311: The Hidden Costs of People Pleasing Leadership

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:10]:

Are you a people pleasing boss? This is something that came up in several conversations that I had during my tour around America and I thought it was definitely worth addressing here. What I mean by people pleasing boss is either you’re a boss who is a people pleaser or you could be someone who is working for a people please boss. So that’s what I’m talking about today on the Happier at Work podcast. I am your host, Aoife o’ Brien and I’m excited to dig into this topic in a little bit more detail because like I said, it came up on more than a few occasions during my trip around the US And I think it’s something that will really resonate either as a leader or someone who has a leader who is a bit of a people pleaser. As always, I would love for you to get involved in the conversation, let me know of your own experiences and feel free to reach out to me directly on podcastappyratwork, ie or get involved in the conversation over on LinkedIn. I’m most active there. So coming back to this idea of the people pleasing boss or the people pleasing leader, these are the leaders who genuinely care about other people. I think that’s the thing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:18]:

So they’re a nice person and you want to like them, but actually they’re not necessarily effective as a boss. They want everyone else to be happy, they want to avoid conflict, they really struggle with saying no and they hate disappointing other people. So on the surface it might seem like it’s good and you might like them as a person, you might even like them as your boss. But you have to really think is the people pleasing leader effective? And if you are the people policing leader, you might think that you’re doing the right thing. You, you might struggle with not having people like you if you have to take a stand on something, if you have to hold them to account. But it is for the best to become a more effective leader if you can understand and address these kind of people pleasing behaviors. So one of the biggest things that a people pleaser will do is avoid difficult conversations. These are the kinds of conversations that can feel really uncomfortable to both the the person who wants to have the conversation and the person who’s maybe part of the conversation.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:28]:

But more on the receiving end of that difficult conversation. If you like, it could be in relation to poor performance. It could be that someone is dominating a meeting so they’re trying to get their $0.02 in, but actually no one else has had the opportunity to speak and the leader is not jumping in to Kind of save what’s going on or to share their opinion or to cut the other person off because they’re talking too much. It could be a conflict between two team members that everyone knows about, but the leader’s not actually addressing it because they don’t want to create more conflict. They don’t want, they’re completely conflict avoidant. And I think the trouble here is that everyone can see what’s going on and they can see that the leader is not doing anything about it. And this then becomes amplified. So oftentimes as leaders, we don’t understand the power that we have and this behavior becomes amplified and it becomes the normal behavior.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:28]:

And so other people will role model that they will copy the behaviors that you’re doing. They will avoid those conversations or they’ll try and take advantage and try and get away with things because they know that you’re not going to have that difficult conversation. And again, there’s more than a few episodes of the Office with Michael Scott that I can think of that’s come to mind in relation to those kinds of behaviors. One of the biggest reasons that we don’t have those conversations if you are a people pleasing leader is because they feel so uncomfortable. And I’ve just come off a call this afternoon actually, and this is something that came up in that call. The idea of, well, how do we give feedback to people? I think we’re not trained in how to deliver feedback. We’re not trained in how to have those hard conversations. We don’t want to disappoint other people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:18]:

We want other people to like us. But the thing is, it doesn’t remove the discomfort by not actually having that conversation. It just transfers it to other people. So if you think about it from that perspective, you’re basically making other people uncomfortable by not having that momentary uncomfortable conversation that you need to have. And the question for you today, what conversation am I avoiding because I don’t want to make someone feel uncomfortable, uncomfortable? Is there a conversation that you’re avoiding? And I can think of conversations that I’ve avoided in the past because I didn’t want to disappoint someone. I wanted them to like me. That’s not being an effective leader. Theme two then is they say yes to everything.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:03]:

So even though the team is overloaded, maybe there’s client demands coming in, maybe the CEO has asked for a last minute request or a change, something’s going on and there’s boss. Even though they know there’s no capacity within the team to take on extra work they say yes anyway when they really should be saying no. They should be protecting the team from that. And I know certainly I’ve been on the receiving end of that where I was overloaded with work and my leader said yes to a piece of work that came in even though there was no capacity. And guess who had to pick up the reins on that? Yes, absolutely, I had to pick up the reins. And it was a real struggle and I was going to use some curse words there, but I’ll refrain myself. It was very annoying. I will say, and maybe in the defense of the people pleasing leader, maybe they think we’ll make it work or we’ll share the workload across the team.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:58]:

