Welcome to the new manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim nickel. Hello, and welcome.
I'm glad you're here, and I hope you're doing well.
I want to start today by sharing a celebration.
I'm so proud. And so, happy, one of my clients
has started a new job, and one of the things we had coached on
was her confidence in moving from an organization that she
had been in for many years and understood how everything.
Into a new company that is in a different part of her industry.
So she had less experience in that specific part of the
industry. And she had some insecurity and
some, you know, her confidence felt a little shaky because she
thought I won't know as much and you know I'm kind of new and I
want to do a good job. And so she's now been at this
new job for about a week and she said, you know, I I had a couple
realizations and she said, one is that when I ask questions?
Everyone learns and that was important for her to realize
because before she was starting the job.
One of her fears was, people will think, I don't know enough,
they'll question why I'm there and she was worried about, would
she be able to ask the right questions?
Would she look stupid? If she was asking questions
about things that she She was supposed to know already and so
it was this huge Revelation and she realized, oh my gosh, when I
ask questions, everyone learns. So asking questions isn't a bad
thing and it doesn't make me look bad.
It actually is normal. Everybody knows, you know, I'm
new here and asking questions helps other people.
So that was the first, Aha. And the second was she said, oh,
it's no longer about trying to prove myself.
Now, it's about what do I want to contribute?
And why it's about what I can contribute to the success of the
team? And when she started to think
about it in those terms, the pressure, she felt started to
dissipate and now it was no longer.
You know, she was kind of no longer obsessing about what do
they think of me? And my proving myself.
It was no longer about her. Now, it was oh, how do I want to
contribute to the success of the team and when she focused on the
team and how she could help everybody?
The it completely changed her thinking her experience.
No, she's been able to really enjoy this first, you know,
these first days in the new job and her confidence that has
always been there is just more available now.
So I feel so happy for that, I love when my clients have those
aha's and those insights that I'm so happy to share them with
you because if you are also thinking, I need to prove
myself. Maybe consider flipping it to
ask instead, how can I contribute to the success of my
team and also realizing hey when I ask questions, everybody
learns. So there you go, that is how
we're starting today. And remember if you want to work
with me one-on-one to apply these insights and Implement
them, turn them into action, make them your own.
That is the work that I do. I'm a coach.
I help people to work better with others and a lot of the
times that's around confidence and mindset and how you're
thinking about the situation and dealing with the overwhelm, the
uncertainty, all of the human things that show up when we work
with people. So, go to the show notes, if you
want to know how to book a call with me to talk about working
together, and I'm also going to put in the notes, a link where
if you Have a question or a topic that you would like me to
address here on the podcast. Then please send me a note and I
will add it to that my list of topics.
So our topic today is about people pleasing and it comes up
a lot especially when you're a new manager.
Because, you know, now often you're thinking about not just
how do I make sure that my man Sure is happy, but we often
correlate, the contentment and happiness of our team with our
success of managing people. Meaning.
So if my team is happy, I'm doing a good job.
If my team, or if someone on my team is very unhappy, then maybe
I'm not doing a good job or either something I need to do to
address that and it can get a bit entangled with Our own sense
of confidence and being effective and, you know,
sometimes it flares up in unexpected ways.
So, I wanted to talk to talk a little bit about
people-pleasing. And first of all, I find that
when people tell me that they have a people-pleasing tendency,
they say it kind of like they think of it as a bad thing.
They feel maybe a little bit embarrassed about it because
they say, Like, oh, I tend to be a people pleaser.
No one ever says, oh, I'm a people pleaser.
I've been really focused on pleasing pleasing other people
for years. I've been kind of obsessed with
it actually like nobody presents it that way.
It's always kind of like, well, I also know.
I'm a bit of a people pleaser. It's a little bit almost like
they're admitting something that is not a great thing.
Thing. But I want to neutralize that a
little bit because when we think of it as this heavy bad thing,
it actually makes it a lot more difficult to deal with.
So the tendency to people, please number one.
When we have that kind of that awareness of what is the
emotional state of people around us and a desire that the
emotional state of the people around us be one of contentment
and joy that in and of itself is actually great.
And especially in the workplace. I mean, think about it, we
talked about wanting our customers or our clients to have
a great experience with our product or with our service.
We talk about things like NPS scores because we want people to
be happy and to recommend our product or service to others.
We want them to be pleased with their experience in the
workplace. Specifically, that's why so many
ins do things like pulse surveys to get a sense of how are people
feeling? We talked about morale?
Morale is a sense of that positive emotion of yeah.
Like I actually feel happy at work and I feel that I trust my
colleagues and the mission and the leadership.
So this idea of, you know, are people feeling pleased?
I think we can Overlook some of the value of what that Has to
bring because we so often encounter it in either and
unpleasant or negative way. But essentially what it really
means is you have the ability the awareness to perceive what
is the emotional tone of other people.
