Have you ever scrapped an entire Instagram post because you thought it was too much and instead went for the same boring and safe type of content you always put out? Have you ever avoided holding your team members accountable because you want to avoid conflict? Have you ever diminished your true self in order to appear more appealing to the masses?
If you answered yes to any of these, then you might just be a people pleaser.
Being a people pleaser in business might sound like a good thing, but Kristen is here to explain why people-pleasing might be the biggest reason why you’re not succeeding. Here’s what she’s talking about this week:
- The consequences of outsourcing your self-worth to others
- How to use our own triggers for personal development
- The hard truth about why you can’t be a good leader and also a people pleaser
- What it looks like to lead from curiosity instead of insecurity
- How people-pleasing takes you out of leadership mode and into management mode
Remember this: You are not responsible for anyone else’s beliefs, feelings, or reactions. When you dim your light to please others, you stop showing up and serving as your true self. Putting yourself out there is scary, but it’s an important step to healing from those fears in order to serve your audience and grow into the business owner you truly are.
It’s back and better than ever! Sustainable Success 2.0/22 is the virtual event of the year. Join Kristen LIVE for 3 days of intensive training, December 27th – 29th at Noon CT. This event is exactly what you need to start your New Year off right. Click HERE to register and download your free pre-workbook.
Connect with Kristen:
If you’re ready to learn the simple process of running your social selling business online, you have to check out Kristen’s live group coaching program! The Social Selling Academy: www.thesocialsellingacademy.com
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Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question
Transcript for Episode #82 People Pleasing in Business:
Kristen Boss (00:05): Welcome to Purposeful Social Selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industries. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller, who is tired of feeling inauthentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business in today’s social media landscape. In this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you the new way.
Kristen Boss (00:49): Hey bosses. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I want to remind you that we are starting our three day Sustainable Success. 2.0 live event next week. It is coming up. It’s right around the corner. And today we actually opened up the Facebook group for you to dive in there. Join, we have some fun things going on the week before leading up to the event. We have an amazing pre-event workbook for you to work through, to really evaluate your year and get you set up for the best year possible in 2022. You guys, I’m covering brand new material. I have not yet taught to this large of an audience, to this large of a group of people. And it’s truly going to serve you so well as you step into the new year, because a lot of people set great intentions. They set great audacious goals, but 80% of people drop their goals and they don’t meet their goals, but most people drop them by the first week of March.
Kristen Boss (01:47): So I’m going to talk about why that is. We’re going to get to the root cause of why you give up on your goals and why you don’t stay consistent in your business instead of symptomatically treating the cause. And a lot of people will symptomatically treat the cause of what’s going on in their on in their business. And here are a few examples of symptomatically treating, treating the business problems. Content calendars, thinking time blocking is the issue, planning, writing down a strategy plan, trying a new strategy, 90 reels in 90 days. Those are all trying to address the symptom of your inconsistency or not hitting your goals rather than addressing the root cause. So in our three days together, I’m going to address that. I’m also going to be talking about future trends for social selling, where the industry is going versus where it’s been. It’s going to be insanely valuable for both you and your team.
Kristen Boss (02:40): The replay will be up until midnight on January 1st, 2022. And then we are taking ’em down. We’re actually closing registration to the event on the 28th. The event starts on the 27th. We’re closing the registration on the 28th. We’re always having people trying to get in last minute. Don’t let your team forget. Don’t let, you know, them straggle in. We don’t because we don’t want people stressing out and not able to watch the material, not able to watch the replays. The replays will be housed in the Facebook group. It’s only $9. It will be the best training you have had. You’re you’re going to actually, after you watch it, it, my goal is for you to think, I can’t believe I paid $9 for that. That feels like it was worth hundreds of dollars to me in new training. I always over deliver at that level. So be sure to check the link in the show notes and get registered and we will see you in the group.
Kristen Boss (03:33): Okay, let’s talk about the topic for today’s podcast episode. I want to talk out people pleasing and particularly what happens when you let your people pleasing tendencies bleed into your business and kind of take over. And here’s the thing. I don’t think people intentionally set out to let their people pleasing, get the best of them and their business. As we are in a service based business, we are about helping people and giving them solutions to their problems and really serving them well. But what happens is, is I think sometimes we blur the lines over what is serving and what is people pleasing and what happens when we bring a people pleasing mindset into our business. And there are three areas it affects specifically. So I want to talk about those today. And the first way I want to talk about people pleasing is when it shows up with your audience, with how you serve your audience with how you show up on your platform.
