Is People-Pleasing Holding You Back?

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.

How often do you want to speak up and disagree with a colleague but stop yourself? Take on an annoying task for your boss, even though you’re maxed out, and see no upside in doing it? Agree to go out for lunch or happy hour when you’d rather keep working or go home? If the answer to some or all of these questions is a lot, you might just be a people pleaser.

In the workplace there’s a fine line between being the standout employee who helps the team, volunteers for assignments, socializes and gets ahead, and the one who says yes to everyone and everything, even when it’s burning them out or damaging their reputation. Today’s guest is here to explain what people pleasing at work looks like, why it doesn’t serve us well, and most importantly, how to navigate away from it without hurting our careers.

Hailey Magee is a certified life coach and author of the book Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power. She joins me now. Hailey, welcome.

HAILEY MAGEE: Hi, Alison. Thanks so much for having me.

ALISON BEARD: I’d love to start with your definition of people pleaser. What does it mean to you?

HAILEY MAGEE: So in the book, I define people pleasing as the act of putting others’ needs, feelings, wants and dreams first at the expense of your own needs, feelings, wants and dreams. So it’s not just being kind and generous, but it’s sacrificing yourself in the process of doing so.

When we’re people pleasing, our insides don’t match our outsides. So when we’re being kind and we do a favor for someone, we might help them out with a task or support them in some way and we do it because we want to, we feel good about it and it aligns with our values. But when we’re giving through the lens of people pleasing, outside we may seem easy going or happy or flexible, but inside we usually feel resentful or overwhelmed or overworked. And so that’s the clearest way you can tell when your kindness is veering into people pleasing territory.

ALISON BEARD: And do most people pleasers realize that they’re doing it or do they need help recognizing that this description fits them?

HAILEY MAGEE: I think it takes a while for people pleasers to really come to terms with the fact that this is a pattern of behavior. For so many people we become people pleasers because somewhere along the way we learned that this pattern of putting others first at our own expense would keep us safe somehow, whether that’s physically, emotionally, socially, or even materially. But the thing is, it may have kept us safe in the past, but in the present as adults with power and agency, it usually harms us more than it helps.

ALISON BEARD: And you were inspired to start researching this subject and write this book because you yourself suffered from people pleasing. And now you’ve worked with dozens if not hundreds of recovering people pleasers, so how do you see the problem playing out in the workplace for all of those people?

HAILEY MAGEE: So there are a couple of different ways that people pleasing shows up in the workplace. And in many ways it’s unique because to some extent we all sometimes sacrifice some degree of our own full authenticity in order to work, because we sort of have to meet the demands and expectations of a workplace.

But it tends to show up in three specific ways among the folks I work with. So the first way is that it shows up in our relationships to other people. This can look like we’re overworked but we’re unwilling to express our needs or make requests to our colleagues or our managers or our bosses. We might be conflict averse. So really unwilling to have those hard conversations. Or a lot of times there’s this element of over functioning. So when other people aren’t doing their job or functioning properly, we’ll overwork and pick up the slack for them and get so burnt out in the process.

But many people pleasers are also perfectionists and many of us derive a sense of worth and value from over giving, and that’s where people pleasing shows up internally. So even if our workplace would theoretically be receptive to accommodating our needs, many of us push past our own limits and boundaries, we overwork to the point of burnout; you know, I have to function at 125% to be liked and valued.

And then finally, the last sort of third way this can show up, which is a little bit more nuanced, is that there are also societal pressures at play that sort of force us to people please in the workplace because of our identities. For example, women in the workplace are often subtly reinforced that if they speak up or if they make firm convicted decisions, they’re often seen as being demanding or overreaching. Also, people of color in the workplace have to deal with racial pressures and they might face pressure to code switch or adjust their behavior or their dress to fit in with white colleagues. So there are lots of different ways that this can show up at work.

ALISON BEARD: I can see that there would be negative consequences for the individual to doing this, for the person who’s doing it, but part of the issue is the fact that oftentimes it benefits the team and the organization. How do you as the employee, as the people pleaser, try to break this cycle when your team or your organization might want you to keep doing it?

