next best move was; speaking with her supervisor.

I appreciate what all of you had to say here.

Many thanks!

Nothing wrong with CCing her, that’s standard practice and keeps her in the loop. It also ensures she is on the exchange between you and the MD in case she needs to reference it herself.

(what if he gives you feedback that she would want to see / stay in the loop on? What if he tells you he wants a page done a certain way and wants to prevent clashing? What if he asks you a question, you give a helpful answer, and she wants to refer to your answer in the future?)

CCing them keeps them in the loop and frankly is how you start taking steps to get to speak to the MD directly…my issue had always been when they want me to email it to them and then they send it to the MD themselves without CCing me. That’s when it starts to enter ‘taking credit for your work’ territory, but even then that’s only for when it’s answers to questions / things that actually took expertise

Most MD’s are not here assuming your VP is making every deck that comes their way lol