By Coach JoyGenea with support from Notion AI
Ending People-Pleasing and Adding Thoughtful Accountability
If you run a business or manage a team, you have probably learned this the hard way:
You can be a good human and a strong leader, but you cannot be a strong leader while constantly trying to keep everyone comfortable.
People-pleasing looks like kindness on the outside, but in leadership it often turns into delay, avoidance, and unclear standards. You stay “understanding,” “patient,” and “hopeful” while deadlines slip, resentment builds, and your best people quietly start carrying the load.
And the part nobody wants to admit?
Doing nothing is still doing something.
It is choosing the status quo. It is choosing the slow leak instead of the clean repair.
The hidden leadership cost of people-pleasing
Most business owners and managers do not struggle with caring. They struggle with being direct when caring is not enough.
People-pleasing tends to show up as:
- Avoiding the hard conversation.
- Over-explaining, hoping the other person will “get it.”
- Repeating the same feedback without consequences.
- Keeping someone in a role that is not working, because firing feels “too harsh.”
Over time, those choices create very real costs: lost productivity, broken trust, and a culture where standards are optional.
The data behind the “avoidance tax”
We cannot always measure “people-pleasing” directly, but we can measure the outcomes it drives; avoiding hard conversations, unaddressed toxic behavior, and disengagement.
- 70% of employees avoid difficult conversations at work, and 53% ignore “toxic” situations, which is linked to declining engagement and organizational trust.
- Actively disengaged employees cost about 34% of their salary in lost productivity (a widely cited Gallup finding, often referenced in HR and leadership research summaries).
Put that into plain business terms:
When you keep an underperformer because you do not want to disappoint them, you may be asking your high performers to pay the price instead.
Thoughtful Accountability Framework (so you can be direct without being harsh)
This is the core of Strategy #3: be thoughtful and accountable.
Here is a simple framework you can use this week.
1) Clarity before the conversation
Before you talk to them, answer these three questions (on paper if you can):
- What is the issue, specifically?
- How is it impacting the mission, team, or urgency?
- What outcome am I aiming for?
If you cannot clearly name the outcome, your conversation will drift into feelings, storytelling, and bargaining.
2) Communicate with respect (use the “CUE” model)
A clean structure helps you stay calm and clear:
- Concern: “I have noticed…”
- Understanding: “Help me understand what is happening from your perspective…”
- Expectation: “Going forward, what I need is…”
This keeps you from dumping, blaming, or rescuing.
3) Hold the line
Most leaders are willing to have one hard conversation.
The leadership part is what comes next:
- Follow up.
- Follow through.
- Stop negotiating against your own standards.
If there is no change, you do not need a bigger speech. You need a decision.
“You can fire people” (and still be a good leader)
Sometimes the kindest, most responsible leadership move is letting someone go.
Not because they are a bad person.
Because the role is not working and keeping them in it is costing everyone.
A respectful, clean version sounds like:
“We have reached the point where this role is no longer the right fit, and we need to make a change. I want to walk through the next steps clearly.”
No drama.
No cruelty.
No endless chances that teach the whole team your standards are optional.
It can be hard to shift out of leading from a people-pleasing style. You don’t have to do it alone. This is one area where a coach, mentor, or counselor can be a game changer for faster results. It helps you to have some accountability.
What is one conversation you have been avoiding?
If you are avoiding it, you are already paying for it.
Get your copy of The Unconventional Leadership Playbook and learn more about the other 10 strategies.
