Why you can’t stand up for yourself at work when you can at home

“At home I have no trouble saying I’m not cooking tonight and that someone else can sort out the weekend. At work, my manager tells me at four on a Friday that it would be good if I finished the report by Monday, and I say: ‘No problem.’ Then I spend the whole weekend at the computer, angry with myself.”

I hear a sentence like this often, in different versions. Sometimes from someone whose partner describes them as stubborn. Sometimes from someone who argues easily about politics with friends, yet in a meeting cannot even object to a wrong date in the minutes. And it is almost always followed by the same question: “What is wrong with me that I can’t stand up for myself there?”

In this post I would like to turn that question around a little. Not to say that there is nothing wrong with you and the boss is to blame — that would be too cheap. But because the question “what is wrong with me” assumes that assertiveness at work is a trait you either have or you don’t. From the systemic perspective I work from, it is more like a response to the space you are in. The same person behaves differently in different systems — and that is not a flaw, it is information.

I have already written about what assertiveness is and how to practise it in words in Assertiveness: how to say what you want without aggression or apology, and about why boundaries feel selfish in Setting boundaries: why it feels selfish. Here I am interested in something else: why it is precisely at work that it is so hard for you, even though you can do it elsewhere.

Assertiveness is not a trait but a response to the space

The knowledge base describes assertiveness as the ability to say clearly and respectfully what you think, what you need and what you don’t want. The description is accurate, but it has one blind spot: it sounds as if it were a skill you carry with you everywhere in the same way, like knowing a foreign language.

In reality it is more like a voice that adjusts to the acoustics of a room. In your kitchen you speak normally. In a church you lower your voice automatically. At a concert you shout. Nobody would say that you “can’t speak” in church — everyone understands that your body reads the space and responds to it before you have even thought about it.

Standing up for yourself works in a similar way. Your body and mind are constantly assessing: who has the power here, what happens to the person who objects, how much this relationship is worth, whether it can be repaired if something goes wrong. At home you have answers to these questions from years of experience. At work you often don’t — or the answers you have received were bad ones.

What research shows about who doesn’t speak up

In a well-known study from 2003, the researchers Frances Milliken, Elizabeth Morrison and Patricia Hewlin conducted in-depth interviews with forty employees from a range of industries. They asked them whether they had ever had a concern or a problem at work that they had not raised with their superiors. As many as 85 per cent described at least one such occasion.

Even more interesting than the number are the reasons. For the most part, people did not stay silent because they could not put a sentence together. They stayed silent because they were afraid of being seen as complainers or as “difficult”, of damaging their relationship with a manager or colleagues, or because they believed nothing would change anyway. In short, the reasons were relational, not technical.

This matters, because most advice on assertiveness at work offers technique — how to phrase an I-statement, how to say “no” in three steps. Technique is useful. But if what stops you is fear of what that sentence will do to the relationship and to your position, even the best-crafted sentence will not help you say it out loud.

A workplace is a system — even if it isn’t a family

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we look at a family as a system: a whole in which everyone has their place, where one person’s behaviour responds to everyone else’s, and where rules apply that nobody has ever written down. If one member changes, everyone has to adjust — and the system often resists.

A workplace is not a family. But it works by very similar laws. It has a hierarchy that is more pronounced than in most modern families. It has roles: the one who always saves the day, the one who complains, the one nobody notices, the one who is the boss’s confidant. It has unspoken rules — about who may object in a meeting, whether it is all right to leave at the official end of the working day, which topics are not to be raised. And it has a memory: a team remembers what happened to the last person who said “no”.

So when you don’t say what you think at work, you are not only responding to the request in front of you. You are responding to the whole system as you understand it. Perhaps you saw what happened to the colleague who loudly opposed last year’s reorganisation. Perhaps you know that your manager takes every refusal personally. Perhaps you are new and don’t know the rules yet, so you play it safe. In all of these cases your silence is a sensible adaptation — it may simply cost you more than it is worth.

Old roles in new clothes

The second layer is less visible. Each of us also brings to work the history of our family of origin — the way we learned to deal with authority, expectations and conflict.

If you grew up as the child who kept the peace at home, who noticed your mother’s bad mood before anyone said a word and tried to fix it by being good, it is very likely that at work, too, you will be the one who notices tension and smooths it over. I have written about these roles in Roles in the family: the hero, the scapegoat, the invisible child. At work these roles don’t show up exactly as they do at home, but they are recognisable: the “hero” takes on yet another project, the “invisible child” doesn’t say they are overloaded, the “peacemaker” doesn’t push back because it would upset the balance.