HAILEY MAGEE: Yeah, what’s interesting Alison is I like to really challenge the idea that burning ourselves out and over giving is beneficial to our workplace because the way I see it is that oftentimes it is actually not sustainable in the long term. And I really encourage people to think about their people pleasing in terms of sustainability. Because in an isolated instance, overworking or saying yes to a task you don’t have time for might not actually be a problem, but in the long term, what I see among my clients over and over again is that the result of this people pleasing in the workplace is that so many end up completely burnt out and overwhelmed, so many end up experiencing physical health or mental health issues that then impact their work performance.

And so ultimately what I like to remind folks is that it does actually benefit your workplace for you to be able to show up rested, balanced, and not feeling this subtle lurking resentment toward your workplace and your colleagues. One thing you can do practically speaking is if you’re struggling with people pleasing in the workplace and you’re thinking like, gosh, is it really worth it to speak up and try to change this? Just play out a mental movie. Imagine if you were to keep doing things the exact same way for six months, one year or five years, and as you watch those negative side effects accumulate, it suddenly becomes really clear that something usually needs to give.

I think of this one client I had who was a sort of middle manager in the tech space. So they were sort of working at this hip new tech company and she was a woman. And what happened was she often really struggled to set clear limits and give hard feedback to the folks that she managed. She didn’t want to hurt their feelings and she didn’t want to be a nagging or demanding boss.

So what happened was when her employees underperformed, instead of giving clear feedback, she often just picked up the slack on their behalf and overworked for them. So over time, what happened was that the work did technically get done, but it was at her own expense. And unfortunately, what also happened then was that she was subtly enabling her employees underperformance by not being willing to have the hard conversation with them.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And if you have an underperforming team, it’s going to show up eventually even if you’re trying to cover their slack. So let’s move to solutions. You argue that people can break themselves of this habit. Where do they start?

HAILEY MAGEE: A really helpful place to begin, because like you said, Alison, and so many of us have this habit without being fully aware of it, and so it really helps when we can draw our attention to, okay, when am I people pleasing? What are the signs that something isn’t working for me? In the book I call these our signposts. So often, especially in the workplace, what you up seeing is that folks who are struggling with burnout, overwhelm, resentment. These are some really clear signs that some of your needs are not going met there.

You might also notice you’re having physical symptoms of overwork. And what I really like to encourage folks who struggle with people pleasing to remember is that so commonly what people pleasers will try to do is they’ll be in an environment that’s not working for them and they will try as hard as they can to change themselves so they don’t have to change the environment or the situation because the thought of having those hard conversations is so uncomfortable.

So they may try to need less, they may try to have more balance outside of work and all of these things. But sometimes at a certain point, what people pleasers have to reckon with is the fact that something does actually materially need to shift in the dynamics of the workplace in order for their needs to be met. So once you identify those signposts, the key question that folks need to reckon with is, okay, something’s not working for me here, so what’s within my control to create a change and try to meet this underlying need?

I encourage folks to write a list of all of the things that might be within your control there, even if doing the thing really scares you. So on that list might be something like scheduling a time to sit down and talk with your boss about what you need, or having that awkward conversation with your frustrating colleague. Even things like setting limits around how much work you’re doing outside of work hours can be on that list.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And you talk about this process that, as you said, starts with introspection and you think about your feelings, your needs, then your values, then your wants. Why is it important to go in that order before you get to sort of that thing that you’re going to change that’s in your control?

HAILEY MAGEE: Yeah. Well, it’s really important to sort of start from the ground up because the truth is we can’t advocate for our needs if we don’t know what we need and we can’t say what we feel if we don’t know what we feel. And unfortunately so many people pleasers are actually fundamentally disconnected from their core needs and feelings because we’re so accustomed to assessing ourselves through external validation, we’ll often perform and do what other people say we need to do without ever stopping to pause and say, Hey, wait a second, what is it that I need and feel?

So we sort of have to fundamentally start from the ground up. And the reason I recommend starting with feelings and needs is because for many of us, they’re the most simple and embodied place to begin. And then once we go through that process of getting clarity within ourselves about what we need and feel, we can then take that information and figure out how to convey that properly and palatably by making requests and setting boundaries.

