Lanna Hill: Standing up for yourself at work doesn’t make you a villain

Chances are, no matter what generation you hail from, you’re familiar with the term “villain era”.

Made mainstream on social media a few years ago, embodying your villain era isn’t as villainous as it sounds and is about clear and assertive communication, healthy boundaries, prioritising your own needs, and reclaiming your power. In fact, it’s more about being the hero of your own story rather than the villain.

As a (somewhat recovered) people-pleaser, this is not just relatable but deeply personal for me. Not speaking up when I wanted to, saying something was okay when it wasn’t, and making myself smaller or more agreeable for fear of being seen as arrogant, bossy, or rude were all well-tread behaviours right up until my early thirties.

Fortunately, as the saying goes, with age comes experience, and I’m usually pretty comfortable having direct conversations, dealing with conflict, or renegotiating boundaries at this stage of my career. Yet many professionals I know, from different genders, ages, education, or experience, still struggle with embodying and embracing their power fully.

So my question is, if we know that so many of us find this idea of being the villain, or more accurately the hero, of our own stories so challenging — why are we dichotomising behaviour as either good or evil, hero or villain?

While, of course, there is a maladjusted and unhealthy version of this kind of behaviour, I would argue most of us are just trying to empower ourselves to ask for a pay rise, speak up in a meeting, and, in essence, sit in the driver’s seat of our own lives.

The more specific phrase of being in your “corporate villain era” was coined after going viral on TikTok in 2022, when reclaiming a sense of work/life balance became far more widespread, mainly led by generation Z in response to hustle culture. But two years later, can’t we strive for something in the middle?

Maybe one of the reasons is the way conflict can often be positioned as something we need to avoid, rather than learn how to navigate and move more confidently through. Or could it be because of the representations we see in pop culture, such as Meryl Streep’s iconic portrayal of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, the fictional character loosely based on former Vogue editor Anna Wintour?

The portrayal of powerful women historically has often been associated with undesirable personality traits. To be powerful was to be a threat. And regardless of gender, being seen as a threat is usually not such a great thing in our culture. Standing out from the pack can often make you more of a target.

Having said all this, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t, at times, over my career or personal life, fantasised about saying exactly what I was thinking, rather than the more filtered, diplomatic version. One of my favourite parts of the villain era personification is defying other people’s expectations and social norms, letting go of relationships that no longer serve you and being more comfortable saying no. Let’s redefine the rules and make this kind of behaviour the norm — rather than that of the villain.

Lanna Hill is a strategist, speaker and founder of Leverage Media.