I recently sat across from a client who was struggling with the direction his company is taking. As we delved into the matter, I asked some probing questions:
How bad is the problem?
- If the situation at work were chest pain, would it be:
- Heartburn
- Angina; or
- Cardiac arrest?
- What was the end-state he was hoping for from us working together?
- Had he already made up his mind about what he wanted to see and needed me to justify it?
- Did he want out?
Luckily, we are dealing with heartburn chest pain; he truly wants his company to be everything it could ever be; He knows it can be better and needs help getting there; and He wants to grow and thrive with his team.
But he did say something that stopped me in my tracks. “I am a pleaser and want everyone to be happy,” I responded to him. That being a pleaser is like making a soup sandwich.
How do you make a soup sandwich?
You take a slice of bread, pour a ladle of soup over it and cover that with the second slice of bread. What you end up with is not a bowl of soup or a sandwich, but a hell of a mess. What do you get when a leader tries to make everyone happy?
Let’s accept a straightforward fact… Leadership is hard.
It is equally exhilarating and challenging, but it is hard.
Every hard decision a leader makes will inevitably excite some and upset others. At the same time, we want people to like us personally and in our role as a leader: That can lead to people pleasing. When that happens, we begin to lead by opinion polls rather than vision.
What happens when we try to lead by pleasing?
- No one is satisfied – When the leader tries to please everyone … no one is happy.
- Tension mounts – People are conditioned to jockey for positions with the people pleaser leader. This creates a political tempest among people who should be working together.
- Disloyalty reigns – People don’t trust a people pleaser. They quickly learn that the leader’s words aren’t always the whole truth, but rather what will keep them popular.
- Frustration rules – People pleasing leads to fractured teams and fragmented visions.
- Visions stall – Great visions take us where we’ve never been. That means change, and who is happy with change? People pleasers like to please others to be satisfied… see where this will end up?
Can you gauge if you are a people pleaser?
Someone told me once that when you move on from your current leadership role, the way to gauge that you have been a good leader is that the going-away-party attendees should fall into three groups:
- 25% should be crying that you are leaving;
- 25% should be cheering that you are leaving; and
- 50% shouldn’t care.
I guess that when a people pleaser moves on … everyone is cheering.