How to Stand Up For Yourself at Work (Without Burning Bridges)

Ever find yourself agreeing to things that you don't really want to do just to keep the peace at work? Well, it is time to change that, because in this episode, I'll teach you how to assert yourself and push back respectfully so you can get what you need and deserve. Hello heroes, and welcome to the Camp Club Podcast. I'm Warwick Brown, your friendly neighborhood camp coach. Now this podcast is all about helping key account managers go from busy to boss. We talk about everything from boosting client revenue to crushing customer retention and building a successful career. So I wanted to explore this topic about the challenges of being a people pleaser and to help you become more assertive to become a self advocate. We're out there all the time as key account managers, being the champion for our customers, being the champion for our business to our customers. But sometimes we forget about ourselves. And you can't be a champion for your customers or anybody else if you can't be a champion for yourself. If you're not sure if you are in this category of people that don't stand up for themselves at work, let me take you through a few common scenarios and maybe you'll see yourself in some of these. Could be taking on extra work without recognition that could be, you know, asked to handle additional accounts or projects without additional compensation or recognition and agreeing to it just to avoid conflict. It could be unrealistic deadlines, you know, where your manager says, I need this by today and expects you to drop everything, when in fact you had already planned your day and now your whole schedule is disrupted and somehow you feel obligated to accommodate that request every single time. It could be micromanagement from superiors, you know, your leaders who are constantly checking in on your work, making you feel like you can't make independent decisions because you don't challenge their approach. You don't say, hey, back off. And actually, I filmed a video about that very topic which will be on my YouTube channel in a couple of weeks. So check out my channel if you haven't already. Just search for the cam coach. You will find me there. It could be that you are undervalued in meetings, that your opinions or suggestions are overlooked or dismissed, but you stay silent instead of actually asserting your point of view. It could be that you're constantly making work, life balance sacrifices. You're working late nights, you're coming in early, you're working weekends, you're always checking your time at home, your personal time and your professional time is completely blurred and you're not discussing alternative solutions with your boss. You are accepting responsibilities for mistakes or failures that were not solely your fault just to keep peace, right? You don't want to throw other people under the bus, so to speak. You don't want to call people out for the fact that they were the ones that actually laid the groundwork or were responsible for the bulk of the issues. It could be that you're not getting adequate support, that you don't get enough resources from other departments, but you're not speaking up about it. All you're doing is adding stress and even more challenges in meeting client expectations. It could be lack of professional development opportunities that you want to attend conferences or training or courses to develop your skills, but you don't request it from your employer because you just want to accept the status quo. Or if they say no, you don't challenge them. For example, the Cam Club, right? Annual membership to my community, the Cam Club is 224ish dollars a year US peanuts for an organization to sponsor your membership. A lot of members do successfully get that paid for, but a lot of members don't feel nervous asking their boss for it. That's, that's a real life example. Unclear role expectations. So you're taking on tasks outside your job description. You, you don't. You have this feeling that it shouldn't be you doing it, but you know, you don't really seek clarification or you don't negotiate your responsibilities. It could be that you have really difficult clients, but your boss, you know, they're rude, they're disrespectful, but your boss won't support you in addressing their behavior because of fear of losing the business. So listen, even if you are pretty good at standing up for yourself at work, I'm sure just from that short list I've rattled off, you may have identified and seen yourself in some of those things I, some of those things that I talked about, I find a struggle to be assertive on. Let me give you a real life example. That happened to me and it's, it still steams. I still boils my blood. I'm still steamed up over it. When I was working for Expedia, they had this idea to change the segmentation the way that we serviced our super large biggest accounts. They were all done through pooled resources like implementation and, you know, customer support and all that kind of stuff. Then they decided they wanted to split them so that mid market had its own team and the large accounts had its own team for everything. So it's all kind of in this little bubble from you know, onboarding right through to account management and everything else. They said, warwick, would you like to lead the large account team? And I said, yes, I would love to. Not only would it be challenging, but it would be interesting. And they promised me some compensation at the end of implementing the whole thing and getting it up and running. So I had to hire people to join my team. But because there weren't that many large accounts, I only had one person for, you know, a couple of the functions and I wasn't allowed to use any of the previous support people because I was supposed to be self contained, right? So if I was super busy, I just had to do it myself. So for example, we had to onboard and implement a new client. Normally you would use the implementation team to help you, but because I was now in this little large account bubble and my