People pleasers are frequently pegged as a great fit for promotion into people management roles. And rightfully so — they are delightful! Everybody adores and respects them! They roll up their sleeves to do the dirty work others won’t, they’re generous with their positive praise and appreciation, and everyone at the company probably owes them several huge favors by now …(that, of course, they’ll never cash in on.)
Ironically, people pleasers can often end up struggling with their transition into people management. The exact strengths that earned them the position can turn into weaknesses that can hamper efficiency, breed burnout, and lead to imbalances that fracture team cohesion.
As a people pleaser myself, I’ve faced all these consequences and more. But I know I’m not alone. Ask any manager about their biggest misstep in leadership, and most will describe a scenario in which their team was hurt by their own personal efforts to be liked. Below are some common ways people-pleasing behaviors can negatively impact a team, and how you might curb these behaviors and their side-effects:
1. Doing instead of delegating
Early in my leadership career, I remember having a difficult time delegating certain tasks to engineering team members. Some people pleasers are simply afraid to burden people with additional work. For me, this issue only popped up during certain types of work. If it was unexpected, lower-priority, or involved a painful legacy system, I often felt compelled to try to handle it myself to preserve my engineer’s time and prevent them from having to context switch from their higher priorities. I had been carrying around some baggage from a past role, where I often felt unsupported in struggling through obscure technical issues, and I never wanted one of my team member’s to feel that way — so I would simply do it. This resulted in more painful experiences down the road, where I had done so much (pardon my language) “shit-shielding” for my engineers, that when they did have to handle one of these tasks, they were far less prepared than they should have been, and struggled in ways they shouldn’t have had to. If you’ve had similar shit-shielding tendencies as a manager, here’s what you can do instead:
- Take note of the types of unexpected work that pops up for your team — whether it’s fielding low-priority requests or questions from other teams, or resolving an obscure customer issue — understand what type of work you might need to delegate on-the-fly. Have a conversation with your team about it, so everyone else is aware and agree on a strategy for how best to spread that load. On-call rotations or informal “goalie” rotations work well for these scenarios, allowing your engineers to mentally prepare themselves for potential interruptions and struggles.
- Agree with your team members on how they’d like you to support them through the obscure, unexpected, or boring work. It’s unlikely everyone is going to enjoy 100% of their job responsibilities, and it’s not your responsibility to take the less glamorous work completely off their plate. Everyone will have different ideas on how you can support them — assigning them a “rubber duck” buddy, agreeing with them on what other work they can de-prioritize to make time for this new struggle, etc. You’ll find these types of support strategies will make the experience less painful for your team member, without having to transfer all the pain to yourself.
2. Avoiding difficult conversations
Giving and receiving constructive feedback can be uncomfortable, but it’s a crucial part of ensuring people are aware of expectations and supported in meeting them. Too often, companies don’t have rigid process in place for creating continuous feedback opportunities, and it’s up to you to create your own. What you can do:
- Set up templates for giving and receiving consistent feedback with your team members — having a regular 1-1 cadence where agenda notes dedicate specific space for feedback will make it easier for both parties to prepare for a difficult conversation. Additionally, inviting others to provide you with constructive feedback is likely to make them more receptive to yours
- Keep your feedback objective — base it on tangible evidence and specific job requirements, rather than “gut feelings” — gut feelings are often laced with bias and don’t lend themselves easily to concrete actions for addressing the issue. If you can’t point to a specific example that demonstrates the feedback you’d like to give, or it’s not aligned with the expectations of their role, you may need to rethink the conversation you’re hoping to have.
- Remember that clear is kind! The more specific feedback you can give, the better your team members can act on it. Shying away from difficult conversations creates confusion and allows others to come up with inaccurate assumptions about performance
3. Playing favorites
Believe it or not, us people pleasers still have favorites. There are some people we feel we need to please more than others. This might be your boss or upper leadership, it might be a team member who is single-handedly keeping the entire organization running behind the scenes, or it could be a stakeholder your team is serving. Accommodating this person can often come at the cost of supporting others. Maybe you’re more likely to side with their decisions, even if they’re unpopular amongst the majority. Or perhaps you’ll avoid giving this person constructive feedback in order to “keep the peace”. Power and dynamic imbalances are likely to crop up in these circumstances unless you are following consistent processes and making objective, data-backed decisions. What you can do:
- Lean on pre-write/pre-read strategies before meetings where decisions need to be made. This helps ensure everyone has an opportunity to have their opinion heard and recorded, and makes it difficult to simply side with your “favorite” when there is a record of how the decision was made
- Have a consistent and predictable process in place that holds all team members accountable to each other. Simple processes such as async daily standups, regular 1-1s with consistent feedback templates, and rotating through team responsibilities can help ensure everyone has visibility into the efforts each team member is working through
I would encourage any new managers to identify how people-pleasing might manifest itself in their work, and put processes in place to hold themselves accountable for curtailing those behaviors. Trying to people-please as a manager will inevitably (and ironically) lead to dissatisfaction among team members. The business requirement is to be responsible in your role, not liked. Setting up your own personal guard rails will go a long way in ensuring you are doing exactly that.
