A colleague takes credit for your brilliant idea. Your boss gives your dream assignment to a brand new employee. A department head throws your entire team under the bus.

How do you react? Do you speak up and risk sounding shrill and rocking the boat? Or do you suck it up like a good soldier? Think carefully before you answer, because whether you’re conscious of it or not, how you respond to these work situations impacts how people will treat you later.

Margie Warrell, women’s leadership advocate and author of Brave: 50 Everyday Acts of Courage to Thrive in Work, Love and Life, says that our behavior teaches people how to treat us, and she’s right. Next time a boss bulldozes you into accepting an assignment better given to someone else or your name is left off a meeting agenda (and there will be a next time), you’ll have to choose your response. And know this: Your colleagues will be watching to see how you’ll behave.

If you let the moment pass without speaking up, you’ll be training that individual (and anyone else who’s watching) that it’s OK to take advantage of you. “If you don’t correct them,” tweeted Warrell, “they’ll know they can get away with it.”

Being easygoing and likable at work can get you a long way in business, but if you really want to be taken seriously on the leadership track, it’s not enough just to be liked…

Want to learn when to stand up for yourself at work?
Read more of my article on The Daily Muse.