How to Overcome People Pleasing
(Originally posted October 10, 2010)
Wanting another’s approval is healthy. Needing it is sick.
You can’t please all the people even some of the time.
“The disease to please,” as psychologist Harriet Braiker likes to call it, is a form of addiction. Just as a drug addict seeks drugs, a people pleaser seeks approval.
Are you a people pleaser?
- Say yes too much and no too little.
- Find it difficult to express your true feelings.
- Feel devastated when others don’t like you.
- Don’t speak up when you think others will disagree.
- Fear rejection.
- Take criticism personally.
Leading through the need to please
- Accept that others won’t always like you.
- Embrace disagreement and learn from it.
- Press through resistance.
- Preserve relationships even when you say no.
Overcoming addiction to people pleasing
- Don’t swing from people pleasing to people offending.
- Begin expressing your personal feelings and priorities with friends. Slowly branch out to others.
- Satisfy your need to please by intentionally helping others with short projects that don’t distract from fundamental responsibilities and priorities.
- Believe the people who count will accept you for who you are not for what you do.
- Delay saying yes. If you can’t say no, say, “Let me get back to you.” Or, “I need to check my schedule.” Don’t let delay become avoidance. Let it be your opportunity to learn how to say no.
- Don’t make long excuses when you say no. “I’d love to help but I can’t this time,” says enough.
- Practice saying no with friends.
Today’s Challenge: Identify one unhealthy “people pleasing” behavior and replace it with gentle assertiveness.
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How would you help a person overcome the need to please?
Awesome article! Dan, have you ever read Pleasing People by Lou Priolo? Incredible and practical!
Thanks for the post!
Hi Noah,
I haven’t read Priolo’s book. I’m sure it’s useful… 🙂
Best,
Dan
A couple thoughts . . .
Wanting to be liked is different than valuing the respect of others. You can be respected without being liked, and respect comes, I believe, from integrity. You can have a healthy goal of earning everyone’s respect.
When I approach life with a servant attitude, and serve people at any opportunity even if it’s just holding a door or finding a telephone number, then that little “please like me” part of my ego gets plenty of affirmation. That gives me a healthier base for saying no when that’s the right answer.
Dear Dan,
I appreciate the suggestions provided to overcome pleasing. I believe that pleasing is the sign of selfishness, incompetency, fear, insecurity, lack of confidence and trying to be somebody else. Authenticity is the solution of pleasing. And to become authentic, one needs strong self belief and values. Weaker values and poor self belief brings pleasing habit. I would rather help person to overcome the need to please by introspecting, strengthening self belief, inculcating confidence and putting effort before expectation. Generally people please because they expect more than they deserve. They also make less effort than they expect. People pleasers are great criticizer. They severely criticize. The reason and logic is simple. They please for their interest; similarly they criticize about someone to put others down to get chance to succeed. People pleaser and criticizers is internal enemy of the organization, and internal enemy is more dangerous than external one. So, leaders should discourage practices that actually guarantee success based on pleasing or criticizing.
How would you help a person overcome the need to please?
This is a good way to frame your question (because it would have been a lot easier to ask “when have you been overcome by the need to please?”).
The main thing I would do to help a person overcome the need to please is to make sure I communicate to them explicitly, nonverbally and verbally, that they are appreciated and important to me even when we disagree.
I was listening to a public radio broadcast a few weeks ago, and I am pretty sure they were discussing “From Bud to Boss.” The example was given of a woman who was responsible (as part of her HR duties) for terminating the COO. Ultimately, that COO hired her for his NEW organization. She must have communicated well even despite having bad news. It’s possible.
Hi Dan,
What a wonderful post & indeed an equally apt picture. I specially liked the suggestions to overcome people pleasing. People please due to several reasons per se for their wrong desire, for pleasure of others as its also true that people sitting on high designation some time like to get pleased et. its a wrong perception perhaps of those who please that it could be an easy means to achieve their desired aim. It could be possible that in short run they might be achieving also but for long term they miss to see their failure. One can discourage pleasing by not giving due attention to it & even not allowing pleasing to become a tool for achievement rather hard work,selflessness, capability & ability should become the drive of success.
A people pleaser wants to be liked. I would try to convince this manager that being liked long term, not on every interaction, is the goal. If you try too hard to please, you will be taken advantage of, not respected, not help your people grow, not be a good manager and most importantly, not achieve your goal to be liked. If you work on changing your goal to being respected as a helping, achieving manager long term, you will do more of the coaching and no saying needed to achieve these goals.
For those who want to test the degree to which they try to please, go to http://www.managingpeoplebetter.com.
Great post Dan. I think the notion of not being selfish or wanting to be of service sometimes confuses the issue and people then don’t know their NO.
You’re to be commended fo your efforts, good sir! Nicely done!
Pleasing people is the healthiest tonic of the day.
hmmm, i just took a class on boundaries and i can see how this is very much related. I really enjoyed this article, but i see i have a lot of work to do in order to even acknowledge my people-pleasing behavior.
Thanks a ton though!
lizbian