ALISON BEARD: So I’ve moved to the step of outlining what I need, what I want, and I’m choosing something within my control, which is having a conversation perhaps or setting a boundary. How does controlling what I can control translate into other people changing their behavior so that they’re not making demands of me that will sort of tempt me back into people pleasing?

HAILEY MAGEE: One of the most important mindset shifts here when we’re thinking about, all right, I know what I want and need, how do I communicate this? How do I bring this into the workplace somehow? And I really think the best place to start here is that instead of seeing your wants and needs as something you’re going to impose upon someone in a negative way, really try to see this process as a collaboration. We are trying to have these conversations, whether it’s with a colleague or an employer, where we want to emphasize the mutual benefit here of why it’s so important that we get our needs met and we don’t fall into this place of overwhelm, burnout, and resentment.

And when you really stop and think about it, there are so many mutual benefits to those dynamics not being present in the workplace. And ideally, those we work with will want to hear what those things are. So I recommend going into this conversation, seeing it as a collaboration and raising this question of, Hey, I’m noticing such and such isn’t working for me, and I have some ideas. And sort of framing it in that collaborative way makes it feel easier to bring up and it also makes it easier for others to receive and be open to.

ALISON BEARD: Let me ask though about saying no to assignments, for example. We just did an interview on the show with Bonnie Hammer, who’s a vice chair of NBC Universal, she’s worked her way up through the industry, and her message to particularly young people in the workplace is you’ve got to do any job they ask you to, and you should do it with a smile because that’s the way you get people to like you, you get people to trust you, you get them to give you better assignments in the future. So how do you, if you’re someone who is ambitious and driven and wants to get ahead, set boundaries with colleagues and bosses in a way that won’t stop you from making that progress?

HAILEY MAGEE: Your question just brings me back to this core tenet of what is sustainable for us in the long term, right? Because there’s no denying that when we’re ambitious and we’re wanting to succeed, there are forks in the road where we might say, you know what? I’m kind of overworked, but I really want to excel here, or I really want to ascend, so I will take on that extra job, or I will do that extra task.

And I think being discerning when we do have the bandwidth to make those compromises is helpful and can help us achieve. But at the same time, I’ve worked with so many people who have developed the pattern or tendency of regularly saying yes to things when they really don’t have the space or feel an internal no. And I think that’s the key.

So much research shows that the folks who are most susceptible to burnout are actually those who are most achievement oriented, most hardworking, and most passionate about their careers, because ultimately, those are the folks who will not say those no’s along the way. And so something I like to remember for folks who are in that position is really making sure that what you’re saying yes to aligns with your vision of what is sustainable for you in the long term.

ALISON BEARD: It also reminds me of Adam Grant at Wharton’s Research on giving and taking. He makes the point that no one likes a taker in the office, someone who’s only out for themselves and is never helping, and there are actually great benefits to being a giver, a collaborator, someone who does volunteer for work that others might want to take on. But there’s a fine line there. You can’t be giving all the time.

HAILEY MAGEE: No, you can’t. And that distinction is so critical. Working hard and being achievement-oriented is not intrinsically self-sacrificial. The very same action that for one person might be people pleasing for another person would just be an ambitious decision that aligns with their values and aligns with their desires.

And so I really want to make that distinction clear, that working hard, taking on extra tasks, helping out a colleague in need, these things are not intrinsically people pleasing, but they are people pleasing when they result in self-sacrifice.

ALISON BEARD: But going back to Bonnie Hammer’s point, there are times in your career, particularly when you’re young and inexperienced, that you’re going to have to take on assignments that you don’t want to do, that don’t necessarily advance you. So how do you counsel people to decide whether this is an area where they’re going to go ahead and people please, because it’s the right thing to do in this moment, or they’re going to set the boundary.

HAILEY MAGEE: So I think this question really brings us back to this conversation about our values. When I’m working with people pleasers who have such a history of defining themselves based on externalities, coming home to the values that we most wish to embody is one of the most profound things we can do to regain a sense of connection with ourselves and also to orient our difficult decisions based on us, based on these intrinsic motivations.

