If you consider yourself to be a bit of a people pleaser, you’re not alone.
Many thoughtful leaders seem to have this trait.
But here’s the good news – I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.
Sure, being a people pleaser can have its drawbacks, but it also has considerable strengths.
In this post, I’m going to take a look at how to manage your people pleasing tendencies and still lead effectively.
What Is a People Pleaser?
Put simply, a people pleaser is what it sounds like – someone who wants to please other people.
For many people pleasing leaders, this means that they:
- Focus on helping and supporting others
- Strive to create a harmonious environment; and
- Deliver on their commitments so they don’t let other people down.
These all sound pretty good, right?
As you can see, they tend to be more motivated by building positive relationships rather than just getting things done.
This doesn’t mean they can’t deliver, it just means they may be motivated differently than someone who is very goal-focused and target-driven.
A people pleaser can be an excellent leader, because they are interested in and invested in the people around them.
They want to help and support, and they’ll spend time and energy doing so.
And as a result, team members who work for a people pleaser may actually feel safe and supported, which can lead to a great team culture.
Learn More: Liked or Respected: Which Would You Rather Be?
OK, So What Are the Drawbacks of Being a People Pleaser?
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and people pleasers are no different.
When it comes to leadership there are a few situations where you may struggle if you’re a people pleaser.
First, you might find it difficult to give people feedback, especially when it may be pointing out areas for improvement.
Sometimes a people pleasing leader may also seek to avoid potential conflict, such as initiating a difficult conversation.
You may also find yourself taking on too much, because saying “no” or pushing back may feel like you’re letting someone down.
For some leaders, there can also be a desire to be liked by the people around them. This is quite natural, but may not be helpful in leadership situations.
Are You Going to Tell Me to Stop Being a People Pleaser?
Nope.
That’s like trying to tell a horse to stop being a horse.
If you’re a people pleaser, you’ve developed those tendencies over years of life, all the way from birth, through your upbringing and into your adult life and leadership.
I don’t think it’s useful to try to change who people are.
What’s more useful is to be able to acknowledge your people pleasing tendencies, and use that self-awareness to adapt the way you lead.
In other words, it’s about understanding your own style, looking out for the warning signs, and adapting your behaviour accordingly.
That means I’m not going to tell you to stop being a people pleaser.
Instead, I’m going to help you watch out for your people pleasing tendencies and then adjust accordingly when you need to.
You can be a people pleaser without doing people pleasing things all the time.
Learn More: Thoughtful Leader Podcast #248: Are You Avoiding Something Important?
No Matter Your Style, You Need to Adapt
I sometimes hear leaders in my training courses say:
“That’s just the way I am. They can take it or leave it.”
Well, that’s one way to think about it. The problem happens when people choose the “leave it” option.
It’s easier to just say “That’s how I am”, because then we don’t have to do any work.
It’s much more difficult to admit that your style may be holding you back in some situations, and then taking ownership of your behaviour and working to adjust it.
Even people who aren’t people pleasers have this challenge.
Some leaders are very direct, and goal-focused. They have the challenge of steamrolling people, and being perceived as aggressive.
People pleasers have the opposite challenge. They may be perceived as passive or a “pushover”.
The answer? Being aware of your natural tendencies, and adapting your style when you need to.
You won’t need to adapt all the time, but you’ll probably already be able to identify a few situations when adapting your style or approach could be useful.
Learn More: Should You Be Yourself or Adapt to Your Audience?
Ideas to Lead Effectively as a People Pleaser
OK, let’s get down to the business of working out what to do about it.
If you’ve identified yourself as a bit of a people pleaser, congratulations! That’s the first step.
Next, I’ll cover some ideas that I believe can help reduce the impact of your people pleasing nature.
1. Use decision-making tools
I believe that leaders often know what they should be doing with regard to their leadership, but they sometimes struggle to do it.
It’s easy to think of a good leader and what they would do, or get advice from someone about what to do or read a leadership book.
However, it can be a struggle to follow through, because we might feel scared or lack confidence.
In other words, the “what” can be easier than both the “how” and also motivating yourself to actually do something difficult.
That’s where I believe decision-making tools can be helpful. One of the best decision-making tools for leaders is their own personal values.
When used effectively, personal values can help you make decisions about what you should do in a given situation. This can take away some of the “grey area” and uncertainty.
For example, if one of your personal values is “honesty”, then you can ask yourself:
“If I was living that value, what would I do in this situation?”
