Are you too nice to the people you work with?
While the ability to get along with others is important, always putting other people first and striving to gain their approval can turn into a dangerous addiction, says Harriet B. Braiker, author of “The Disease to Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome” (McGraw-Hill, $21.95).
People-pleasers can’t stand not to be liked. “If she is in a room with 25 other people and 24 of them like her,” says Braiker, “the approval addict will feel that that one person is the one she has to win over. It’s like trying to be perfect 100 percent of the time.”
Such people often believe that being nice will protect them from bad things in life. But when bad things inevitably happen to them, as they do to everyone from time to time, people-pleasers think they are at fault and strive to be even nicer. And to keep getting their fix of approval, they widen the circle of people they might be able to please.
They also have a peculiar relationship with time, says Braiker. “They never have time for themselves but they always have time if someone else asks them to do something.”
The irony is that these constant attempts to be liked and appreciated can end up sabotaging a person’s relationships and career. Even worse, Braiker contends, the stress that results from never saying no to other people’s requests, as well as anticipating their needs before a request is even made, can make “nice” people physically and emotionally sick.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the compulsion to please is more common among women. “Women get cultural support for being nice and trying to make others happy,” says Braiker.
Also, because many women are trained from a young age not to express negative feelings, especially anger, they may seek to please others as a way of avoiding conflict.
Working women who aim to please may find that despite all this exhausting effort, they aren’t as far along on their career paths as they’d like to be.
It may be in the form of gravitating toward support positions–like executive assistant jobs–that are almost designed for people-pleasers, Braiker says. By getting caught up in how much they can do for others, they may find their own progress slowing down.
Additionally, the need to please often works against women managers. In Braiker’s view, these women often have an inability to delegate and a tendency to micromanage.
The people-pleasing manager might think she’s doing her staff a favor by taking on the lion’s share of work, but in reality she could be alienating subordinates. She may be surprised to learn that when she limits her staffers’ involvement in a project, they are not grateful, but resentful that they are not being given a chance to show their talent.
Even more surprising to a people-pleasing manager is that after having cultivated the image of being an extremely hard worker, her bosses may not be impressed. When it is time for a review, Braiker says, higher-ups may perceive her extra work as compensation for being inefficient or lacking the natural ability to get the job done.
In other words, all that effort probably won’t be rewarded with a promotion, warns Braiker. To move from a managerial level to an executive level, especially in a corporate environment, a person must be perceived as strategic and forward-thinking, not as a micromanager who merely follows directions.
Also keep in mind that performance suffers when a worker overdoes it and that there is a spillover effect for colleagues. “Others feel the stress bouncing off these people,” says Braiker.
Logic might dictate that if someone is in over her head, she would ask for help. But when the people-pleaser gets tired, she pushes herself to do even more. This is because her value as a person is derived entirely by what she does for others.
So if you see yourself as a people-pleaser, what can you do to break the cycle? Start with the understanding that it’s OK not to be nice sometimes and that not everyone has to like you.
Next, Braiker’s book has several tools as well as a 21-day action plan to help attain a healthier perspective. (The Web site is www.diseasetoplease.com.)
Specifically on improving delegation skills, Braiker suggests that while you may crave the security that comes from getting all the credit for a job well done, remember that you’ll also take all the blame if there is a glitch.
Another tip: Decide that you will delegate just 10 percent of your work. So if your to-do list has 50 items, you should be able to let go of five.
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Attention working moms: Do you have unusual or creative arrangements for day care? If so, we’d like to hear about them. E-mail jfitzgerald@tribune.com or write to Jacqueline Fitzgerald, WomanNews, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611
