To ask for your advice on how to stop being a people pleaser at work?

[PeoplePleaserr]

I really struggle with people pleasing at work. My role involves completing quality control on documents other people work on, so I'm the last step in the process. As such, there is often lots of things waiting for me to work on with strict deadlines. My work is the kind that can't be rushed as that defeats the point of quality control, yet I still worry if something is taking me longer than expected that I'm being 'too slow'. I also hate letting colleagues down, and struggle to tell them when I can't take on anything else for the week as my time is already taken up by projects.

Sometimes I get put on the spot during our team meetings, and I find myself agreeing to things on the spot that I know I shouldn't. Other times I get emailed work that I had not agree to take on, and I struggle to reply to colleagues and say so.

I feel guilty taking my lunch break as it means an additional hour I could power through and get more done. I also try and stay online later to try and keep up with it all. We are allowed to log off early on Fridays during the summer, and I haven't done so once as each Friday someone will send me something before they themselves log off early, with something that needs doing by end of day.

How can I be more assertive and less of a people pleaser?

I’m similar, although I’d say I’m a bit more assertive now than I was.

One thing that has helped me was to have some pre-prepared stock phrases I could use when I felt pressured or put on the spot, to avoid me needing to think under pressure.

Something else that might also help is setting aside time each week to check what you have on each week and each day. Once you know exactly what you have on each week and each day, have a rough think about what your key priorities are within those tasks.

When you’ve done that, you might still have capacity - equally, you might find you have no spare capacity.

If you really have no capacity, explain this to your colleagues e.g. unfortunately I’m not able to help with X task, as I have X/Y/Z on, which are quite important and have tight deadlines’.

If you’re worried this sounds rude or uncooperative (because if you’re anything like me, that voice in your head will say you’re all of those things! 😂), try and keep your tone really polite and professional, which will hopefully help.

Good luck.

I'm not a people pleaser but did do audits in my last role before retirement.

If a piece of work came to me with more than 3 decent sized errors, it would go back to them for corrections and then go at the back of the queue. Make it a 'them' issue.

I'd programme my diary to account for all the audits I knew were coming up, and so would never have time do do additional work suggested at meetings. I'd check my diary and say 'I could but I'm booked up on current work schedules until x date (in about a month's time). So I knew I had 3 that needed doing every month and 18 that were every 3 months and each one took several steps so once they are all planned in with realistic times that each step took, there was only time to juggle them about in the order they came in, as opposed to having to make space for them AS they came in.

If regular errors are occurring, present to their meeting on the errors that are taking up your time, and how they can self check before it gets to you and book in training sessions up front to teach them what it is you are going to be checking for.

You need to manage them not let them manage you.

In my experience, people pleasers always end up pleasing nobody, because they over-promise and under-deliver. I am always very open and transparent about what I can and can’t do. If someone asks me for something, I ask them when they need it. If I can’t do that, I say so and give them a realistic estimate of when I can do it. If that isn’t good enough, I review my priorities and see if I can move anything around. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t.

In my experience with this approach, people can be a bit taken aback at first, especially if they are used to people who never say no. But they always come around when they realise that I always deliver what I’ve promised. Managers also appreciate it (unless they are terrible managers) because it works, and never ends in a crisis that they need to step in and fix.

Speak to your senior/ manager and ask for a 1 to 1, and ask for training opportunities to help with this. Also if you have instagram, theres a great account that has a bit of fun to it but can give you ideas - 'louwhaley'

Good post.

And this is an excellent point, too. People-pleasers always think their people-pleasing 'works', but the fact is it usually doesn't for exactly this reason and because they are often simmering with sometimes entirely unconscious rage and resentment.

OP, read this post again, and accept that people-pleasing doesn't make you the good guy. It makes you someone who isn't managing their workload appropriately.