4 boundaries that will prevent people-pleasing from killing your career

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…