Today is March 31 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you try to please everyone?”
There is a growing field of research in people-pleasing for personal growth and professional development. Amy Morin is one researcher on personal growth and author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.
Morin has identified five things that a people-pleaser often does.
First, a people-pleaser never says no. Saying yes to everyone’s requests means you’re saying no to something you may want to pursue. If you are afraid of saying no and letting someone down, have you thought about what saying yes to someone else does to your own dreams? Second, a people-pleaser struggles to make decisions as the sound of everyone’s voice tends to drown out your own voice. How can you hear yourself think if you are allowing everyone’s voice inside your head? People-pleasers seldom ask for help as doing so is often a sign of weakness. If a people-pleaser invest all their time and energy into saying yes to others, it may be difficult to live according to their own values. Finally, people-pleasers often fail to set healthy boundaries.
In terms of people-pleasing and professional development, Ron Askkenas and Matthew McCreight published research in The Harvard Business Review on the concept of 'getting to no' in the workplace. “Getting to no” is a classic management issue because the vast majority of us tend to accept requests and assignments without first filtering them by what’s possible, what’s urgent, and what’s less of a priority.
In an age when we are encouraged to be “team players” and responsive to colleagues, it may seem counter-intuitive or even selfish to encourage managers to say no more often, but that is exactly what many need to do. While saying yes to every assignment may initially please senior execs, it usually leaves people over-stressed and inundated with work — a lot of which ends up half-finished or forgotten. In the long run, no one is happy.
As U.S. editor and journalist Herbert Bayard Swope wrote “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
How often do you try to please everyone?