People Pleasing: How our superpowers can play out in overdrive

As a recovering people pleaser, I understand first hand what it is like to seek the approval of others, play small, try to fit in, and not be one's true, authentic self.

When I was an executive and senior leader myself in the corporate world, I was consistently told that my people radar, my ability to adapt, to collaborate with difficult peers and deliver outcomes drove my effectiveness. However, what sat below my self-assured external facade was low self-efficacy, a desire to be liked by others and limited boundaries.

Can you relate to this?

People pleasing explained

People pleasing is when we consistently put other people’s feelings, views, or needs above our own to the detriment of ourselves.

Fawning is the psychological term for people pleasing. It is one of the 4 identified categories of a stress or trauma response, along with fight, flight, and freeze. Even though we can all exhibit the 4 stress responses over time, typically we have 1-2 that are our default reactions. Mine are fawn and fight.

Fawning is when we attempt to avoid or deescalate a perceived threat by tending to the needs or caring for others around us, and deprioritising our ourselves. In doing so, we attempt to avoid the stress that others being upset with us would cause us.

Many of the executives and senior leaders I coach are ashamed of their people pleasing tendencies. They want to care less about what others think of them, they want to say 'no' more frequently and set boundaries, however they have this innate drive to suppress their own needs and fear of disappointing others.

The first step in building a stronger sense of self and prioritising ourselves is acknowledging that many of our people pleasing behaviours enable us be tremendously effective as leaders.

We people pleasers have superpowers in empathy, reading the room, anticipating problems, creating calm around us, amongst many other traits. Yet it is when we exhibit these ways of thinking and operating in overdrive for a prolonged period of time that it becomes problematic for our wellbeing and sense of self.

The image below explains these superpowers (left side) in overdrive (right side).  

Change is possible

We CAN shift how we think, feel and behave using psychological, evidence-based strategies to stop being a ‘yes’ person. We CAN release the fear of disappointing others.

The second step to reducing our people pleasing tendencies is to understand our cognitive, emotional and behavioural patterns - we cannot change what we cannot see in ourselves. Self-reflection is an important tool to increase our self-awareness. The research tells us that the more we self-reflect, the higher our levels of self-knowledge are. This makes sense.

We can only change what we can see in ourselves.

Questions to ponder on

To understand our patterns further we can reflect and write down our responses to these questions. We can discuss them with a trusted peer, friend, or family member to seek further input into what they notice about our tendencies as we all have blind spots.

1. What types of situations, or behaviours from people trigger you into people pleasing mode? Why do you think this is?
2. What internal stories do you tell yourself about why you place greater priority on other people’s needs than your own?
3. What are some of your needs that frequently go unmet at work, or in your personal life?
4. How can you better balance your needs and other people’s needs?
5. How can you build a stronger sense of self that is separate from other people's views and expectations of you?

Simple strategies to put into place

Here are three tips to help manage your people pleasing tendencies:

1.     Prioritise daily meditation to become more present and connected to your needs - meditation activates our parasympathetic nervous system and helps us listen to our feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations more easily. Start small with 2 minutes a day and build up to 10 minutes preferably in the morning.

2.     Pause to create space before you respond and say yes automatically to someone’s request of you – reflect back their request to check understanding, then tell them you will get back to them. Sit with yourself and reflect on whether you are able to, or want to do what someone else has asked.

3.     Start small to establish boundaries with one person your life – look for opportunities to say no, push out the timings, or modify their expectations of you.

You can download this free self-reflection guide on people pleasing here.

As people pleasers, it is important to celebrate the superpowers we hold and balance this with focusing on dialling them down at times to put ourselves first more frequently.

I explore people pleasing in depth through my 1:1 executive coaching, in my group coaching programs and keynote speaking on the topic. Visit Thriving People Consulting to find out more, or reach out for a virtual chat to share your leadership story with me.

Rebecca Christianson

Founder & CEO – Thriving People Consulting