implementation person was, I can't remember whether they're on leave or if they'd left or if they hadn't hired them yet, so the account manager myself had to implement them. We'd never done an implementation, I'd never set up back office stuff, I'd never set up the system, didn't know what we were doing, but nobody would help us. It was like, you're on your own. Anyway, it continued like that for a very long time. And then at the end when it came time for salary reviews, they said, oh, sorry Warwick, there's no money for you. I just got like my normal, you know, inflationary increase and I was fuming. I just thought, I have worked my ass off day and night for 12 months to set this up, to make it working smoothly, to step in when there were resource gaps, to take over when people came and left, to really get this working like a well oiled machine and to lead the team and motivate the team through some very difficult times. And at the end of it, all I got was, yeah, thanks, that's great. Not once during any of that time did I stand up for myself. Not once did I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not enough. I, I thought I'm going to do the thing, I'm going to show them I'm going to make this work. And that was my guiding mission. I just thought, if I get this working, I'm gold. Not only will I be recognized and rewarded, I will have really done something really a major accomplishment. Nobody really seemed to give a shit, to be honest. Didn't really get any recognition and didn't get any money. So I took on all this extra work, not once putting the brakes on anything Just loading myself up. Never again. And I'd say this to my coaching clients now, don't do this stuff up front. If there's a carrot dangling, you get that commitment in writing and you get the compensation up front. You don't do it on the promise of anything because I got so burned by that. But anyway, I digress. Let's talk about how you tackle it. First, identify your values. You've got to know what's core in terms of your values, your beliefs and what matters most to you. So journaling is a great way to do that. I used to do morning pages and I think I'm going to go back to them where first thing I wake up in the morning, I write down exactly what's on my mind and what I'm thinking about. And last thing at night, I'm going to reflect on the day that happened, reflect on my goals and reflect on my personal principles and see if there was anything that any compromises that are causing me any stress or anxiety or friction. Because without that reflection, you're not going to know when you are, when you're being compromised. So having a really clear point of view about your values and then also how they guide your decision making because you'll know then when your values are starting to be compromised, they will act as a compass for those tough decisions and you'll be able to align what's happening around you, the environment, the circumstances, the conversations, the situations to make sure that they are compatible with your goals. And when they're not, it's going to make it that much easier for you to speak up. Speaking of that, speaking of speaking up, you've got to work on confidence. And I don't know about you, but for me, I'm an introvert. I'm not the most outside of work, I'm not the most outgoing person. I put on a face, a role when I'm in the office. I know that as an account manager I've got to step up, I've got to play the part. But that's not the real me. Like deep down, you know. And in my personal life I'm a very different type of person. So even now I still have to think about how do I build my self confidence. There's a great book called Networking for Introverts or the Introverts Guide to Networking. Really good guide to how do you be better at building confidence about networking about positive self talk about, you know, thinking about successful outcomes and visualization. What I recommend is that you start to think about how do I do that to myself. And part of that book, and part of what it reminded me of is that I really need to prepare and practice. That's the key to confidence, is rehearsing your speaking. But if you're going to have a meeting with a manager about something that went wrong or something that you want to have happen, don't go on emotion. Plan your bullet points. Plan your reasoning. Build the business case. Role play with your friend, a colleague, a trusted, you know, mentor, whoever it might be. But that's going to make it that much more powerful because you'll have thought about the reactions, you'll have thought about the objections, you'll have come up with the counterpoints and the arguments, and you'll have built the evidence that's going to make it that much easier to. To make your, you know, your voice heard. So you can also start small, right? I'm not suggesting that you go in like a steamroller and you gotta pick your battles, right? You're not gonna die on every hill. But you do have to think about the things that are bugging you the most. So pick one of the things where you think, you know what? I've gotta tackle this, because it's getting beyond a joke, you know, and start there. And start small. It could be that you just make smaller, you know, a small little contribution in meetings. It could be anything. But you need to get the ball rolling. And for the ball to roll, you gotta push it right? Now, when it comes to getting what you want at work, you've gotta teach people how to treat you. And that comes with setting boundaries with colleagues, with your managers, with immediate teammates, whoever it might be. You need to make sure that you establish those boundaries and you communicate them clearly. So don't be vague. Use explicit I statements. I need time to focus on this project. I'm unable to take on this extra work. I will not be able to get that to you until next week, whatever it might be. It's fine to say no, right? Or not yet, or give me more information or I need these things in order to be able to do that for you. Be firm but polite when you either are declining requests or