And then the thing that we want to pay attention to you is, what
do you do with that perception? One of the things we can do is,
we can question it, right? We can also question, you know,
the accuracy of it. We can then question, what to
do? You make it mean, when you see
someone who seems displeased or disappointed or upset, like what
do you do with that observation, what do you make it mean?
And that's really where the work of kind of untangling and
becoming more clear. So you can be more intentional
and Liberate, that's where that comes into play.
So let's look at this from another angle.
So why do we do people-pleasing? Why is this a thing on some
level? It's because it feels good to
have a certain reaction from somebody else.
That's really what it's about. So it's kind of like if you had
your choice to have, Have a conversation with someone who
was feeling pleased and content and happy.
You would choose that over same person, same conversation, but
they are feeling displeased disappointed.
Impatient frustrated upset in any way whether it's about you,
or whether they're Simply Having that emotion about something.
Else and you are simply in proximity to it like on some
level, it just feels better for you.
You feel more calm. You feel more safe.
You feel more at ease when the person near you or around you is
also in a more content state. So, one way to think about it,
it's almost like you're just managing your environment, kind
of like if it was too. Cold.
You'd want to get a sweater or turn the heat on if it was too
warm, you would not wear the sweater or you might open a
window to get the breeze in, in that same way, we can think
about the emotions of other people around us, kind of like
the environment that were in, and we're always trying to
adjust that so that we can feel most comfortable and most at
ease. Now getting a bit more specific,
there are a couple of specific examples or reasons that I've
seen through my clients and my work about, kind of where this
desire for people-pleasing comes from.
So one is that if you're a very empathic person, meaning you've
always been very sensitive to the emotions of other people
around you. Another way to think, Give it as
when someone is having an emotion, you feel it in your
body. Like, if someone is feeling
angry, you start to physically in your body, feel the same
sensation of that, that angry feeling or someone is feeling
really sad. You also start to feel very sad
and, you know, one of the one of the reasons why this this tends
to happen. Number one is, as humans were
very wired for social perception and force for social like
emotional mirroring and in the body we actually have these
things called mirror neurons and that's part of how science
explains why we can perceive and literally feel the emotion that
someone else is feeling. So you might be a person who is
very High empathy and you know you were just always able to
sense. The emotions of people around
you and feel them. Such that you may not even
notice is the emotion I'm feeling mine or is it somebody
else's? But it's almost like you're this
really powerful tuning fork. And so when a note is played
that matches that tuning fork of you, you also So vibrate you
also feel that same emotion, so that's the sense of high empathy
and what that means then is that if you feel so tied to the
emotional state of others, then for sure you're going to want
the people around you. To be pleased and content so
that you can also feel that and that you don't get kind of
dragged along with the emotions that they're experiencing.
So that's one high, and Half the other one is we can use
people-pleasing from a desire for connection.
It's the sense that if the other person is content and pleased
and relaxed and happy then we think.
Okay, we're good, we're connected.
And if they are frustrated angry upset distant withdrawn cold
then we feel a disconnect with I feel like the relationship is
damaged or ruptured and that can feel scary.
And so we'll want to repair that and we'll try to do that through
people pleasing, and that's sometimes will also connect to a
sense of safety. So, for example, if you grew up
with adults, either in your family, or in your school, or in
your community, if you grew up around adults, who were highly
volatile, Meaning, you know, very dramatic, emotional and
behavioral swings or if they were very exacting like had high
Perfection behaviors and that can turn into putting a lot of
pressure on you either explicit like, especially around school.
I see this a lot where, perhaps the adults in your life, put
specific pressure on you to have perfect performance in school or
music or Sports. Sports or in your role as this,
you know, in your in your family.
Like as the eldest child or whatever your role was, in your
family, whether that was explicit or implied, you might
have absorbed this sense that, okay, I need to make sure that
the adult is pleased with me, so that nothing bad happens.
Like, it was a way of kind of controlling your environment of
creating safety of In connection and sometimes we just absorb
that and then we bring that same pattern of behavior into all of
these other relationships so that can show up at that way.
The third thing, it can also show up in Conflict avoidance,
so if we have a fear or an aversion to anything that feels
like conflict or confrontation, then one way we'll deal with
that is by pleasing others as a way to avoid.
The discomfort of conflict or confrontation.
And number one, that's a super normal thing, but we want to be
aware of that because at work. And as a manager that
specifically will really get in the way there are times, when
actually, the kindest thing is to confront and have an
uncomfortable conversation or to move towards Conflict to try to
diminish it or understand it, or figure out, like, what is going
on and that will require that. Yeah, maybe someone isn't
pleased and that that needs to be okay, you don't want your
sense of safety or success to be dependent upon the continual
good mood of another person. And so if you are a people
pleaser because Typically, you know that you are you tend to be
conflict avoidant that something that we can understand and look
at and find an alternative to because that is not a good
long-term strategy that actually becomes very limiting and very
exhausting. And so we actually want to
address the discomfort so that you're not doing everything you
can to wiggle out of that perceived conflict, okay?