Kristen Boss (04:37): And I really notice people struggle with this. When they’re thinking about the content and their audience that they want to serve. It’s probably the biggest setback that people have with choosing a niche. They feel like they’re leaving people behind. They feel like, oh, but I want to help those people too. But if I only talk to these people, then I’m leaving other people out. I’ll never forget. A couple of years ago, I was talking to somebody about nicheing her audience and she felt bad. She felt like she was leaving people out and that she truly wanted to help everyone. And I feel like it’s the mentality of being all things to all people, because we want to be seen as helpful. I see engram twos really struggle with this as they want it to be all things to everyone they want to, they don’t want to see anybody hurting.
Kristen Boss (05:26): And it’s, it’s a really wonderful quality to have, but when it goes unchecked, when we’re not watching the stories we’re telling ourselves, it can really come to our own detriment with how well we serve people. Because here’s the thing. When you spread yourself too thin, the, the quality of your serving diminishes, the quality of your serving, you’re not able to serve as well. And it’s kind of the same with your audience when you’re thinking about leaving people out, or I don’t want to upset people. I don’t want people to misunderstand me. That’s a big one is thinking like, I don’t want people to misunderstand me. I don’t want people to think I have false motives. I don’t want them to think I’m, you know, trying to extort them or all these other stories. So what happens is they start to like diminish or dim, like diming their light and they up less powerfully online because all they’re thinking about is what other people think.
Kristen Boss (06:22): They fear making their audience uncomfortable. And I’ve, I’m always coaching on this in the Academy. And I’m just like, you can’t make people feel things you need to hear that you are not responsible for how other people feel. You are not responsible for their emotional state. And we get ourselves in trouble. When we believe that we cause people to feel a certain way, that we’re causing people to feel uncomfortable with our content that we’re causing someone to feel hurt, that we’re causing someone to feel left out. And what happens is, is we’re making ourselves responsible for their emotional health and wellbeing. And then we end up that becomes a burden to us because now we feel we are responsible for how someone else chooses to think and feel about and circumstances in their life and what you end up doing. Here’s what you end up doing when you’re trying to please people emotionally and trying to make everyone happy around you.
Kristen Boss (07:25): You become a micromanager of everyone’s thoughts and feelings. You want to make sure that everyone’s thoughts are in a good place. Everyone’s feelings are in a good place and you start living your life in such a way that is vicariously. Like you’re trying to manage everyone’s thoughts and feelings about you so that you can feel good. That is really what is at the root of people. Pleasing is I want to manage how you think and feel about me so that I can feel good about me. Because if I think you like me, or you’re happy with me, or you feel loved by me, then I can think I’m a good friend. Then I can think I’m a good business owner. Then I can think these things about myself. You see where we’re going here. And then when you’re thinking that I only get to think these things about myself.
Kristen Boss (08:14): If depending on other people’s behavior and their response to me, you’re going to constantly feel burdened by how you interact with the world and how they interact with you, how you view yourself and you, how you see yourself will start to feel very shaky. If people, you know, are happy with you, then you get to be happy with you too. But you have to grow out of this. If you want to grow your business and grow your impact, you have to be willing to have some people misunderstand you. Not like you be unhappy with you have thoughts and feelings about you, that you cannot change. You cannot seek to change their thoughts and feelings about you. And I think that’s what a lot of the reason why a lot of people are afraid to grow. They’re afraid to grow their audience, grow their impact. Because what happens is is you can, the more you grow, the harder it becomes to manage all those people’s thoughts and feelings about you set.
Kristen Boss (09:14): It feels out of your control now, but it was never in your control. But we like to think it is. We like to think, oh, I can just manage. You know, if I can manage who I am being and how I am operating in the world, then I can also manage other people’s thoughts and feelings about me based on who I am being and how I am operating in the world. And what is sad way to, to live, to constantly be softening all your edges so that you are not triggering to people. Think about that. I want you to think about the areas in your life, where you are diminishing, who you are. You are diming your light. You’re not saying your truth. You’re not being your true self because you are afraid that that sharp edge will be too much for somebody that they’ll react to you in a certain way.
