A client came into my therapy office one afternoon ready to quit her job. She’d been passed over for another promotion and had no idea why.
I suggested that before resigning, she ask her boss why she wasn’t advancing.
She came back to her next appointment stunned. Her boss had told her she lacked leadership skills.
“For 10 years, I did everything asked of me,” she said. “If someone said jump, I asked how high. I thought I looked eager. But my boss said he couldn’t make me a leader because I don’t have a backbone. He needs people in charge who can say no.”
She was surprised to learn her eagerness to please was killing her career.
If you’ve gotten caught up trying to make people happy at work, don’t judge yourself too harshly. You probably get praised for going above and beyond. Or you get satisfaction when you are able to clean up messes you didn’t make. So it makes sense you’d want to show off your willingness to be a team player.
But when your eagerness to please is taken too far, you’ll lose sight of your priorities. Even worse, when you don’t treat your time as valuable, other people don’t respect it either.
The solution is to set boundaries—which isn’t an easy task if you fear looking mean or being judged. Taking on extra tasks likely means working longer hours. And research shows when work bleeds into personal time, employees experience more emotional exhaustion and less happiness.
Setting a few boundaries might be all it takes to stop people-pleasing and regain control over your career. Here are four essential boundaries all people pleasers should set at work:
1. Pause before you say yes
If you’re a chronic people pleaser, your default answer is yes—whether you’ve been invited to join an extra committee or handed a task that’s above and beyond the call of duty.
Replace “yes” with a script that becomes your new automatic answer. Saying something like, “Let me check my schedule and get back to you,” or, “I need a minute to think about that,” buys you the time to decide if you actually want to do it.
Ask yourself if the task is something you really want to do. If it is, saying yes is kind. If the only reason you want to say yes is out of fear or obligation, saying yes would be people-pleasing.
When you come back with your decision, skip the apology and the lengthy excuse if you decline. The last thing you want to do is invite a negotiation. Just say something like, “Thanks for asking. That’s not going to work for me.”
2. Stop pretending to agree
People-pleasing takes the path of least resistance, so you might nod your head during meetings even when you’re not on board. Or you might agree a plan is solid, despite the obvious risks you see, because you don’t want to make waves.
Speak up and share your opinion sometimes. Start with something like, “I’m not sure I agree with that,” or, “Can I push back on one thing?”
Be willing to be the first one to go against the grain. You might find other people speak up as soon as someone else is brave enough to talk first. Even if they don’t, it’s important to show that you have opinions of your own and fresh ideas that can help the company.
3. Stay in your lane
Role creep is a common problem for people pleasers. You get volunteered for things because everyone knows you’ll say yes. And you volunteer yourself for extra tasks so you can look like you’re motivated to cooperate.
But every task outside your lane takes time and energy away from your priorities. You become the dumping ground for all the work no one else wants to do, and you might be guilted into taking it on as others try to convince you that you’re the only one who can handle it.
Keep a written copy of your job description handy. Before you take something on, read it and ask whether the task fits your role. If not, decline by saying, “This sounds like it’s outside my role.”
4. Let people feel disappointed
You will disappoint your boss when you ask for more time on a task. You might disappoint a colleague when you decline to help with a project because you’re working on a tight deadline. But you’re allowed to disappoint people.
It isn’t your job to manage everyone else’s comfort. And it’s far kinder to be honest up front than to say yes and resent it later.
Take a deep breath and tell yourself that it’s OK to let people feel bad. Practice asking for what you need and then allow yourself to sit with discomfort when the other person seems disappointed. Learning to manage your feelings–—and letting others manage theirs—can help you build mental strength over time.
Reset your boundaries as needed
Boundaries erode slowly over time. Often, we don’t even notice what happened or how things shifted.
So it’s worth pausing every once in a while to evaluate your boundaries and see if there are any changes you want to make. You can reset them at any time.
Maybe there was a short-term project that required you to work in the evenings, but now you want to stop replying to messages after hours. So you set an autoresponder telling people you’ll reply at 9 a.m. tomorrow.
Or maybe you agreed to help a coworker get settled into a new position, but now you’re spending more time than you can spare helping them out. Resetting that boundary might involve saying you’re available only during a 30-minute morning slot to answer questions. It might feel “mean” at first, but ultimately, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor. And who knows, maybe it’s best for them in the long run too.
Once you start protecting your time and energy, it’s likely that other people will too. And that might be just what you need to advance your career even if you’re a natural people pleaser.