But that’s not always how it works and the team will perceive it. Here’s just another thing. On top of everything else that we have on our plate, here’s one more priority that we need to deal with. And again, thinking about, well, why do leaders do this? They think they’re maintaining harm harmony. They think they’re maintaining a positive relationship with clients or with whoever it is who’s making this request. They’re trying to maintain those relationships, but actually they’re damaging the relationships that they have within the team by overloading other people with additional work. And if you’re trying to think of a way to say no, someone told me something a long time ago and I just loved this. When you’re saying no, you’re saying no to that thing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:42]:

And when you say yes, you’re saying no to a thousand other things. So really have some consideration about when you’re saying yes to something, what are you saying no to? And when you say no to something, it’s easier to flip and say, well actually we have created capacity and we can take that on. And it might be hard to do but creating some space, creating a pause and saying, can I come back to you on that? Without committing to something straight away, get buy in from the team, get some extra resource from somewhere, do something about it. Another area that people pleasing bosses struggle with is making a definite decision. So they really struggle to not disappoint people by making a decision one way or another. So they can deflect the decision making, they can look for consensus for buy in from everyone else around them and try and reach some sort of consensus so everyone’s happy. Rather than a compromise, rather than accepting the realization that some people are going to be disappointed by a specific decision that has been made. Best thing that you can do in that situation is notice the behaviors.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:57]:

Are you gathering input From a lot of different people. Are you trying to get buy in? Are you speaking to lots of different people to try and gather opinions? Or are you putting your flag in the sand and saying this is what I have decided? Because that kind of clarity is the kind of clarity that a leader needs to bring to the team. The team need that sense of clarity. Because if you’re going around in circles and you haven’t actually made a decision, then the team don’t know what to focus on. They’re confused. They don’t have that clarity. They don’t know what is the priority. They.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:35]:

They don’t know what it is they should be focusing on because you haven’t provided that clarity for them. A way to think of it is that once a decision is made, even if it’s something that disappoints someone, at least they have that sense of clarity. And it’s less frustrating than being in limbo and not having any decision at all. A better way to approach it is to gather that input and then decide. So make a decision or have a deadline for the decision. Explain your reasoning behind the decision. I think that’s important so people understand how the decision was reached. I think the bigger struggle is if you make a decision but don’t really explain the reasoning behind it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:15]:

I think people really want that sense of clarity, especially when it comes to decisions that were made that impact them directly. As I mentioned at the start, the people pleasing leader, the people pleasing boss, they get a sense of safety from feeling like other people like them. They want to be liked. That’s why they are pleasing to other people. What I’ve noticed in my personal life, if you try and be pleasing to others, they probably don’t even realize that you’re trying to please them. And I have had this where I went out of my way to accommodate someone else and she didn’t even notice. And afterwards she said she thought I was actually quite selfish and self centered and lacked empathy. That’s a conversation for another day.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:07]:

But I felt like I was going out of my way. So people often don’t even notice if you’re going out of your way to accommodate them. And here’s where those people policing leaders get tripped up. They feel like they want everyone to like them. They may favor people who they get along better with. They may favor people who are more like them. Someone who also is very agreeable, let’s say the person who doesn’t challenge them, who doesn’t give them that negative feedback, who’s always giving that reinforcing positive feedback loop. And so they will go back to that person who’s giving them that positive input for their opinions.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:52]:

And the one who’s asking the difficult question maybe gets overlooked. The one who’s challenging how things are being done is being ignored. So a really subtle one, but watch out for it. And I know I’ve certainly done that in the past where I favoured the opinion of people who I like more within the team. And it’s probably something I didn’t even really think about consciously, but it’s something that we need to bring into awareness so we know that we’re actually doing it before we can begin to address it then. And for me, it also comes down to this idea of being liked versus being trusted. So do you want to be the person on the team who was liked or do you want to be the person who people trust? And I think building a greater sense of trust means getting those opinions from different people, not just the same people all the time, not just the people who agree with you. One of the last things I want to leave you with is the idea of boundaries.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:49]:

This is something I do touch on in the book in the leadership chapter, but it’s such an interesting thing. And not everyone knows what boundaries are. I’m listening to an audiobook at the moment and I think we’re very aware when someone else has crossed a boundary of ours, even if we haven’t communicated that boundary. That’s one thing I’ll say. But we’re less aware when we’ve crossed someone else’s boundary, and especially if they haven’t communicated that to us. So leaders who can model really strong boundaries are people that we can learn from. But oftentimes the people pleasing leaders haven’t got really strong established boundaries or they let people kind of walk all over them a little bit. They haven’t created those, or they haven’t upheld the boundaries that they have created.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:37]:

Maybe they say something like, I won’t send an email. Like I always go back to this idea of emails after hours. I won’t send an email at 9pm or I won’t send an email after hours. And then lo and behold, you receive an email. And that’s the kind of behaviors that are being modeled. So aside from the fact that you’re, you know, you’re working out of hours, it also shows that you say one thing and you behave in a different way. So there’s an inconsistency between what you say and what you do. So, thinking about boundaries, what boundaries do you have Are you always available? Are you always responsive? Are you always the one to jump in and rescue and solve other people’s problems? What do you think that says about you? Maybe you think again, going back to this idea of being liked, being committed to the cause, you know, what do you think that says about you being if you’re overworking, if you are doing lots of things that are demonstrating to other people that you’re always available.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:41]:

The big problem with this is that is role modeling behavior. Other people, when they see you doing this and also when they see you being inconsistent with saying one thing and doing another, they will think, well, this is how things are done around here. I need to step up and I need to do these things as well. And if you think about it from an employee perspective, if you get into a routine or a habit or just a way of working, that you’re jumping in and you’re taking on extra work, or you’re correcting work that has come to you and needs correction, if you’re doing those things, then you need to stop doing those. You need to stop trying to rescue people. Hand back accountability, set clear expectations. Hand back that accountability to those people who need to be held accountable into account. When that expectation is set for the team that you’re going to be the one to rescue or to save or to protect them in some way, then you’re going to become the bottleneck in the team and you’re not going to be able to achieve results through the team.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:50]:

It’s always going to be reliant on you and you need to give that accountability back. So make sure that you’re setting really clear expectations, provide that feedback and then hold people to account to that, as I mentioned, you become the role model, you become how people understand how work gets done. And so you need to be role modeling that leadership behavior. So some questions for you if you suspect that you might be a people pleasing boss, is where am I prioritizing being liked over being effective? What conversation am I avoiding having? And I can think of a few that I have avoided in the past. So I’m sure you have some that you can think of right now. What have I said yes to that should have been a no? So where am I allowing my people pleasing tendencies to get in the way of my ability to do my job? You might be able, you know, might be thinking of that. And where am I creating ambiguity because I’m afraid of disappointing someone by making a decision? Where am I creating that sense of ambiguity because I haven’t made that final decision yet. So when we are a people pleaser, and maybe we’re a people pleaser with some people and not with others, and maybe we’re a people pleaser in some situations, but not all situations.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:10]:

But when we have these people pleasing behaviors, we think that we’re helping other people. We think we’re being really supportive, we’re protecting their feelings, we want to be liked, so we’re protecting our own feelings as well. But actually it can undermine the very things that we need to create a really thriving workplace environment. And it can undermine our effectiveness as a leader as well. What we need in the workplace is really clear expectations. I’ve touched on that. We need to hold people to account. We need accountability.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:46]:

We need to create psychological safety so that people feel free. Free to speak up and share what’s going on and that we listen to them and take action. We need trust and we need growth and we need healthy boundaries. So these are the kinds of conditions that we need to create a thriving workplace. If you want to know more about that, then definitely check out my book, Thriving Talent. I do touch on not specifically people pleasing leaders, but I do talk about leadership when I talk about creating the conditions to thrive at work. I would love to hear your own experiences of either being a people pleasing leader. Maybe you still are now, no shame.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:25]:

Or being on the receiving end of a people pleasing leader. Get involved in the conversation. Drop me a note on podcast@happieratwork.ie, drop a note below or get involved in the conversation over on LinkedIn and I hope to see you there. Sam.