Kristen Boss (10:04): That they’ll think of you in a certain way. And because you don’t want to handle the possibility of them thinking and feeling about you in that way, you just kind of squash that part of yourself. You kind of soften that part of yourself. You keep polishing all these, you know, all these like little sharp edges thinking, but I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to trigger people. I don’t want to upset people. I can’t live my life in this way. I can’t show up on online this way, because some people I’m going to hurt their feeling or they’re going to be upset. And here’s my, here’s my, here’s what I want to offer. You. Let them be upset, cause they could also choose to not be upset. They can choose to look at what you’re doing and they could choose to be inspired by it. They can choose to be curious. They can choose to ask questions, but some people don’t operate that way. Some people judgements, some people are critical and they don’t ask questions and they make assumptions. And then they treat you a certain way. According to those assumptions, this is growth and I get it. It’s hard. It’s hard. Letting people have their thoughts about you, but people pleasing is when we are not letting other people have the, our thoughts.
Kristen Boss (11:22): And so we operate in such a way where we are like, how can I manufacture myself in such a way where I am making that person happy so that I can be happy. So what we do with our audience, maybe it’s what we do with our family, with our friends. And a lot of you, you know, we we’re in this business model because of personal development and you’re changing a lot. You know, what’s so fascinating is a lot of my students in the Academy, you know, they’re they do, you know, they start doing the thought work and they start shifting how they think about things. And when you start thinking about things differently, you respond to things differently. You start acting differently, your behavior starts to change and therefore your life starts to change and people start to notice and people make comments. And so while you are growing, that also means people are, might notice the growth and they might have thoughts about it and you’re going to have to be okay with it.
Kristen Boss (12:24): But you did not join this business to experience a transformation and then manufacture yourself in such a way that you become a less triggering person to people who don’t desire. Growth. Think about that. Listen, we all get triggered. People get triggered, we all get triggered. And here’s what I want to offer you. We can be someone that reacts to our triggers. Someone says something, someone does something. And we, we have a strong, very visceral, emotional response to it, right? And we can choose to go about in the world, allowing ourselves to constantly feel triggered and react from our triggers. Or we can be the person who explores our triggers. Why did that make me feel that way? Why, what about that person saying that or doing that? Why am I having such a strong, emotional response to this? What story have I not yet healed? That’s causing me to respond in such a strong way to this one thing.
Kristen Boss (13:35): You can explore the trigger and to heal it, or you can react to it and continue to feel like you are trying to avoid emotional landmines as you navigate your life. Like, Ooh, I don’t want to be triggered there. Ooh, I don’t want to deal with that feeling there. Ooh, I’m going to, you know, and I think, I think there are time where we have to do our healing and maybe sometimes that’s blocking somebody or on following somebody or maybe putting just a healthy boundary in place while we’re healing so that we become a less triggered reactive person. Right? So you, you can just decide, are you going to be somebody who reacts to your triggers? Are you going to be somebody who explores your triggers so that you can do your healing? But here’s the thing. If you can’t handle your triggers, then of course you are walking through the world, assuming nobody else can handle their triggers. And therefore you are responsible for triggers and you don’t want to trigger anybody. Do you see how we like you end up projecting your own experience to others and being like, I don’t want to trigger people. I don’t want to upset them. I don’t want them to feel this way. I don’t want them uncomfortable and that’s no way to live.
Kristen Boss (14:54): Okay. Let’s talk about people pleasing with your team. Let’s say you’re a leader and you have a team with you. Oh my goodness. This is a very relational business. And I think I’m going to do a com a separate podcast episode about this. But a lot of people that join you are people. You have relationship with people that your friends or you become close, or maybe you were friends. And then they joined you and you as the leader or, you know, their upline, your job is to help hold them accountable for what they say they want. If they want to grow their business, you know, you have to kind of stand in the gap and help them see what’s keeping them from there, but this is where people pleasing gets in the way of leadership. You cannot be a people pleaser and be a leader. There’s a difference between being a peacemaker and selling the vision and getting lost in people pleasing.