It is interesting why these roles often wake up more at work than at home. At home, with your partner or your own children, you may already have won a different place for yourself. There you are an adult and an equal. Your boss, on the other hand, is — at least symbolically — a figure of authority with power over you, as your parents once had. So in front of them you can, for moments, become the child waiting for a grade again. In psychotherapy this phenomenon is called transference, and I write about it in more detail in The boss who reminds you of your father: why we slip into old family roles at work.

The same goes for attachment. People with a more anxious pattern are often afraid at work that a single “no” will cost them goodwill, while people with a more avoidant one would rather do everything themselves than ask for help or negotiate. More on this in Attachment at work.

Power changes the body, not just the words

In 2003 the psychologists Dacher Keltner, Deborah Gruenfeld and Cameron Anderson proposed a theory that neatly explains why, in a subordinate position, your words suddenly “run out”. According to their model, power affects two systems within us. When we have more power, the approach system is more active: we speak more readily, pursue our goals and worry less about what others think of us. When we have less power, the inhibition system is more active: we watch closely for threats, read the faces of those above us, think before we say anything and are more likely to hold back.

This is not a weakness of character. It is an adaptation that makes sense: if you depend on someone, it is wise to watch them carefully. But it is precisely this adaptation that means that, at the moment you should say “I can’t do this by Monday”, your mind is already three steps ahead — how will they react, what will they think, will they bring it up at the annual review — and the sentence fades away in the meantime.

At home you may barely feel this braking system, because with your partner you don’t experience yourself as someone with less power. That is why it works there. It is not that you are a different person at home. It is that it is a different system.

Triangles and coalitions: when you stand up for yourself, more than one relationship shifts

In family therapy we talk a lot about triangulation — the way tension between two people is often redirected onto a third. A mother doesn’t talk things through with the father but complains to her daughter. A brother and sister don’t settle things directly but through their parents.

At work, triangles are everywhere. A colleague doesn’t complain to you but to your manager. Your manager doesn’t tell you directly that they are unhappy; you hear it from a colleague. You don’t tell the director there is too much work; you grumble about it to a colleague over coffee. And this is why standing up for yourself at work is so complicated: your “no” rarely concerns just one person. If you turn down an extra task, it may go to a colleague who is already overloaded. If you contradict your manager in a meeting, alliances you never saw clearly may start to wobble.

The body knows this. Even when you cannot describe why a situation is “dangerous”, you sense that one sentence will shift more than one relationship. Your restraint is therefore sometimes wise. And sometimes it is an old, learned caution from a system where things really were dangerous — caution the present system no longer requires.

This is where a concept developed by Murray Bowen is perhaps most useful: differentiation. It means the ability to stay in contact with others while keeping your own position — neither fleeing the relationship nor dissolving into it. The more differentiated a person is, the less tension in the system pulls them into an old role. It is not about not being afraid. It is about fear not being the only one making the decision.

Here is how a conversation might sound when someone tries to stay in contact and stay with themselves at the same time (composite, not a real person):

“Ana, could you also take on preparing that presentation by Friday?”
“I can make a start, but I need to say something. If I take it on, the finance report won’t be ready by Friday. Which of the two matters more right now?”
“Hm. I thought you’d manage both.”
“I understand that would be easiest. But both would mean a weekend at the computer, and I don’t want that. I’d rather we agree on what comes first.”
A short silence. “All right. The report first, and the presentation by Wednesday.”

Ana wasn’t loud, didn’t apologise and didn’t give a flat “no”. She did something else: she handed her manager the information he needed to make a decision, and she stayed friendly when the pressure briefly rose. This kind of assertiveness at work often works better than a sharp refusal — because it also respects the system both of them work in.

What assertiveness at work is not

Because people often think they have to become someone else, it is worth saying what we are not looking for.

It isn’t loudness. In 2007, across several studies, Daniel Ames and Francis Flynn showed that the relationship between assertiveness and how people rate leadership ability looks like an upside-down U. People who were too unassertive were seen as weak, and those who were too assertive as someone who damages relationships. Those somewhere in between came off best. Moderation, then, is not a compromise but the goal.

It isn’t as big as it feels. Ames later described, with his colleague Abbie Wazlawek, a phenomenon they called the line-crossing illusion. In negotiations, many participants believed they had been too forceful and had “crossed the line” — while their counterparts rated them as appropriately assertive. If you are afraid you were too much, you were very often just clear enough. This is good to know when, after a meeting, it nags at you that you “said too much”.

