Is People-Pleasing Undermining Your Leadership?

Is people-pleasing undermining your leadership?

“I can’t give her negative feedback because she might leave, and then what would the rest of the staff think of me?”

I actually heard a version of this from a client a few years ago.

He had a lead designer who came in late, sometimes didn’t show up, and complained about everything to everyone. He thought this designer was brilliant and was afraid of confronting him.

The question I had for him was this, “What is not addressing this costing you? Both as a company and as a leader in this company?”

When we slowed this down, he realized compromising his leadership was actually costing more than he could afford to pay.

This employee’s complete disregard for company policy was showing all his other employees that the rules were negotiable or simply avoidable. Productivity was suffering. Employee morale was at an all-time low.

And, he was putting money into the company to cover payroll every two weeks because the company wasn’t profitable.

Through our work together, he fired that designer. He firmed up his company policies. He started communicating more clearly and directly with his employees.

He set aside his people-pleasing tendencies, and he started to lead.

His company started to become profitable. His employees showed up with more enthusiasm. Payroll started to cover itself. Over the course of the next six months, the company saved over half a million dollars.

Why did this happen?

Simple. Strong leadership.

And, you don’t need to be a CEO to struggle with this. People-pleasing affects our leadership in our families, in ourselves, and in our communities.