when you are negotiating. So you can say things like, I'm currently focused on another priority, but I can help with this later, or I, I'm not available for that task, but here's a resource that might help, or go talk to that person, whatever it might be. Don't feel obligated because somebody has asked you that you have to take on that work. So think about how you can implement some of those boundaries. One of the things that I had to sort of help train my team on was they will always interrupt me going, warwick, have you got a minute? Warwick, have you got a minute? They would hover behind me to say, you know, and I could just feel the hairs on my back of my neck stand and I was looking around and there'd be somebody from my team there waiting to ask me a question. I. And I was constantly interrupted. So I had to have some conversations with people to say, look, I'm happy to help, but please make sure that it is, you know, stuff that you have tried to find the answer to, not treat me as a shortcut. And also, if you see me working, look in my calendar, right? Set up a 15 minute call with a meeting with me or a call with me so that we can have some dedicated time and I'm not going to be interrupted and I'll know that it's coming. You know, some stuff like that, pretty basic. But it did change their behavior and I didn't get interrupted so much with Warwick, if you got a minute. All right, so we've talked about identifying your values. Like you've got to know your core beliefs because that's how going to help you identify when they're being compromised. You need to start working on building the confidence to speak up. Even if you're confident, there will be areas where you struggle to make your voice heard that could be in your relationship with your boss, it could be in lots of situations. Figure out what those are because it's the only way to address them. And of course, set some boundaries so that people know where you stand. Finally, you need to advocate for yourself. This is the hardest part, because now you've got to talk out loud, you've got to negotiate for what you need. You've got to express yourself and that comes down to planning out that strategy, Negotiating for what you need. You need to present data and evidence. So never just say, no, I'm not going to do that. Then you get the reputation of being difficult. Instead, you want to present data and evidence to support your case. You want to find ways to highlight the mutual benefits for you and your boss or your teammates or your company, or the risks that you will avoid. It reminds me of a time when I was looking for extra headcount and they said, no, no, no, you can't have any more people, you have enough. And I said, yes, I have enough now. But if you have confidence in the sales pipeline, then I'm going to be having £50 million worth of accounts coming in the next six months and I have no key account managers to look after them. So if you want that pipeline to either you're telling me that the pipeline you don't have any confidence in or you're telling me that they're going to have a terribly onboarding and implementation experience and you know, they're probably going to leave. So they're the risks. Either you better check your pipeline or you're going to have clients come and go as soon as they walk through the door because there's no key account managers to handle them. You know what, I got my headcount. So that's what I mean by potentially positioning the risk rather than just saying, oh, it'd be so helpful if, you know, we could get somebody up to speed a bit earlier and then we would have them trained up and ready to go when the clients came in. That wasn't the angle I took on that situation. It was more like, hey, either your sales pipeline sucks or you win the clients and they're going to walk right back out the door again because it's going to be terrible. So you choose. I say it bluntly to you like that you want to be nice. When you express these things, you're coming at a point of view of helping. You're like, listen, I'd love to, you know, this doesn't make the best sense because of this, this and this, this. If you want me to do A, I'm going to need B, you know, it's cause and effective, give and take, you know, that's all it boils down to. So when it does come time to advocate for yourself, you want to outline your main points and supporting details, emphasize the positive impact on your performance, show how your request aligns with team goals, and then, you know, practice delivering the message confidently. So when the time comes, you my friend, are ready. Now if you would like some help for that, check out the CAM club because guess what? I have one to one coaching sessions available with me every Tuesday and Wednesday via open office hours. You can always grab 30 minutes with me from time to time to run through any of these things. If you want to help your preparation when it comes to advocating for yourself and even practicing role playing, whatever it might take, I'm here to help. So check out thecamclub.com if you would like me to give you some support. So I challenged you here as is to do one of those four things right, Identify your values or work on some techniques to build your confidence or set some boundaries, even if you start small, or to, you know, prepare for advocating for yourself on something that has been bugging you. As simple as that. Remember, it is so important to stand up for yourself. It's going to have a massive impact on your career growth and your confidence and help you do your job more effectively. Because you're going to be laser focused on the activities that make the maximum impact and shed the things that are just loading you up for no reason. As always, show notes are available and you can find them at tkcpodcast.com 042 I've been your cam coach, Warwick Brown. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to help me out, you could leave a review on itunes, or you could, you know, little rating on Spotify that would help this little podcast out. So until next time, heroes. Bye for now.