An antidote to people-pleasing
Research has found 50% of adults are stuck in a people pleasing trap, trading their authentic voice for others' approval. This isn’t personality, it's harmful programming.
I’m one of the 50% (and in active recovery).
People pleasing is a primal strategy desinged to keep us alive when we fear rejection from the tribe could result in mortal harm. A helpful as a kid when we have limited options, but once we morph into adults, that same wiring only serves to kill our potential and burns us out from the inside.
In The Courage to Be Disliked, authors Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga use Adlerian psychology to explain that people-pleasing is really a disguised need for control, cleverly managing how others see us because we once needed our tribe to survive. Early in life we make a choice to disconnect from how we genuinely feel in favour of how we think others need us to feel.
The upside is we become highly empathic, tuned to expertly spot and relate to others emotional states. The downside is we can get overwhelmed and run over by others because we don't have the skill to enforce boundaries that protect us.
In teams we become excellent connectors and adaptors. But it can come at a cost to our personal wellbeing because we tend to self-abandon in service of others.
Here are the steps I use to bring the best of people-pleasing empathy with the protection of boundaries into the workplace:
1. Catch the Pattern: Notice when you're attempting to manage others' emotions to calm your own anxiety, not because it genuinely helps them.
2. Separate Caring from Fixing: Use your empathy superpower to deeply understand someone's feelings without being responsible for making them feel better.
3. Choose Your Investment: Direct your energy towards what matters most rather than trying to keep everyone comfortable all the time.
And above all, realise the truth that having the courage to be disliked for expressing your genuine thoughts, feelings or talents isn’t fatal any longer.
When you choose to be in service of others while also being in service of yourself, you become your authentic self. And that’s the safest path out of people-pleasing programming I’ve found.
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