Dear Boss,
A few years ago, I accepted a job as a director of strategy at a small firm. One of the perks of this job was that I would deal with clients less than before, because this company had client managers to do that, and I wouldn’t have to do things like public speaking. To be clear: This wasn’t a promise, just the way the job was laid out, and I liked it as I have never been a big fan of formal corporate work. But now that is changing.
For a while, I was able to minimize my direct client-relations work and time spent leading meetings, which was great. Unfortunately in 2023, we had to downsize. Many of the roles that were buffers between me and clients have been lost. Now I am leading a ton of client calls, which I begrudgingly tolerate.
In addition, though, my company has started pushing me to give huge strategy presentations, appear on panels, lead trainings, present at conferences, etc. I do not want this! I do not want to get better at public speaking or learn how to teach more effectively — I just do not want this, full stop.
Whenever I talk about how stressed I get when I have to speak, they tell me, “We could never tell! You did such a good job!” and say I am good at it. Which, great! I do not care! All I want is to work quietly. I get that I can’t always avoid client meetings, and I have no problem with presenting internally. I’m not trying to never speak in public, but this has branched way out of my comfort zone.
Besides this, my company is wonderful, and I’ve worked at enough places to know that I have it good. I don’t want to work full time anywhere else. I could move back to freelancing, which I used to do, but the market is imploding and I have a baby and a toddler in day care.
Ideally, I would tell my company that I want to walk back all this public speaking — but their growth strategy includes the person in my position doing this, so if I were to say “No thank you,” I would very much risk losing my job. It’s a small company, so there’s no one else on my team I can punt to.
I feel like there’s no solution between “leave my otherwise good job and try to cobble together some kind of freelance career again” (which, *gestures wildly at our capitalist hellscape*) or “spend the rest of my career doing something I really don’t want to do.” Is there?
If it’s true that you’d risk losing your job by declining to do public speaking, that actually makes this pretty simple: You need to choose which of those unpalatable options you find the most tolerable. But I’m not convinced you’ve reached that point. Obviously you know the internal workings of your company better than I do, but unless the goals of your job have shifted so significantly that public speaking is now the most important thrust of your work, it’s unlikely that your company will toss you out simply for raising the issue.
So talk to them. After all, if someone you managed was this unhappy with a new element of their job, wouldn’t you want to know about it? Even if ultimately there was nothing you could alter about their work, wouldn’t you still want to hear their concerns and have the opportunity to at least consider whether you could make any changes? You might be thinking, But I’ve told them I don’t like it and find it stressful, but a lot of people say that about public speaking and still continue to do it. In fact, it’s such a commonplace thing to say that your colleagues may have no idea that you dislike it as much as you do, to the point of you’re considering whether you need to leave your job over it.
If it does turn out that the speaking gigs are truly nonnegotiable, it’s extremely unlikely that a company you describe as “wonderful” will fire a good employee solely for broaching the question. For the sake of being thorough, it should be noted that (in the very worst-case scenario) it’s technically possible that they could conclude, “Wow, we really need someone who’s actively excited about this new direction and that is not Jane, so let’s starting thinking about a transition” … but it’s far, far more likely that the worst outcome from this conversation would be, “We hear you, but we do need the person in your role doing this, so please think about whether you’re up for it or not.” If that’s the case, you’ll be no worse off than you are right now, because you’ll simply have confirmed what you already suspected. In fact, you’ll be better off, by virtue of the additional clarity.
And there’s a chance that the answer will be something entirely different than what you fear! You might hear, “We didn’t realize this was a deal-breaker for you. The speaking work is important, but we’d rather keep you on doing XYZ than to lose you entirely.” Or you might hear, “Well, we can’t cut it out altogether but you don’t have to do as much as you’re doing now. Let’s talk about what’s truly necessary and what’s optional.” Hell, who knows what you might hear — maybe there’s a junior person who would leap at the opportunity to raise their profile by engaging more with clients, maybe there’s a new hire coming in who loves public speaking, maybe they’ll conclude the return on the speaking gigs hasn’t been as high as they’d hoped, and on and on. You won’t know until you talk to them — and they won’t know where you stand until that happens, either.
If it does turn out that this is now a core part of your job, no exceptions, then at that point you can decide if you want to stay, knowing that this is part of the package, or whether you want to look for openings elsewhere. Having it good at your current company doesn’t mean you need to stay there forever, especially if your job changes into something you don’t like. When you say you wouldn’t want a full-time job anywhere else but you also don’t feel equipped to jump head-on into freelancing right now … well, then you’ve got to pick between a handful of less-than-perfect options, but that’s true of every job search anyway. Locking yourself into “it’s this job or nothing, and this job is making me miserable” is setting you up to believe there’s no way out when in fact there are opportunities beyond those.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email askaboss@nymag.com (and read our submission terms here).
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