Don't Let Anyone Boss You Around!

We grew up with the idea that you go to school and pick a career path and get a job and then for the rest of your working life, you have a boss. You do what the boss tells you to.

If the boss says jump, you jump! You might not like to do what your boss tells you to, but it's too bad: the boss is the boss, and you're not.

We never question this chain of events. We think it's normal.

Why should one person tell another person what to do? There is nothing normal or inevitable about that.

Plenty of people don't have a boss. They work for themselves. They have enough clients that if one client falls out of the picture, there are plenty more to replace them. 

You can have the same mindset even if you have a salaried position. Plenty of people do that, too. They take job offers like everybody else does but they negotiate an employment contract.

The contract says that if the people in charge don't appreciate the newcomer's style, they can say "Take a hike!" but then they have to pay up.

We've been trained since childhood to think that we are ordinary and have to keep our mouths shut and take orders from the boss.

I grew up learning the same ideas. It helped me to get fired a couple of times before I was twenty. I saw that being fired is no big deal.

It's kind of pathetic when a fearful weenie says "You're fired!" and then you say "Whatever" and you go down the street and get another job in two seconds.

You realize that the people who need to put you down the most turn out to be your greatest teachers. You realize that you don't have to be afraid of anyone. 

I got fired on my 19th birthday, which happened to be New Year's Eve in 1979. I was working at a now-defunct restaurant chain in New York called Brew & Burger.

I was making bank for an 18-year-old. I got fired because I left the restaurant at ten p.m. to go to a club with my friend Dee Dee. We had both been scheduled for weeks to leave at ten so we could get to Times Square, watch the ball drop and then hit the club, called Ipanema.

Fifteen minutes before we were due to depart, a roving supervisor walked into the restaurant and said "It's busier than we expected. Everybody has to stay until 2:00 a.m."

Dee Dee and I walked out anyway. We both got fired. We both got new jobs in no time. We realized that once a particular snake bites you, its venom can't hurt you any more.

People will try to define you and box you in and the only power they have over you is your own belief in their power. That includes supervisors, CEOs, condo association presidents and plenty of other people in your life.

You have to listen to cops because they can kill you. Everyone else can stuff it. If you are not their cup of tea, they're welcome to leave you alone.

We put ourselves into boxes because we think we have to please the people around us. As kids most of us weren't taught to set boundaries, so we let people walk all over  us.

Deep inside we know when we've fallen into a doormat state and it's a sensitive topic. We don't want anyone to call our attention to it. When they do, we bristle and say "You don't know what I'm going through!"

Everyone knows what you're going through because everyone has been there. I've sat through more hours and weeks of leadership development than most people have. I have never heard anyone in a leadership development course say "It can be hard to tell the truth in the moment. It can be terrifying. Let's practice doing that, right now."

We don't tell the truth very often at work. We say what we think people want and expect us to say. When we do that, we weaken our own muscles. Our body doesn't know what to do. 

No job can pay you enough to make it a good deal for you to bury your personality and pretend to be someone you're not. If you can't bring your whole self to work, you have several choices.

You can launch a stealth job search and start looking for something new. That will require you to grow some new muscles. You can start to speak up at work and tell the truth about how you feel. That will require you to grow muscles, too. 

You can launch a part-time consulting business on the side and realize through your consulting that you have a lot more to offer the world than you may have realized before.

There are a lot of ways to grow your muscles -- but you have to start! You can't say "Yes" to every request that anyone makes of you. You can't try to please everyone around you. 

If you read my columns you know that we have a business, Human Workplace. It's a business and a movement -- a movement to reinvent work for people.

Does everyone like what I have to say? Of course not! We get tons of mail that says "You're an idiot and don't know what you're talking about."

Who would take the time to write if we hadn't affected them? Haters are the greatest teachers. They show us that we're having an impact, and getting people to think. They inspire us to keep moving forward on our paths.

You can't avoid conflict. It will find you! You can't avoid making people unhappy with you. You have to look for the people who get you, even if it takes a long time.

You have to look inside yourself to understand what you were put here on earth to do. Don't let people bully you and mistreat you, whatever your relationship is with them or whatever their title is.

True leaders don't boss people around. They lead by example. If they supervise people, they respect and value the people around them.

You can't grow your flame working for a fearful manager. If you're stressed out and ticked off when you get home from work, then your paycheck isn't enough.

Who can pay you enough to grind your teeth at night and get sick and ignore your children and your sweetheart because you never stop working and you never stop worrying?

It's a new day in the talent marketplace and the people who can make their own way are the people who claim their own power. They make their own way and they speak with their own voice.

They know that the broken, artificial, house-of-cards bureaucratic systems will be around for a long time.

They will run into it, but they don't have to bow down to it. They don't have to buy into it.

They don't complain about their situation -- they change it.

They take charge of their lives and careers and view the obstacles in their way as mental and emotional hurdles for them to surmount.

They don't accept an unhappy work situation as inevitable or predetermined. They're not afraid to leave a bad job or the wrong client without knowing what will come next. They trust in themselves and the universe.

At times they slam doors because they know that when you slam a door shut, another door opens.

It's your life. No one has your permission to boss you around, make you feel inferior or tell you how to live or how to work -- do they? What title and what paycheck would make that trade-off a good deal for you? 

Got a Burning Career or Workplace Issue?

Talk it over with Liz Ryan LIVE on the Radio on Monday, August 10th between 1:40 and 2:00 p.m. MT (12:40 t0 1:00 p.m. Pacific)! Liz will be appearing on Larry Mantle's AIR TALK program and she's taking listener calls! 

Here are the details. Get Liz Ryan's advice on your issue and a mojo boost, too!