Kristen Boss (15:51): Because when you’re people pleasing, then you, you’re trying to please everyone at once. Like, what does that person want? What does that person want? What does that person want? And again, this is when you step out of leadership into management and then you start managing everyone’s emotions. Everyone’s thoughts and you’re managing the drama over here and their drama over there. And how can I help you hear? And you just feel like you’re managing emotions, everyone’s emotions all day. Instead of that, being into your leadership and realizing their emotional responses have nothing to do with you and everything to do with the story they tell themselves. But most leaders are afraid to lead because they’re afraid that they’re going to upset someone that they’re going to trigger someone that someone’s going to feel offended. Someone’s going to get hurt. Right? But I think there is language around leadership that doesn’t serve.
Kristen Boss (16:40): And that’s a whole nother episode, but I just, if you’re using language like confront, you need to confront your team. Member confrontation happens when we believe we’ve been wronged on some level. And if you’re bringing confrontation into your leadership, it means that you likely might be taking the actions of your team member or inactions of your team member. You might be taking it personally and making it mean something about you. So that puts you in a confrontational stance with them. And that you might be sharp or blunt instead of curious, and compassionate and open and asking leading questions. Right? It’s so different. But people pleasing in leadership means that you will typically avoid the hard conversations. You’ll likely manage people. You’ll kind of manage them to like, okay, well, what, what do you want to do this month? Oh, you want to hit your minimum goal? Okay. And then you help them reach their minimum instead of being the leader and saying, well, how can we help you do better than that? How can I help you grow more than that? Right? Because you are that holding someone accountable for their growth is going to be, is you hurting them? Is you being unkind to them?
Kristen Boss (17:58): But that’s just your thought about it. Someone could someone you could say to somebody, Hey, you told me you really wanted this. And I really want to help you with this. How can we help you get there? That person is free to have two responses to what you say. One person can say, how dare you. You’re so selfish and you’re trying to make money off of me. And the other person can say, wow, thank you for caring enough about my goals and dreams to help me take action, stay consistent and treat my business accordingly. Right? But because people are afraid of the latter, they’re afraid of somebody saying like, you hurt me. That was unkind. They just don’t have the conversation at all. Or they don’t know how to have the conversation. So they avoid the conversation. And so they don’t lead. And when you’re not leading, you’re not loving.
Kristen Boss (18:46): Think about that. Leading requires loving people on some level and loving them, regardless of what they think and feel stepping into that. Leading from love instead of managing from frustration or managing from feeling insecure about your leadership. I think a lot of times insecurity and leadership come from people. Pleasing comes from someone, said something to you about your leadership and you believed them and you took that identity on and it started to chip away your confidence and started chip away at your belief in helping others. Just want you to notice how people pleasing might have chipped away at your leadership, or maybe it’s never truly allowed you to step into leadership. Think another thing that happens when you’re people pleasing is you end up sabotaging your own success.
Kristen Boss (19:55): I want you to think about, and this is, this moves more outside of just the team, but just in general, if you were to zoom out with your business, if you are afraid that your success is going to trigger somebody, you making more money, and that person is going to have a thought about you making more money. And maybe it’s likely someone you really, really love. And if you’re afraid that they’re going to have less love for you as you become more successful, if you do not explore that and heal that you’re going to self sabotage your success so that you will preserve the love you have with that person. And I will tell you real love is stronger than that. Real love can handle you being a successful, brighter, happier person in the world. When we love someone, we want that for them. We applaud them.
Kristen Boss (20:53): We’re excited when they grow. We’re excited. When we see them do big things in the world. That’s what love is to me. Love is I love the people I love. I want to see them succeed in life. I want to see them do big, brave, bold, audacious things. I don’t want them to diminish their light in order to make me feel more comfortable about me and where I am, how sad I don’t want them to do that. But we do that to ourselves. We think I can’t be the most successful version of me because that person might not love me. This person might not be able to handle that this person will think I’m too good. Now that person will think this of me, that person might not want to be around me anymore. And so you end up sabotaging your success. You just stay where you are. And I don’t think you’re going to do it consciously. I don’t think you’re going to wake up each more and, and say, how can I sabotage my growth in order to preserve L love and safety with people in my life? No one thinks that consciously it happens on a very subconscious level where you’re thinking, how can I feel safe? And a lot of times self sabotage comes to this is how I feel safe.