And Last one around people-pleasing, is that it can
also come from this genuine place of care and because you
care so deeply and you want people to be doing well and you
want them to be happy that can drive.
This people pleasing Behavior. But what's actually happening
is, it's almost like you've hooked your achievement drive
into your caring. And what that means is you've
I've decided that if this person is in a good mood or feeling
happy with me, that means I am being successful.
That means I am doing a good job and I think that Dynamic also is
actually very common and I'm thinking specifically, you know,
I've mentioned my nephew's on this podcast before and when
they were little, this was my first experience with small.
Children. So if you're a parent, listening
your Advanced at this already, you know how this works.
You know if you have if you have responsibility for a small child
and they are crying, it doesn't feel good, you want them to be
happy, right? You're thinking, what can I do
to please this tiny human and bring them to a state of
peacefulness and contentment because you care.
You care about their well-being and In that case, actually our
achievement Drive does kind of look into that because I know
that when I was able to soothe or, you know, address the need
of the child and so he went from being upset or you know hungry
or you know, sometimes they get so tired that they can't sleep
and they get really grumpy and learning how like how can I help
this child take a nap. Like, that is my measure for
Success today. You know, there are some really
interesting ways that actually our sense of achievement, it
felt so good. Oh, I got both of them to take a
nap. Yes, I am winning right?
Like that, sense of. Okay, if I can if I can achieve
their emotional contentment their physical well-being, it's
because I care and I am going to feel like the greatest champion
and it feels really good. And so sometimes we don't even
realize that the way that we care and are feeling of
achievement ends up getting hooked up in the behaviors, we
bring into the workplace and trying to please other people.
So that overall picture that I want to offer is if you know
that you tend to lean towards people-pleasing behaviors and
Some of the effects of that will turn into No Boundaries
second-guessing yourself, undermining your confidence, you
know, feeling like you're avoiding important
conversations. There are so many different
symptoms. That, you'll notice that come
up, when you lean into the people-pleasing at work, but the
solution to all of this really is the same.
And what I want to offer you as the solution really, the
starting point that will help you unhook, the people pleasing
behavior from the workplace is this.
So listen up learn how to be present with discomfort and the
uncomfortable emotion so that you can discern and make an
intentional decision. In what often happens is, we
feel the discomfort and then we become reactive we jump into
action, right away and sometimes that action is avoidance.
So, the first thing we need to learn is how to be present with
that, discomfort, how to be present with the uncomfortable
emotion. That you are feeling letting
yourself be present and feel that first.
So that then you can CERN. Okay, what is this about?
What kind of impulse am I feeling around the
people-pleasing? Am I trying to avoid conflict?
Am I looking for connection? Is this?
An empathy situation where I'm simply really perceptive and
really feeling this other person we want to slow things down a
bit so that you can discern what's going on and then make an
intentional decision, it's okay to be a people pleaser As long
as you're doing it intentionally and not out of habit or because
you don't know what else to do. Or because you're afraid of
doing something else, right? We actually just want to harness
that and use it. And it's most beneficial way in
a way that's beneficial for you and for your team and for the
mission and not just about relieving the discomfort in the
moment that you're experiencing. Being because of what you're
seeing this other person having a difficult emotion.
As one specific example, I had a manager that was working with me
and it was at the beginning of the pandemic and she was feeling
really bad because she thought my team is so unhappy right now.
I feel like I'm doing a bad job because if I was doing a good
job they would be happy and I said, look, we're still early in
this pandemic. We don't really know what's
going to happen. We don't know all the way.
Is that their personal lives are being affected or their extended
family? Actually, what if them being
unhappy is a perfectly normal, and healthy response to the
situation and circumstances that they're in.
What if you being a good manager is being okay with them, feeling
how they're feeling and being able to support them through
that, and through all of these challenges in the ways that
you're able to do that. And And it really helped her to
see her role in a different light and also to take off some
of the feeling of blame or failure and just get a
perspective that was actually more useful and I would offer it
was even more honoring of the entire team in the entire
situation. So that is what I wanted to
offer to you today. Some insight around
people-pleasing and offer a little bit of Is to yourself.
If you're a person who has a pattern of that, there are
probably some situations where that's actually a very valuable
thing to have. We just want to make sure that
it's not running the show. And if you want help with that,
we can definitely work on it. Reach Out Below and we'll talk
about how I can help you see that, all right, that is what I
have for you today. I hope you have a wonderful rest
of your week and I will talk to you next time.
Bye. Hey before you go if you like
this podcast leave a review. Tell me why you listen and what
has helped you? Thanks so much.
I'll see you next time.