People-pleasing? It might seem like a different topic for a leadership blog, and yet people-pleasing can happen to any of us at one time or another.
The incidence has increased over the last year as many of us have juggled personal and work priorities to keep everyone happy.
When I refer to people-pleasing, I am not talking about the natural human trait many people have to help colleagues and friends.
In this context, people-pleasing is about individuals across organisations who will often go out of their way to please someone, even if it means taking their own valuable time or resources away from themselves and giving them to others.
On the surface, is this really an issue? The answer is yes.
People-pleasers often act the way they do for several reasons, including:
- A need to be in control of what happens,
- their insecurities about what people might think of them, or
- a lack of self-esteem.
All of which can and do cause issues for the individual in question. Remember, people-pleasers rarely accelerate their careers in the way they want.
I am sure you have experienced colleagues who are late delivering a project because they have taken too much on to deliver within a set time frame.
Constantly saying yes rather than no eventually leads to problems and is rarely a trait to help individuals develop their careers.
So what are the classic traits of people-pleasing, and how can you manage this tendency in yourself or others?
Classic Traits of a People-Pleaser
They are addicted to approval from others, hoping that saying yes to everything asked of them will help them feel accepted and liked.
They agree with everything rather than sharing their own opinion. Not ideal when new ideas and innovation is wanted. Listening to other people’s views in the team is healthy, though pretending you agree to ‘keep the peace’ or be liked is counterproductive.
They want harmony and manage their behaviour to avoid any challenge or disagreement to maintain the status quo.
They apologise for the smallest thing, which is unnecessary. Often, this happens unconsciously.
They feel laden with things to do. Their calendar is full though not with the specific tasks that are a priority in their role.
They are poor delegators and hold onto tasks they really shouldn’t be doing because they don’t want to ‘put on’ someone else.
They are externally referenced and crave praise. Let’s be honest; we all like to be told we are doing a good job. However, it is critical to have our inner source of validation. On the other hand, people-pleasers rarely have an internal reference point for how well they are doing.
Their need to please means they take too much on, which often leads to delays, poor quality of work and a burnt-out people pleaser.
Breaking Free From People-Pleasing
Yes, it’s more than possible to manage the need for people-pleasing.
The first step is to become aware of what is happening. Many people-pleasers have been saying yes for so long it has become an unconscious pattern.
A friend of mine refers to people being ‘asleep’ in how they react to different situations, so waking up and being aware of what we are doing is key.
Dr Tasha Eurich is an organisational psychologist, executive coach, researcher, and New York Times, best-selling author on the subject of self-awareness. She calls self-awareness the meta-skill of the twentieth century. Her book insight is well worth downloading from Amazon as it gives a great overview on why improving our self-awareness leads to success.
At Zestfor, all our development programmes are designed in such a way to help everyone in your team improve their self-awareness through the practical workshops and coaching we deliver, and you can find out more here.
Working on your self-awareness is an ongoing process, so what else can you do now to navigate the people-pleasing side of your personality.
STOP!
Yes, the simple act of pausing before you react helps us focus. A study from Columbia University related to optimising decision-making showed that the human brain needs just 50 to 100 milliseconds to focus its attention on relevant information and block out all distractions.
This is especially true for people-pleasers since it can be an automatic reaction to say yes to all requests asked of them.
Practically this means taking a slightly longer pause before you make any decision to agree to volunteer for anything.
Something else to add to the equation here is a neat phrase; “let me get back to you on that”.
This gives you time to consider whether this particular request works for you.
As an employee, you can say you need to check your work plan and activities and then go back with a question about priorities.
One client I was coaching had a strategy where she asked for clarification on priorities. She could do task x that her manager had asked though Y, A and B would have to be deprioritised. Not surprisingly, her manager said it was fine, and he would allocate it to someone else.
There was no issue or drama, and her manager had even more respect for her as their relationship moved forward.
Until next time,
Julia
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