Today I had my first coaching session. While I had a rough idea of what this would entail, the whole process was new to me. However, with one down and eleven to go, I’m rating it.
I’d had to prep my coach with a fair bit of material. This included a reasonably in depth questionnaire about my motivations, previous highs and lows, my aspirations and, wait for it, an autobiography.
No biggie, right? It was quite a self reflective Sunday evening getting it altogther.
I had guessed that coaching sessions are meant be constructively confronting. And because of the questions I was asked in the prep material, I had anticipated we were going to do a fair bit of drilling down. However, what I wasn’t expecting was one of the first questions to be “so, would you describe yourself as a people pleaser?”
My immediate reaction was almost to take offence. It’s not a descriptor I’d ever give myself.
In my mind a people pleaser is submissive. They do things to appease others and don’t know how to say no. If anything it strikes me as being slightly disingenuous.
I shot my mind back to what I had written during prep that may have alluded to this type of behaviour. I’d covered off that getting things done is important to me, that over-delivering is a habit I tend to fall into and that I feel very uncomfortable when I let others down.
But, did all this make me a people pleaser? I’m an independent woman, dammit. I have more back bone that just to do things for other people all the time.
After this brief chimp-in-a-cage moment passed, I understood that the question had been intentionally challenging. It was a provocation intended to make me think about what drives my behaviours: my own agenda or the expectation of others.
It’s not that pleasing people isn’t a good thing. We just need to sense check we are doing it for the right reasons and that the validation of others doesn’t become our only incentive. If it is we run the risk of losing conviction in our own judgement and initiative.
There’s also the knock on effect that if people know they can expect things from us all the time, it’s easy to be taken advantage of. We become seen as highly reliable and become a place to offload. A cycle that can be fairly toxic for our sense of personal worth.
All red flags to say the least.
I’m glad that I had the question about being a people pleaser asked of me today. It was a good little wake up call. While I don’t think all the negative aspects of this behaviour are true of what drives me, it was good to identify and mark them as watch outs. It acted as a worthy reminder that we really do need to put ourselves first. And when it comes to investing energy, time and effort into things, making sure our reasoning is clear and we are being true to what is right thing for us.
