A Big Realization
“I realized that my people-pleasing was actually holding my team member back.”
I led a workshop last week about people-pleasing and how it undermines our leadership. Participants were asked to call to mind an example of a situation in their lives where they went into people-pleasing and felt that it impacted their leadership.
And again, leadership isn’t just about how we are at work. Leadership shows up in ALL areas of our lives. Family. Community. Our relationships with ourselves.
Many of them had significant aha moments when they worked with a partner around this question-
In this situation- did your behavior truly SERVE this person? Honesty here is crucial.
So often when we people-please, we think that we’re helping the person we’re pleasing.
But, we don’t know that we are. We are making an ASSUMPTION based on partial information.
One of my clients realized this first-hand when he transferred an employee out of his department after six months of agonizing over what this would do to his employee. He really believed that if he was just nicer to this person that she would improve and he wouldn’t have to have the difficult conversation of talking about her performance and transferring her.
A YEAR after the transfer this same employee came back and thanked my client. She had been miserable before the transfer and she liked her new role so much better. He realized that his people-pleasing had actually been holding her back.
Hmmm.
So, that year that my client thought he was SERVING this employee by keeping her in the same role? Not true.
One of my mentors, Steve Chandler, has an audio where he says, “If your brother-in-law was an alcoholic and you gave him a drink, you would be PLEASING him. But, you wouldn’t be SERVING him.”
True leadership is about SERVING those we lead.
Want more? I’m leading a five-month group coaching program about leadership for women. It’s a spectacular opportunity to define what leadership means for you and to step more fully into the leader you want to be.
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