So for example, someone who is trying to decide whether or not to take on a job that they may not love but may increase their professional success. What I encourage them to do is assess whether that decision of taking on that role aligns with their values inside. So if one of their values, their core deepest values, is truly ascension and growth and professional ambition, it’s quite possible that even though taking on that job would be hard and difficult, there is still that alignment where the outside actions are matching with the inside values. And for a recovering people pleaser, that’s a great sign that you’re doing something that aligns with you at your core.

ALISON BEARD: What are some examples of clients that you’ve had who have made these changes, perhaps both in their professional and personal lives? In a holistic way they’ve set boundaries with their teammates, with their bosses, with their subordinates, with their friends and family. How have you seen their work or career improve big picture?

HAILEY MAGEE: Yeah, so for most of my clients, what I do actually end up seeing is that the efforts we make to break people pleasing patterns in our relationships with friends and family and at home do often translate into the workplace. Because what’s happening here is there’s this fundamental restructuring of how we exist in the world. Whereas previously, we were constantly passive and deferential and overly flexible, now, what often happens is we begin to be a little bit more firm and immutable in who we are and what we need.

I think of one client in particular. She came to me when she was really at a breaking point because all of her efforts to over give, especially in her marriage and in the workplace, had resulted in her just being so utterly burnt out that she felt she barely had the energy to take care of herself, much less do anything else. And it was this really difficult reckoning, and I see this across the board with so many clients, where it becomes very clear all of a sudden that the only two paths forward are to continue sacrificing yourself and further running your health and well-being into the ground or to pause and say, this isn’t working for me, and to make that clear and then let the chips fall where they may.

In this particular client’s case, she decided to stop self-sacrificing, and it became clear that her self-sacrifice was the only thing that was making that job tenable. And unfortunately, she had to leave it. And while that transition was incredibly painful for her, and there was a while where she really reckoned with her own sense of worth and value, down the line, I got to witness this beautiful process of her slowly discovering what her needs were and using that as a litmus test for selecting future partners and workplaces in the future. So there was a definite period of growing pain followed by a period where she was finding things that were better in alignment.

ALISON BEARD: That’s interesting because my next question was going to be, what if you figure out that you’re in a workplace where you can’t really set good boundaries and achieve what you want?

HAILEY MAGEE: Yeah. And I just want to acknowledge how normal this is. Like I said earlier in our conversation, so many people pleasers will go through this process where something isn’t working and so they do everything within their power to make it work inside of themselves. They try to shape-shift, contort, they try to need less, to feel less dissatisfaction. But often what happens in our healing, and this is surprisingly a positive thing, even though it feels like a negative thing in the moment, is we realize I can no longer shape-shift and accommodate, something needs to materially change in my circumstances in order for this to be a healthy situation for me.

And what often happens in some workplaces is that the workplace is not willing to materially change to accommodate you and what your needs are, whether that’s needs for greater balance, more rest, and a more fairly distributed workload. And what I like to remind my clients is that a relationship, whether this is interpersonal or a working relationship that only functions when you abandon yourself was ultimately never a healthy or aligned fit for you.

ALISON BEARD: But there are cases that you’ve seen in which people have changed in this way and the team around them, their bosses, the organization as a whole has accepted it?

HAILEY MAGEE: Definitely, because I think especially when a workplace is truly employee-centered and they want to have long term employees who stick around and do their job well, they are devoted and committed to making sure that they’re not creating a culture where their employees are getting constantly burnt out.

That does not benefit the workplace. They don’t want to have to lose employees and put in effort and resources into finding new folks to fill their shoes. So I think workplaces that are willing to grow and change, take their employee’s communication of, Hey, I’m overworked, hey, this is not distributed well for me, as information that can help them better structure to create a culture of sustainability long-term.

ALISON BEARD: And so what’s your advice to a boss who maybe suspects that some of the people on their team are people pleasers and might benefit from it, might not know how to change it? What’s the case for them to reach out and how might they help the person shift?

HAILEY MAGEE: So I think whether the relationship is interpersonal or workplace-related, the very best way to support a people pleaser in speaking up is by being a safe person to say no to. Ultimately, a people pleaser will probably not speak up if they anticipate that the reaction is going to be highly negative or reactive or explosive.

