What would you do next?
A senior colleague repeatedly asks you to do tasks outside your role because you are helpful. The extra work is now affecting your own deadlines, but saying no may feel awkward.
The situation
A senior colleague repeatedly asks you to do tasks outside your role because you are helpful. The extra work is now affecting your own deadlines, but saying no may feel awkward.
Recommended Response
E. Set a clear boundary: you need to finish your assigned work first, and extra tasks need manager agreement.
This protects your role and makes extra work a planning decision, not a personal favour.
Context matters. This is a recommendation for the situation described, not a rule for every interaction.
Explore every response
A. Keep helping because refusing a senior colleague could hurt your reputation.
Being helpful is useful, but not when it consistently damages your own responsibilities.
B. Tell them you are too busy and never help again.
A firm no can be needed, but a blanket refusal may be more than the situation requires.
C. Say you can help only if your manager agrees what should be deprioritised.
This is useful because it makes workload ownership clear.
D. Do the tasks badly so they stop asking.
This damages your own standards and can make the issue look like poor performance.
E. Set a clear boundary: you need to finish your assigned work first, and extra tasks need manager agreement. (Recommended)
This protects your role and makes extra work a planning decision, not a personal favour.
Why is E the recommended response?
Understanding this situation
Repeated extra work needs a boundary and proper prioritisation. Otherwise helpfulness becomes an unpaid workload transfer.
Another reasonable perspective
Bringing your manager into the priority decision is also reasonable if the senior colleague keeps pushing.
Practice. Speak. Improve. — Spekero Playground
