The Weight of Perceived Expectations

Expectations carry weight. Perceived expectations -- the ones nobody actually stated, the ones you invented in your own head at 11pm re-reading a Slack message -- carry a weight that's worse, because you can't argue with a mind-reading contest you're having with yourself. I've run creative shops for over 40 years and hired, fired, and mentored a few hundred people along the way. The ones who burned out fastest weren't the ones with bad bosses. They were the ones drowning in expectations nobody ever actually set.

I know not every workplace is safe to air your concerns in, and there are bosses who genuinely don't care about morale. But kicking perceived expectations to the curb -- and figuring out which ones are real -- can change how you work for the rest of your career.

Don't Be a Doormat

First things first: DON'T be a doormat. It doesn't do ANYONE, including yourself, any favors. I learned this the hard way early in my career, back when I thought saying 'yes' to every request from an account lead was the same thing as being good at my job. People-pleasing gets you exactly one thing: a longer leash for the next unreasonable ask. Eventually you're at the end of your rope, and nobody even noticed you were holding one.

What REALLY happens when you're busy people-pleasing (or boss-pleasing) is you're setting yourself AND your employer up for failure. Think of it like this: you become a heat source in a culture of bad workplace habits, and bad habits, like bacteria, love a good heat source. Your compliance doesn't stay contained to you. It's the four coworkers you vent to at lunch. It's the ones who watch that 'yes' attitude get rewarded and quietly adjust their own behavior to match. More on that later.

Being the doormat is a slippery slope. In my first decade in this business, one belittling comment about a missed revision note turned into a running theme: one of us mattered more than the other. One of us was worth more. One of us deserved more grace. Hint -- it wasn't me.

I didn't know how to stand up for myself, so instead of getting constructive feedback, I got a toxic pattern. Humans miss deadlines. Humans misread briefs. We all do it. But instead of a straightforward 'hey, fix this,' I got belittled for it. After enough of that, I started believing the implication underneath it: I didn't value my employer's time. I didn't respect them. (Notice there's never a 'we' in that story -- it's always 'I' or 'you.') I got so worried about every task being put under a microscope that I stopped doing my best creative work. Every headline I wrote got run through a filter of 'will this get me yelled at' instead of 'is this the best possible ad.' That's the opposite of good work, and it's the opposite of what any employer actually wants -- even the ones who create it.

What I Should Have Done

It's hard to look back at that stretch of my career. My employer at the time wasn't a bad person -- nobody there was. What I cringe at now is what I DIDN'T do.

I didn't stand up for myself. I didn't speak up. I fell into a cycle of boss-pleasing that wasn't pleasing anyone, including the boss. We missed years of opportunities to reset patterns, find a better way to work together, and cut the dysfunction out of the shop.

This isn't me venting, or recruiting you to come work at Ad Zombies (though the radical-candor thing we run here works pretty dang well). This is about empowering people to respectfully address issues like the ones I faced. They may not be your fault, but they won't fix themselves. And is it worth it to drag that stress home with you every night? For me, it wasn't -- and it cost me creative energy I could've spent on client work instead.

Workplace Morale Matters Everywhere

Regardless of the job, workplace morale matters. I've seen agency creative teams implode from the same dynamics that wreck a warehouse shift or a fast-food counter. The titles change. The math doesn't.

If you hide your feelings about what's happening in your workplace, it doesn't do anyone any favors. And if you think there's strength in numbers -- that venting your grievances to coworkers fixes things -- you're not exactly wrong, but you're definitely not right.

Venting to coworkers might expose the problem, but it doesn't fix it. It actually reinforces the bad practice, the same way an agency that never pushes back on scope creep trains its clients to keep pushing. If a group of you feel and experience the same issue, vocalize it together. That doesn't mean bashing your boss -- it means proposing a solution to the problem you're all living through. In client relationships, I've watched this same principle play out: agencies that never set a boundary end up training clients to walk all over them, exactly the way employees who never speak up train a workplace to walk all over them.

We don't live in a perfect world, and maybe you and your boss just butt heads. But if you make your concerns known, you've done your part -- and you can look for a healthier place of employment without staying stuck in the cycle of perceived expectations.

Break the Cycle

Empower yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses and take them in stride. Don't be a doormat, and don't get so busy perceiving expectations that you miss the real ones -- because you'll do better work and feel a lot happier operating on ACTUAL expectations instead of the ones you invented in your own head. I've built a 40-year career and a few hundred million dollars of client revenue on teams that operate this way -- it's not a nice-to-have, it's the whole engine.