How Being a People Pleaser Is Hurting Your Career

While in uniform, some things were clear: who you were, what you were responsible for, and what you’d sacrificed were all displayed on your chest, shoulders and collar. Your uniform and rank noted your seniority, achievements, and influence. Those around you quickly identified how they measured up, whether they should comply or direct, and how decisions would be made. Now, in the civilian sector, you notice a completely new set of rules for advancing an idea and are looking around for the rules of engagement.

Taking off the uniform and stepping into your civilian career means rethinking how your ideas, vision, directives, and value get communicated. No longer will your positional authority command compliance. Now, you’ll need to focus on relationship building, credibility, visibility, and influence.

How Civilian Influence Actually Works

In the past, the private sector assigned a lot of value to rank (status, job title, seniority, and stature). The notion of executive presence layered on certain expectations around how professionals looked and dressed, how they spoke, and whether they commanded attention (gravitas). A prestigious job title plus executive presence was known to be the recipe for influence in the civilian sector.

Today, that formula looks different. We see examples and evidence of people across organizations who carry tremendous impact in their team, who speak and others listen, and who influence decisions at the highest levels of their community, company or organization, yet who do not have the job title or presence you would expect.

When you have influence, people take you seriously. Others will consider what you say, trust that your words match your actions and values, and want to include you in important conversations. If you have low influence, you can be overlooked and passed over for promotions and other advancement, can be taken for granted, and may be assumed to be less qualified, interesting, and important to the team’s (and the company’s) success.

Earning What the Uniform Used to Give You

When you join a new team or company, you will bring credibility, recognition and some degree of influence with you. If you’ve invested in promoting yourself, being intentional about your professional relationships and exposure, and have consistently advanced your personal brand and values, then when you enter a new environment, people will already have a positive perception of who you are and what you stand for.

• Examples of ways you can be intentional about your positioning:
• Building social capital. Being visible and engaged on platforms such as LinkedIn will expose others to your ideas, message, talents and goals.
• Informal networks (who knows you, who vouches for you) drive opportunity and influence, as the word of others often carries great credibility.
• Being seen. If you aren’t visible, people can’t learn who you are and what you care about. Volunteer to lead the project or present the results. Offer to mentor younger professionals. Raise your hand to share your perspective or ideas.
• Being open to listening and learning. Even if you have a senior job title in the company, showing openness and listening without judgement let’s others know you care about considering their ideas.

Because the military culture rewards clear hierarchy, veterans entering the civilian sector can default to rank equivalents as positional cues, instinctively looking for who they believe holds the most authority or power before engaging. That instinct, useful in the military, can be costly in more experiential environments where relationships, trust, credibility and expertise matter more than job title. Instead of abandoning the discipline and structure of the military culture, learn to lead without rank, building coalition and collaboration instead of issuing orders, and creating influence by sharing who you are and what you care about.