The answer would be that you’d communicate openly and provide your honest opinion, rather than hide it away.
Other examples of decision-making tools are conflict handling styles (which I cover in my article about when to collaborate) or even a simple two by two matrix, which I discuss in this article about decision-making.
The point is, use decision-making tools to try to get out of your own head a little, and make a more objective decision.
These tools can reduce the temptation to blindly act out people pleasing behaviours.
Want Some Help Understanding Your Values?
I also have an online course to help you understand your values, and teach you how to use them.
It’s a small investment for a big return on your leadership confidence. Click the link below to get started.
Join the Leadership Foundations: Understand and Use Your Values Course today.
2. Practice structured reflection
A useful thing to do when you’re trying to reduce your people pleasing behaviour is to identify patterns.
A pattern is something you notice happening repeatedly. In leadership, patterns are often found in the way that we respond in various situations.
For example, you might notice that when a certain team member behaves badly, you tend to look the other way instead of addressing it.
Or perhaps you fail to communicate with your boss, because you’re more focused on what’s happening in your team.
Structured reflection is a good way to identify patterns, especially when you do it in the context of specific events that you found to be especially positive or negative.
I like to call this process “useful thinking”, because it encourages us to learn from and take meaningful action based on our previous experiences – you can see the process below.
Following this process is a good way to make sense of things that happen in your work and life, and then come up with strategies to execute if a similar thing happens again.
This process is so valuable that I created The Useful Thinking Journal to help you do it too. You can learn more about the journal and get your physical or digital copy here: >>> Get the Useful Thinking Journal.
Learn More: Thoughtful Leader Podcast #259: Why leaders should have a reflective practice.
3. Examine the negative consequences
One of the techniques that works really well for me is looking at the negative consequences that might happen if I don’t take appropriate action.
For example, you know you should probably talk to that team member about his bad behaviour in the meeting the other day.
What might happen if you don’t do that?
By avoiding that conversation, you might be:
- Setting a precedent for the future. That team member will feel like they can behave that way again.
- Sending a bad message to other team members. They see that this behaviour is tolerated, so they might feel they can do it themselves.
- Damaging your reputation. People see that you’re not doing anything about the problem, so you may lose respect and people may no longer want to follow your lead.
You probably wouldn’t want to have those things happen, so thinking in this way can be a powerful way to motivate you to doing the right thing.
4. Reframe your thinking
Reframing is a useful tool that can help us to see situations differently.
A common example is the glass of water.
If the glass is filled half-way to the top, an optimist is seen as someone who says the glass is half full. A pessimist would take the negative slant, and the glass would be half empty.
A thoughtful leader like you would know, however, that the glass is actually full – with half air and half water!
The point is, reframing is simply changing your perspective about a situation.
When it comes to people pleasing, here are a few examples.
1. Feedback
You may be fearful of giving someone feedback because it might hurt their feelings. This will mean they dislike you, which is the opposite of people pleasing. Therefore, you are tempted to avoid giving the feedback.
A reframing of this situation might be that you are actually hurting the person by withholding your feedback, because they don’t have an opportunity to improve.
2. Addressing bad behaviour
Using our example of bad behaviour earlier, a people pleaser may be hesitant to address bad behaviour in a team because it may result in conflict, and upset somebody.
A reframing of this situation could be that if you don’t address the bad behaviour, you are actually upsetting the other team members who are doing the right thing.
3. Taking on too much work
Another common people pleaser behaviour is that of saying “yes” to everything. For example, when your boss asks, you take on additional tasks even if you’re feeling swamped.
A reframe for this situation might be that if you keep taking on more work, you might burn yourself out, meaning that you will be very unhelpful to your boss if you call in sick.
You can see the idea now. Taking a different perspective may encourage us to take a different action because we see the situation in a different way.
Don’t Stop Being a People Pleaser. Instead, Manage the Symptoms
You can’t change your true nature, but this doesn’t mean that you need to do people pleasing things all the time.
People who try to “turn off” their own personalities put themselves under stress because they are continuously acting as somebody else.
Being a people pleaser has advantages in leadership, but it also comes with its drawbacks.
Look out for your people pleasing tendencies, and adapt your style when you need to.
Then you can be a people pleaser and a good leader at the same time.
Are you a people pleaser? How do you manage this in your leadership? Let me and all the other thoughtful leaders know in the comments below!
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