Video Transcription:
I have a really great story to share. It’s pretty funny. So I had an incredible opportunity come up, one that is about making memories and about having a lasting relationship, and an opportunity my mom had, um, asked if she could come with my husband and I when we were traveling for the last month, and it has really been a great experience. And as I’ve been talking about this week, and as I am talking about now, one of my, um, one of the things I’ve had to grow and expand on is my communication when it comes to leadership. And in particular, I’ve had to grow and expand past people pleasing. I grew up in a bit of a hostile environment as a kid, and with being neurodiverse and not fitting in in school, and, um, and teachers not knowing exactly what to do for me anyways, due to those environments, I was, I definitely a people pleaser. I was definitely taught, um, how, how to adjust my thinking, how to sacrifice my needs and my wants to make sure everybody else was feeling comfortable. And it didn’t work out well for me in the long run, I have to say. And when I started working on that, my life got a whole lot better, my leadership got a whole lot better, and the people around me actually started to like me a little bit more because they actually understood what I was expecting from them. They actually understood how they could achieve those things and if it was a right fit for them or if they needed to move on as my friend or as my employee or my subcontractor. It made things so much better when my communication stepped up on so many levels. I didn’t realize that my, what I saw as avoiding conflict or not hurting someone else’s feelings, what that was actually doing was creating a toxicity within that relationship, unintentional on every level. But when you’re not actually communicating and working together, which would mean both people have an opinion and so forth, you’re actually kind of going in directions that may not be the best for each other, for the whole, all of those things. So, the last month has been interesting because I got to revisit places where I saw my people pleasing flare up and I didn’t say anything until I about blew up or, um, I was able to, to feel that a lot sooner, see it a lot sooner, and come from a place of, of empathy and compassion and have the tougher conversations in the communication in the moment, and it was pretty incredible. The people, my mom and my husband, are both pretty incredible people, and we were able to work through and navigate some really challenging circumstances and do it with kindness and with grace. and I bring this up not that you need to navigate those things in your family, but I know if you can navigate those things in your family, you can navigate those things at work so easily. You have incredible skills. So, my encouragement is, if you are a people pleaser, you can become a recovering people pleaser. Easily start to add in just a little bit of different language, a little bit more compassion actually for yourself, and a little more acknowledgement of your own feelings and bringing that to more of the conversations. I promise you firing your first employee will hurt astronomically, you may cry more than they do. I can also promise you after that the second and third employees won’t hurt as bad, and you’ll have to do it less when you communicate more and move out of people pleasing and actually come from a place of communicating better about your, the needs of the organization, the direction things are going, and when people are achieving what you’re asking and when they are not and how they can get back on track. It’s not the amount of money that is lost, the amount of bandwidth that I see leaders give up, I mean energy, like going home stressed, the amount of anxiety it creates for leaders when they have a wrong person in a wrong spot, the toxicity that creates within the team if you have a wrong person in a spot and do not adjust that situation because your people pleasing is so great that you are afraid of that conflict, you’re actually creating so many more headaches for yourself and you just don’t realize it or nobody’s been direct with you in saying that. I want to be really direct with you. If, as you’re listening to this, you’re thinking of people and circumstances that you know are depleting all of your energy, are basically energy vampires and sucking you dry, they need to be addressed. And you will be amazed how much more energy you have to address even more issues, how much easier it might be to bring in a new person and actually communicate with them the needs and so forth, and they can meet those needs and maybe even exceed those needs. So, your fear of rejection, your fear of taking an action that might offend somebody, taking an action that might not feel good, your fear of that is actually creating so much more stress for you, you just don’t realize it. You’re a lot more used to that stress than the new stress and anxiety you’re gonna feel the first time you kind of go through this, and I promise you the first time is the hardest time. And it is a great time to have a coach, have an advisor, a mentor help you with that so you can talk your way through it, ’cause it’s gonna hurt, but it’s gonna feel so much better in the long run. You will thank yourself. You will thank the people that help you through that. So, in my unconventional leadership blueprint, I talk about that specifically one page number three, all about the fact that you can leave behind people pleasing and you can regain that power and energy and excitement that you have for your business that is possibly being sucked out by one or two employees that you are afraid to let go of, afraid to handle, or maybe it’s a, a client that you possibly have. Maybe it’s a particular circumstance with a partner in your business. I promise you finding the right language and having those conversations, while it might feel hard, once you get through it you will thank yourself and anybody else that helps support you through it. Good luck. You do not have to sit in doing nothing because that actually is an action and it does have consequences. Instead, you can take a few small actions, learn new communication styles, and have a whole lot more freedom. I’m JoyGenea, unconventional leadership coach, international neurodiversity coach, and champion for my outside of the box thinkers. Yay, because guess what, you are leading the world into all of the incredible places we’re going. Thank you so much. And if you would like a copy of the unconventional leaders playbook, please let me know. There’s a link below, you can use that, and I would love your comments. How have you overcome people pleasing, or what’s a situation you’re avoiding because your people pleaser is running the show? Share with me, I’d love to comment back. Bye now.