Kristen Boss (22:12): So I’d be very curious. What would show up for you? If you did some exploring around the stories of the people in your life and the stories you’re telling yourself about their thoughts and their feelings about you and the ways you might be living in such a way where you are curating or manufacturing yourself in such a way that you become more palatable for them. I want you to like me more. So I’m just going to soften all these edges. I’m not going to talk about this because I’m afraid you’re going to have an opinion. I don’t want to do this because I’m afraid you’re going to judge me for it. So I’m just not going to live in a way where I trick you. And I just, I remember this was part of my healing and it still is. Some days won’t lie, I’m human. But there, I remember one day telling a friend, I said, you know, I’m so tired of feeling like a walking grenade, wondering if I’m going to walk in a room and someone’s going to have a thought about me.
Kristen Boss (23:07): And, you know, I trigger them. And I, and I, I just, and I realized I was carrying the story that I was triggering people everywhere I go. And I was so afraid to trigger people that I was just like, I just don’t want to. I remember one time I thought about like completely blowing up my business, walking away, and never touching it again because I just felt like I wasn’t safe in the world anymore. And I think that’s normal, I think it important for you to hear that because it’s, it’s normal. It’s normal for your, for you to think this is when people pleasing is that bad. It gets to that level where you actually contemplate destroying your dreams or not living into the best version of you because you were absolutely terrified of what that will feel like and look like to other people that is people pleasing in the worst sense. And then here’s what happens when you dim your light. When you stop showing up, you stop serving and you got into this to, which is so fascinating. People pleasing at the end of the day. It’s like, it should be about how I want to help you have more in your life. But people pleasing is usually about self-preservation.
Kristen Boss (24:25): It’s usually a, self-protective be behavior that we have in order to protect ourselves and feel safe and feel loved and not feel threatened. And if you do not let that go, then it’s seriously going to get in the way of your ability to serve. Meaning please serve so many people because service true service requires self-sacrifice and people pleasing is about self preservation. Serving people is about self-sacrifice. So I’m willing to sacrifice other people might think or feel about me in order to serve and help the people I am meant to serve. Can you step into that? Can you step into that? Can you step into feeling the discomfort of someone you love, someone you are close to deeply misunderstanding you, having thoughts about you and you continuing on your path to serve who you were meant to serve and to make the impact that you were ma made to make, or are you going to constantly be sanding down your sharp edges until you lose all the, all the shape that all your unique shape that makes you you so that you become this smooth polished, you know, UNT, triggering person in the world that isn’t making the impact they could be because you were too busy, making sure that the wrong people we’re okay with you think about that.
Kristen Boss (26:22): I have another episode. That’s going to be coming out about a thousand deaths to a million dollars. And I have a lot of people asking me a lot. Like how, how did you get where you are? And, oh, goodness. I think the podcast episode alone, the tie is going to be it’s triggering for me. I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m going to actually talk about, you know, a million dollars. I’m going to talk about millions. What will people think? I’m like, well, I remember when I scrolled podcast episodes, I was hungry to learn. And to hear the honest thoughts about somebody that had, was making that kind of money and the growth that they had to have. And I was sitting across the table from someone the other day, and they are going for, you know, a very public position locally or in their local city. And they’re going to be running for mayor.
Kristen Boss (27:13): And I was telling him, he was asking like, Hey, what has, what has leadership been like? And I said, it has been a thousand deaths and you will feel it to, you will have a thousand death. As you are serving people, as you are making an impact, it will feel like you will die to yourself over and over and over again. So I’m going to be talking about that in that next episode, but this is one of the deaths. I believe one of the deaths that you will need to like one, a part of you that you will need to put to death is this deep desire to people, please, everyone around you and your urge to soften the edge so that you become more palatable to people. So I help today. You do some exploring around this. You ask yourself the question, and I want you to think about the kind of life you might, that is available for you. When you stop diminishing who you are, you stop curating yourself. You stop being afraid to trigger people. And I want you to picture the life that is available for you. We’ll catch you next week.
Kristen Boss (28:27): That wraps up today’s episode. Hey, if you love today’s show, I would love for you to take a minute and give a rating with a review. If you desire to elevate the social selling industry, that means we need more people listening to this message so that they can know it can be done a different way. And if you are ready to join me, it’s time for you to step into the Social Selling Academy, where I give you all the tools, training, and support to help you realize your goals. In the Academy, you get weekly live coaching so that you are never lost or stuck in confusion. Whether you are new in the business or been in the industry for a while, this is the premier coaching program for the modern network marketer. Go to www.thesocialsellingacademy.com to learn more.
