Aram Donigian :
People pleasers, warriors and freshers. Could you say a little bit about what each of these are and how they show up in our conversations? And going back to this idea of awareness and self-reflection, why self-reflection on our prevalent archetype may be a useful practice?
The People Pleaser, the Warrior, and the Fresher: Recognizing Ourselves in Everyday Leadership Moments [00:13]
Nicole Posner :
I think there’s a little bit of each archetype in all of us. And it depends on the situation that we find ourselves in. So, you know, I am a fully fledged people pleaser, you know, hand up. But I can also be a warrior and not so much a fresher, but anyway, I am a people pleaser. There are many situations where that does not serve me well. I don’t like saying no, sometimes I don’t have boundaries.
Sometimes I don’t, you know, I accept work when I know I really shouldn’t ’cause I don’t want to upset somebody. And if you are in a leadership role, the consequences of that are, you know, far more impactful than, you know, say for me because they impact a team, for example. So a people pleaser, let’s say, would have difficulty saying.
You know, to a team member, no, you can’t take tomorrow afternoon off. If they’re always used to hearing yes from their boss, that’s going to come as quite a shock. What do you mean I can’t take tomorrow off and not having boundaries. For example, a people pleaser doesn’t know, you know, doesn’t like boundaries in friendship.
They want everyone to like them. They’re friendly, too friendly. They might go out for a drink after work, for example, but they’ve crossed a line so people think that they’re a mate and not, you know, not as the relationships change the expectation of it. So when suddenly you need to put your foot down and be a boss.
They’re like, whoa, what’s changed in our relationship? Well, nothing’s changed. I’m just being a boss. You know, so that’s a people pleaser. I’ve done loads of mediations over the years, which have been because a manager has been a people pleaser and they haven’t been able to be honest.
So they end up, you know, getting themselves into a lot of hot water. They can’t manage strong personalities, but, you know, then an example of this was a mediation I did a few years ago where there was a manager who had to manage one employee who had a very difficult communication style. She was quite abrupt and quite blunt in how she said things which caused conflict with another colleague. In fact, her own manager.
So the boss, if you like, who was the people pleaser, had to step in and manage her in the interim. You know, she was never honest. She never said, you need to be careful how you say that, or this is how you’ve been experienced. Anyway, in the mediation it came up, she was very blunt in the mediation.
The manager who I was managing her initially said, you see, that’s why Sally hates managing you because of the way you are. And suddenly this whole thing erupted because Sally had never been honest with, I can’t remember her name now, and you know, that suddenly opened a can of worms because she couldn’t actually sit there and say, you know, couldn’t be direct and honest.
So that’s, you know, a few issues that come up with people pleasers and also they’re sort of afraid to speak up and say, you know, say what they think in meetings. So people never actually take them seriously or never give them an opportunity because they never show their true colors.
So, that’s people pleasers. Then we have the freshers. The freshers are the new managers who are often promoted into a new role without the training. And that in itself creates problems or even as I said before, a business owner who’s never managed people before, they’re inexperienced, they’re unsure of themselves.
They’ve been very good at the job they were in before, but people management is a new role, so you know, they don’t know.
Nolan Martin :
I know another role that you know, that you talk about is the untested assumptions and competing expectations and how this has a conflict within teams. I was hoping you could also share an example about that and how that may have contributed to unnecessary conflict and what might have been able to go differently to handle that situation better.
The Danger of Assumptions: Why Clarity and Confirmation Are Essential for Healthy Team Dynamics [04:18]
NP :
There is an expression, which again, I’ll try to say delicately, assumptions are the mother of all bleep, bleep, and assumptions are very dangerous. You know, we have in a meeting. For example, an untested assumption will be, a couple of, in a conversation, you’ll be talking about one point on an agenda, and suddenly something else comes into the conversation and you’ve never finished discussing the previous point, and suddenly the conversation moves on and you were talking about speaking to a client, following up with a client about Or something.
Anyway, a week or two goes by and your colleague says to you, did you speak to the client about that? And they’re like, no, I thought you were. And they were like, no, you said you were. But the point was, and there was no, you know, there was an assumption because nobody actually confirmed that in fact, who would take responsibility for it?
Any conversation, whether it’s with your teams, I talk about the expression, so let’s say you’re doing a feedback or performance conversation and you finish the meeting and you say, is everyone understood? And they’ll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you are all fine. And then. You go away and they clearly haven’t understood.
So what I always say to leaders or bosses is, well, instead of asking them if they’ve understood, you actually ask them what they’ve understood so that that clarifies that missed assumption. You know, that they have all understood to kind of replay back or reframe back exactly what, what they’ve understood. So it’s about clarifying at the end of the day.
AD :
I like that. So, and Nolan, and I would say from our military time, right? It wasn’t just to understand the direction, right? Actually having them brief back to you what you’ve understood, what they’ve understood. Really powerful. Part two of your book is about, you call it the cure, and you say it starts with us and you’ve alluded to this, some of this already, but when you say it starts with us, you’re talking about our mindset, our responses, our preparation.
So what can we do both emotionally and physically to set ourselves up better to manage these difficult conversations?
Mindset, Achievement, and Preparation: Setting Ourselves Up for Success in Tough Conversations [06:29]
NP :
I have a little acronym. I like acronyms and I talk about using…
AD :
You’re in good company, Nicole.
NM :
So does Aram and I.
NP :
Oh, great. Acronyms. Team acronym. Yeah. I think they’re great ways to remember things.
So I talk about using a map, which you know, gives you direction, but also a MAP is an acronym for Manage your mindset, Know what you want to achieve, and Plan and prepare. When you think about a difficult conversation, the most important thing I think is actually what you think about it. Your mind, how you launch into it, how you approach it.
But if your mindset is this is gonna be a difficult conversation, the chances are it probably will be. And there’s a great quote by Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” And this is, you know, your mindset is, if I think I can’t do it, I probably won’t be able to do it. So managing how you think about the conversation beforehand is very critical.
Then know what you want to achieve. You’ve always gotta have a goal. You’ve gotta know. What do you want from this? Do you want an apology? Do you want understanding? Do you want change? Do you want, I dunno, whatever we want from the conversation, but you’ve gotta know what it is you are aiming for. And then plan, prepare.
And that sounds really obvious. You’d be surprised how many people don’t; they just launch in and that’s when conversations go off track and they escalate and conflict happens. So yeah. But preparing, while it’s important.
NM :
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. If you could please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast, we’d greatly appreciate it and we’ll see you in the next episode.
