How To Fight Your People-Pleasing Inclinations
The strong desire to get along with or please others even if you don't truly want to comes from trauma. Here's how to manage and overcome it.
👋 Hi! I'm Yue. Chief Product Officer turned Leadership Coach. My personal mission is to help women and minorities break through to the C-suite. Subscribe to get future posts in your inbox.
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Client: I don’t like this new leader in the organization. And yet, I always feel like I should try to get along with him, and do the work she asks for to make her happy with me. Why? Is this serving me well? How can I look at this differently?
This is a classic people-pleasing scenario I see often with my clients. They do work to appease or please another person, even at their own expense. It sounds like this:
I don’t want to take on this project because I’m too busy, but I’ll do it anyway.
I don’t like this type of work, but I’ll take one for the team.
[insert objectively bad situation]. No, I’m fine. I’m okay. No, I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t need anything.
Yeah, that is a good idea (self: that’s a horrible idea). Let’s go with your plan. (I really don’t think your plan will work). I can take on parts A, B, and C (why am I signing up for all this voluntarily?)
Often, the larger the differential in power and authority, the stronger the desire to people-please. Sometimes the reaction is so ingrained that the person doesn’t even really realize that there is repressed anger or frustration at the situation until it expresses itself in other ways. You might find yourself wondering:
Why does it bother me so much to do this presentation when I’m usually fine with presentations?
Why do I feel so awkward or annoyed with this person even though they haven’t done or said anything to me to warrant it?
Why did I push so strongly for X or get emotional so quickly on this topic? Why am I finding myself holding back anger or tears?
Fawning is a trauma response
It turns out that people-pleasing, or fawning, is a learned trauma response. Fight or Flight are the more commonly known responses to stress or danger. Men exhibit these responses more than women. However, fawning is another common response, particularly in women. It is much less discussed in literature and society to date (Thank you, male researchers and research participants). Rather than battling it out, women tend to settle conflicts and work to maintain the approval of others.
Where does this come from? Well, it’s a learned response from childhood and shaped and reinforced by family, cultural, and workplace expectations.
Let’s imagine a child who experiences hitting, yelling, or abuse growing up may develop a strong inclination to help resolve the situation. They become adept at reading other people’s moods and adjusting their behavior accordingly. If they don’t, they may get hit (bodily harm), get dinner taken away (face starvation), or go to prison (a common threat that sounds basically like life as you know it will end to a child). In her book, Stephanie Foo describes the phenomenon that even if a child is being abused at home, if the police show up, the child will likely shift to saying everything is fine to protect his or her parents. The fear of losing someone you love is stronger than most other emotions. As a result, the child learns that people-pleasing is the best path towards being loved, having value and self-worth, and avoiding danger.
On top of this learned response, certain cultures, more commonly in the Eastern Hemisphere, value selflessness and respect for elders as virtues. These cultures believe the collective matters more than the individual, and one needs to put the needs of others before themselves. It is improper to disagree or say no to an elder (or in many authoritarian regimes, anyone with more authority). The punishment for not “maintaining the peace” is at best being ostracized at the Sunday family dim sum and at worst, death or shame for the entire family for generations.
Related, gender biases further reinforce the idea that women should be more caring and nurturing, avoid conflict, and put the needs of others first. Starting from childhood, girls are expected to share better (e.g. put their wants and needs behind others), to smile often (e.g. not make a fuss), and to care for others (e.g. take on more chores). In the same vein, the punishments are also more harsh. Girls receive more frequent and harsher criticisms for stepping “outside the lines”. Moms are more likely to say “Ah, boys are boys” to refer to boys asserting their needs or wants. With girls, the answer is more typically “Oh, you don’t need that, be grateful for what you have!”
The same gender bias continues into adulthood in the community and the workplace. Women are more likely to be called upon to volunteer for community efforts. Female leaders are expected to be nurturing and competent. And again, the punishment is harsher. When a woman achieves a goal but ruffles a few feathers, the feedback is often “She isn’t a good collaborator and needs to work on her cross-functional collaboration. Perhaps she isn’t ready for that next-level role.” When a man achieves a goal but gains some enemies, the response is often “Look at what he was able to do! It’s unavoidable that some collateral damage happened along the way. Perhaps they were even envious.”
As an Asian female, I’ve experienced double the amount of expectation to fawn and people-please. I was taught by everyone to be a helpful and kind, but ambitious and successful girl. It is exhausting and has caused so much of my anxiety and low self-confidence growing up.
How to identify your people-pleasing tendencies
Unlike trying to find the shadows of your leadership superpower, it’s rather straightforward to grasp your people-pleasing tendencies. What are you doing that your gut doesn’t want to do? Here are some common feelings you may have:
Pressure from yourself to be friendly, nice, or cheerful at all times, regardless of how you truly feel at the moment.
Anxiety about standing up for yourself and your ideas, or confronting someone with a disagreement.
Stressed from commitments you took on but you really didn’t want to.
Frustration that you never seem to have time to do the things you want to do…after you finish doing what others want you to do.
Fear of not being valuable or valued if you don’t continuously make progress and achieve more…and more.
As a result, people-pleasing can make us take on more than we can handle. It can also pull us into Non-Promotable Work, deprioritize our own growth goals, or prevent us from delegating well.
In the long term, people-pleasing harms our credibility and integrity as a leader or executive. People know when we’re sugarcoating negative events, not standing up for our beliefs, or not letting go and delegating enough.
How do you change your people-pleasing tendencies?
Shifting your tendencies starts with changing your mindset. First, we must internalize three truths about ourselves:
We are not responsible for how others feel
Self-worth comes from within, not doughed out by others
We don’t need to sacrifice our happiness for the happiness of others. It’s not a fixed pie.
In addition to constantly reminding yourself of this new mindset, it helps to adopt a few behaviors to help you shortcut the tendency to agree or take on more.
Stalling: When someone makes a request, ask for time to think about it rather than answering immediately.
Set boundaries and rehearse saying “no”: Set time and priority boundaries so that it’s easy to point to a legitimate reason quickly. Then rehearse before responding.
Time-boundaries: Block out times in your calendar that are preserved for your priorities (e.g. self care). Those become an automatic no except in extraordinary circumstances.
Priority boundaries: Having a your priorities clear is a great way to easily say no to anything that isn’t more important than your priorities.
“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically—to say ’no’ to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.” -Stephen R. Covey, author
Accept discomfort: many of us say yes to avoid discomfort or an awkward situation. Don’t. Be comfortable with discomfort. Sit with it. Growth happens outside your comfort zone.
Accept imperfection or failure: many of us also say yes because we think it won’t be done exactly right if we don’t do it, or it’ll fail. Accept that it is okay to let the less important priorities fail, or not be done well.
Seek help from a mentor, coach, and/or therapist: It may help to seek the support of a coach and/or therapist to work through your people-pleasing tendencies. A therapist is great at helping you uncover the trauma that may be the root cause, and to help you identify the ways it presents itself. A career coach, like me, is great at helping you understand what it looks like in the work context, see how it is harming your career, and help you chart paths forward and keep you accountable.
We are all wired to help each other and to fit in. We are social creatures and doing everything on our own meant certain death. Therefore, it’s important to remember that people-pleasing is a spectrum. On one end, helping and supporting others, maintaining peace, and “taking one for the team” are valuable attributes for any high-performance team. On the other hand, if it comes at the expense of your own safety or sanity, then it will become detrimental to you over time, and eventually, those around you. Be honest with yourself about where you are on this spectrum, and seek that healthy balance!
See you next week at 3:14 pm!
Yue
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