It isn’t people-pleasing in different clothes. If you say “no” and then spend three days apologising and proving you are still good, you have only stood up for yourself on the surface. You will find more about this pattern in People-pleasing: when your worth is in other people’s hands.

Which brings us to a pattern you probably know if you have read this far. When you don’t say what you think at work, the tension doesn’t dissolve. It moves — into resentment, into tiredness, into evenings when you tell everyone at home what your boss has demanded this time. The infographic below shows how the loop closes.

The fifth step is the one people notice least. A system learns from your behaviour. If you always say “yes”, your manager and colleagues start relying on it — not out of malice, but because that is how systems work. Nobody asks any more whether you can manage, because the answer is already known. And a few months later your “no” looks like a sudden rebellion, even though it is simply the first one you have said out loud.

Exercise: a map of one situation

This exercise doesn’t ask you to do anything brave at work tomorrow. It only asks you to look at one situation as a system. It takes fifteen minutes and a sheet of paper.

1. Choose one concrete moment from the last two weeks when you didn’t say what you thought. Write down who was there, what was said and what you said.
2. Draw who was involved. Not just you and the other person — who else would have felt the consequences if you had answered differently? The colleague who would have got the task? Your manager’s manager? Connect them with lines.
3. Write down what you were afraid of. As concretely as possible: “that he’d think I’m lazy”, “that Maja would be angry because she’d have to stay late”. Next to each fear, note whether it is based on something that has already happened in this job, or on something you know from elsewhere.
4. Find the old role. Do you recognise yourself in a role from childhood in this moment? The one who calms things down? The one who doesn’t cause trouble? Write it down in one word.
5. Write one sentence you could say next time. Not a perfect one. One that is yours and that you could actually say — for example, “I can, but then X won’t be done. Which comes first?”

If at the third step you find that most of your fears come from elsewhere, you have discovered something important: the present system may not be as dangerous as your body is telling you. If, on the other hand, you find that your fears are grounded in what really happens in this job, that is different but equally important information.

When the answer isn’t your assertiveness

Now I have to say something that sounds like the opposite of everything above. Not every silence at work is an old role that needs working through. Sometimes your caution is an accurate assessment of a system that really is dangerous.

If the person who objects is systematically pushed out of the team, if your manager humiliates people in public, if working conditions get worse for those who point out mistakes — then the problem is not that you can’t phrase an I-statement. The problem is the system, and no assertiveness course will fix it. Here the systemic view also means this: don’t take on responsibility that isn’t yours. One person cannot single-handedly change a culture in which pushing back is punished.

In that case it matters more than any verbal exercise that you find support outside this relationship. If you suspect workplace bullying or a breach of your rights, you can turn to a trade union, if you have one, or to the Labour Inspectorate of the Republic of Slovenia. I am not a legal adviser and cannot tell you what you are entitled to by law — but I can help you not lose touch with yourself along the way. It is also important not to stay alone with it: keep notes of what is happening and talk to people you trust.

And one more limit. If you wake up every day with anxiety at the thought of work, if you can’t sleep, if your body stops you in some way every week, then assertiveness is not the first thing you need. First you need someone to hear you — a doctor who will also look at your body, and perhaps a therapist. I also write about how silence and disagreement play out in meetings in Silent in meetings: why you don’t say what you think.

What can help in therapy

When people come with this question, they often expect us to practise sentences. Sometimes we do. But mostly we first look at the map: what the system at work is like, what the system at home was like, and where the two overlap. It often turns out that the very moments when your words get stuck carry a very old story — about what happened to the child who said “no”.

Once you see that story, something loosens. Not because the fear disappears, but because you can separate it from the present. Your manager is not your father. Your colleague is not your mother. You are no longer a child who depends on them. You are an adult who has limited but real power in this job — and the right to use it.

A longer session with a genogram can also help here, in which we draw together what roles there were in your family and how authority was handled — more on the page A Look into the Past. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• Assertiveness is not a trait you have or don’t have — it is a response to the system you are in. Managing it at home but not at work is information, not a flaw.
• In the study by Milliken and colleagues, 85 per cent of employees described at least one concern they had not raised with their superiors — most often out of fear for relationships and reputation.
• Less power activates the inhibition system: you read others more closely and hold back more. This is an adaptation, not a weakness.
• Old family roles tend to wake up at work, because the boss is symbolically a figure of authority.
• If the system really is dangerous, the answer lies not in your sentences but in support outside it — a trade union, the labour inspectorate, people you trust.