So for managers who expect that this may be present on their team, I would encourage them to consider ways of encouraging people-pleasing teammates to offer feedback and to provide positive reinforcement for that feedback. And that could be by saying things like, thank you for sharing your voice, your contributions make this team stronger, or thank you for letting me know what your limits are because my goal is that this is a supportive and sustainable workplace for you long-term.

I’ve seen over and over again when my clients receive that positive reinforcement of expression of needs and boundaries, it creates safety.

ALISON BEARD: I think in reading your book, I discovered that I’m really not much of a people pleaser. I sort of know who I am and what I need and where I need balance. And a great example I think that I’ve shared with other working moms is that I often, when I meet a new boss, I just sort of announce really upfront like, “Hey, I’m a mom of two kids. It’s one of the most important things of my life and so that balance is going to be really important for me.” What advice do you have for people just starting their career or just starting over in a new job? How do you make the right impression as someone who’s easy to work with and will be a great colleague, but also won’t be walked all over?

HAILEY MAGEE: You know, early in a career or just starting out in a new workplace is actually such an excellent opportunity to nip people pleasing in the bud because really what’s happening is we’re kind of starting with a blank slate. We’re forming these first impressions. We really have the opportunity to make sure we’re presenting ourselves as we are, including our needs and our boundaries right away.

And so what I would encourage folks to do is kind of don’t be afraid to assert who you are, what your values are, and what some of your limits might be right away. Because truthfully, it’s so much more beneficial to you and the workplace to be clear about those things from the outset instead of trying to suppress them and hide them and letting them come up later on when it’s a surprise. It can be so much harder to communicate about our needs when we’ve been hiding them for months and months, and then they reach a breaking point and we need to convey them.

ALISON BEARD: I think especially if you’re walking into a corporate culture where you think people might make assumptions about you and your priorities and your personality, it’s very important to just explain who you are. And it doesn’t have to say, these are my red lines that you can’t cross. It doesn’t have to be combative at all. It can say, I’m so excited about this job, this new role, the fact that you’re my new boss. I want to tell you what I’m excited about, how hard I’m going to work for you. Also, you should know, in my case, I’m a working mom and being around my kids is really important to me. I do think that you can present that same attitude or proposal to a new boss or new colleagues no matter what age you are, and have it be the start of a really fruitful conversation.

HAILEY MAGEE: Yeah, and I think it’s just such a great opportunity to be clear and forthright right away so that these hard conversations don’t sneak up and become these big unaddressed resentments or difficulties down the road. So it’s clarifying for both parties.

ALISON BEARD: Great. So tell me how you yourself have completely overcome people pleasing? How has it changed your life?

HAILEY MAGEE: Oh, man, there are just countless ways. I mean, I think the fundamental difference between then and now is that back when I was really stuck in the people pleasing pattern, I fundamentally lacked a sense of self-trust. Because I was constantly contorting myself to be what other people wanted from me, I lacked my own self-protection, and I didn’t trust myself to have my own back in conflicts or in difficult moments or at work. I have so many memories of just being so utterly and completely exhausted and burnt out, at my wit’s end, and because I was so focused on what other people thought about me, I didn’t trust myself to say, I need a break. This is too much. I have my own back.

And now having done a lot of this work, I’m not fully healed. There are definitely still areas where this comes up for me but fundamentally, I trust that when I have a strong need or when a situation feels untenable or unsupportive or unhealthy, I know that in that moment, even though I might be nervous or afraid or self-doubting, I will find a way to speak up and make sure I’m standing up for myself and having my own back in those moments. And what that newfound sense of self-trust has done is it’s given me such a greater sense of power and agency in this world. I no longer feel like all of my decisions and pathways are going to be dictated by others’ terms or expectations of me. It’s helped my life really become a much more vibrant thing, and I’m really grateful for that.

ALISON BEARD: Well, I hope that a lot of our listeners take your advice and find the same benefits. Hailey, thanks so much for being on the show.

HAILEY MAGEE: Thanks for having me.

ALISON BEARD: That’s Hailey Magee, a life coach and author of the book, Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power.

And we have more episodes and more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at HBR.org slash podcasts or search HBR at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager Ian Fox and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.