Panache

People pleasing at work can be cloaked as being the nicest, most competent, most hard-working, and most agreeable individual. But it comes with a cost of weak mental, emotional, and physical health. And is not sustainable at all.

There are subtle signs that can remind you that you are not being your true self. Instead, you are pleasing others at your cost.

Below is the list of these subtle signs. Do you have any of these?

You can’t say, “No.”

“Hey! Would you do this for me?” your answer is always Yes. Probably you despise this habit of yours. You despise that the first word that came out of your mouth was Yes. But when you do the task, you are in constant despair and beat yourself up because you cannot say “No.”

It is a tell-tale sign that you are a people pleaser at work. Maybe, you keep telling yourself that you need their support. Or you will have a place in their good books. Or they will favor you over everyone, and hence you have to do what they ask of you.

But it is again a self-manipulative behavior. It might be an illusion that you are trying to keep yourself in. But it is just an illusion and the longer you will keep believing in it, the longer it is going to keep you as a yes person.

Also read: Are you a Yes person? Learn 5 ways to say “No”.

You excessively say, “sorry” when you can’t meet others’ needs.

You say “sorry” a lot is another sign. The reason may vary. Maybe you are a person with low self-esteem and that is why you say sorry. But when you say “Sorry” when you have not met the needs of someone else, it is a sign that you may be a people pleaser.

It can be a way to get away from conflict. Or you are scared that you will upset people. And that is why you keep accepting mistakes that you have not made in the first place. But the consequences of this behavior are far larger than you can imagine.

It constantly troubles your mental health. And in most cases, you are going to end up with more responsibility and guilt than you can keep up with. Thus, leading to self-esteem issues, competency issues, and an unfulfilled life.

You are polite so that people like you.

You are known as a person who is the most likable and polite person at your workplace. However, you are doing it so that your colleagues like you, it is the corporate norm, or you maintain goodwill in your boss’s eyes for future promotions.

These kinds of tendencies are mostly for people-pleasing purposes. You can never be your true self at work because you want to maintain that image. You always wear a mask to maintain that gain.

However, your emotional and mental health gets deeply suffered by it because soon you get confused between your masked self and your true self. Since you start losing your true self, you have a shallow life. And you start feeling lost and as if you are losing control over your life.

Being hard on yourself for others.

The opposite of being kind to yourself is when you become hard on yourself. But not because you want to become more disciplined and achieve more things. Instead, you want to cater to other people’s needs and therefore you keep prioritizing them.

Whether you are scared or just catering to them for personal gains, you eventually pay a heavy price. It can look like sidelining your projects and tasks while your calendar keeps piling with tasks that are the responsibility of other people.

It can also look like when you keep pushing yourself beyond limits because your boss demands that while neglecting your physical, mental, and emotional beings. And it is not a sustainable way.

You’ll do anything to avoid conflict.

When you are working with all kinds of people in your team with different backgrounds, personalities, and characters; conflict is inevitable. What’s essential is to resolve the conflict in a healthy way.

Maybe, you are scared of conflict and will do anything to avoid it at any cost. But the heavy price of it would only be paid by you. You cater to their emotions, you become a yes person, and you do everything that you ask them to do.

However, that is not a healthy solution. In this way, you burn out, develop resentment towards your work and your workplace, and can become sick too. It is not a healthy coping mechanism but you develop it eventually becoming a people pleaser.

Also read: 8 glaring signs of social anxiety.

Also read: How to cope with social anxiety?

You can’t delegate.

There are many reasons that you don’t want to share responsibilities with anyone in your team. You can have trust issues or feel one is competent enough to do the job. So, you keep all the responsibilities to yourself and keep on working.

However, other people-pleasing reasons for not delegating is that you want others to like you. You don’t want to be the boss who wants their employees to hate them. Hence, you avoid delegating tasks.

A major disadvantage is you get overworked while your employees may feel you cannot contribute enough. And that can be a challenge for you as a leader as well as a mentor.

You feel anxiety/ fear while saying yes.

You generally say yes to whatever is asked of you. But there is a persistent feeling of anxiety in your stomach that you can’t get rid of. You also have the feeling of fear when you say yes.

This might be because you fear the consequences of saying No. While you say yes to everything, your body rejects the idea and you feel anxious. You may not realize this because of the conditioning at your workplace but your body says a different story altogether.

Sometimes, there is a feeling of numbness while agreeing to work on what you are doing. But you still do it because you are subconsciously trained to do that but don’t realize the pattern yet.

Also read: 10 instant hacks to deal with your Anxiety.

You depend on external validation.

This is one of the most common traits and coping mechanisms of people-pleasing at work. Because you are getting validation from an outside source, you will keep prioritizing them and catering to their needs instead of your own.

A trait of external validation is that it is never enough. The more you get, the more you crave for it. Thus, caging you in a toxic cycle of people-pleasing behavior. You are also bound to be taken for granted and people will depend on you more than they need to.

At first, this habit gives you the kind of satisfaction that you always wanted. But soon you start to pay a heavier price for it. You get piled on with responsibilities as you become a superhero but neglect the basic needs of a human like work-life balance and truly living your life.

You work late hours not because you want to.

China has a 996 culture. Not because their employers want them to work extra hours but because everyone else is working. It’s a highly competitive environment. The one who works the extra hours will get promoted and end up with high salaries and more benefits.

But the other side of the culture is extreme burnout and the absence of creativity and problem-solving abilities. Chinese employees cater to a culture. However, if you are working late to please your boss or be better than your colleagues then you are probably stuck in a people-pleasing cycle.

China’s white-collar employees do not have a high salary but conform to the norm. But if you are not conforming to the norm, you are probably conforming to a pattern that is toxic and not sustainable at all.

Agree even when you want to disagree.

Ever felt the need to laugh at the lame joke of your boss? Ever felt that the idea was wrong and yet you sat silently in a meeting? Not because you can’t oppose it but because you cannot disagree.

This is another huge sign of people-pleasing behavior at the workplace. However, it is not that common anymore because most workplaces promote honest and healthy discussions.

However, if you have this habit, you are most likely to follow through. You can also fall victim to the manipulative behavior of people who want someone to agree with them no matter what it is.

Conclusion.

There is a thin line between standing out of the crowd at your workplace and not falling into a people-pleasing behavioral pattern. One might seem a bit rebellious which is not often appreciated in a workplace setting.

The other one can be a healthy way of putting your views and creating a sustainable boundary that can be respected by your peers and your boss.

Remember, to create a healthy work environment, you are equally responsible for not following through these tiny habits that can create dire issues for you in the future.

Also read: 10 strong signs you are a people pleaser in the relationship.

Also read: How to stop being a people-pleaser in a relationship?

Also read: How to stop being a people-pleaser at work?