The People You Try to Please Control You
The people you try to please control you and your organization. Customers drive organizations, you don’t.
Drucker said, “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” You are all about pleasing customers. Pleasing others, however, presents problems for you.
The more people you try to please:
- The more frantic you and your organization become.
- The less focused you become.
- The blander you, your product, and your organization become.
- The fewer people you please.
The fewer people you try to please:
- The more focused you become.
- The more creative you become.
- The more distinct you become.
- The more you’ll be unpleasing.
Displeasing:
Purposing to please fewer is not purposing to displease or offend many. It takes courage, however, to be willing to displease. The courage to displease sustains uniqueness.
Cowardice creates putrid mediocrity.
Offending:
Don’t intentionally offend many in your attempts to please fewer. If pleasing fewer offends – so be it. But, in most cases pleasing fewer simply makes others ignore you and that’s good.
Offending may be a clash of values. In that case offend nicely.
Offending may indicate you are offensive. In that case apologize and adjust.
Just please yourself:
If you’re an immature, selfish ass, pleasing yourself won’t take you far. If you’ve shifted focus from serving yourself to serving others then please yourself.
Use what pleases you in service to others. For example, Steve Jobs created produces he loved using.
What role does pleasing others play in your organization or life?
Is there balance between pleasing others or pleasing ourselves? Or, is it an either/or situation?
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Awesome post! Thanks Dan
Very interesting topic (as always).
In answer to the second question, I think there’s a balance and one that needs to contemplate how to maintain integrity, good business/organizational practices, trust and authenticity.
Pleasing others at all costs doesn’t make much sense and… well, it costs in many ways including our own self worth! At the same time, remaining self-centered costs as well. I don’t think it’s necessarily or always easy to strike the balance. But, I do think it’s important to do some purposeful work on how to stay aware of intention and impact on why and how we act when it comes to pleasing ourselves and others.
Cinnie, you use two words together that I love: purposeful work. I know I don’t spend enough time doing that in regard to my own intentions or the impact of my actions on others. Regarding this topic, with the potential Dan acknowledges to offend, it is very important. Critical reminder. Thank you.
Cindy – Thank you for the way you answered this question. It really helped me to frame my own thoughts on the subject. I believe that we first must find balance and integrity within ourselves before we can begin to impact others in a useful way. If I’m giving to others but feel out of balance with myself, then I think the gift can be somewhat inauthentic.
great writing, as there is a subtle line while acting like this. I personally experienced ignore and some business setup using this displeasuring while I focus on business. It was a great experiece though but although I agree with your point, it depends on politics, and how impartial company /executives act .. thanks..
Dan, there’s a lot here I want to disagree with, but when I dig into your meaning I can’t. The problem I have: I was raised by Calvinist parents and then trained by the Army to believe that in public life what pleases me is a very minor consideration, while serving others is important. However, I take your point to be twofold: The greater the number of people with a voice in what you do and how, the more generalized the product or service and the less “wow” for anyone; and that we’ll give better service or product if we like what we’re doing. I agree with both of those ideas.
I used to tell my kids, “You only have to care what people think if you want to have a relationship with them.” That’s true in organizations too.
I think the answer to your first question would be that we try to find those key customers who not only bring a significant revenue stream, but also encourage us to take our product offering to places that will be appealing to a large number of potential customers. In other words, the few relationships become representative of larger groups.
In life the opposite principle applies for me: every relationship has to be for its own sake to be genuine. I (regretfully) made the choice years ago to invest in fewer friendships in order to be a better friend to those I have.
I absolutely think there should be a balance between trying to please others and trying to please yourself, but I prefer not to try to please others in that way. I enjoy helping others and the company of others, so I’m not just doing something to please others, but also helping others and enjoying their company.
Boundaries. Very important. Guidelines for your business, how it’s going to run what you can and cannot offer the client, your standards … all good things.
This is an interesting post with a true premise and a thousand different little angles we out here in comment-land could take.
My favorite sentence: Cowardice creates putrid mediocrity.
You ask, “What role does pleasing others play in your organization or life?” For me, it is one of the consistent battles I fight personally to strike a balance between my tendency to want to please and my need to speak up in situations where I am right (or need to defend someone/something) but in the minority. I also wonder what messages I have been giving my children over a childhood of messages about “not disturbing so-and-so” or encouraging them to be on the edge of subservient. I suppose the fact that my spouse is somewhat the opposite may balance things out. As a family, I am pretty sure we want to steer them away from putrid mediocrity. 🙂
I think the key to customer satsification is a partnership. If you look at it that way, I think you will find the balance. I often fight internally with wanting to say “no” and say “yes” anyway. Almost always I am happy I said “yes.” I agree with Cinnine too and isn’t it interesting you can almost always point out the self-centered folks in any given organization and my experience they don’t end up staying around. At the end of the day you are on a team.
Pleasing others has played a huge role in my life. I am finally getting to a point where I don’t want to do it any more. To some extent, pleasing others provides a sense of well-being at having done something good. But in other ways, it makes me feel totally stressed out. The distinction lies in whether I am doing something that I believe is good and will please others or I am doing something because I think that’s what is expected. Caring what other people think plays a major part in influencing what I do. I’ll give you an example. I want to write fiction. Most people think that’s a sort of pipe dream. So if I am trying to please them, I either pursue other avenues (as I have most of my life) or I just don’t tell many people that I like to write. It sucks because the result of both of those things is me feeling inauthentic and kind of floundering at everything because my true passion lies elsewhere.
Striking a balance is so tough! And I’m still working on it.
Lindsay, I’m right there with you! I too am a closet fiction writer. Interesting how something valued by so many — who doesn’t like a good novel? — is devalued by those who know us.
A voice of encouragement: keep at it. If that’s where your heart is, you’ll write good stuff, and eventually people will recognize it.
Heh, sorry about misspelling your name. I’d like to blame it on old eyeballs, but I just get in a hurry.
Using loads o’ potentially inflammatory words there Dan! Bland, control, frantic, displeasing, offending, putrid…As Greg noted, I wanted to take issue with them and yet your reframe fit.
Wonder if the statement ‘the people you please control you and your organization’ works, just drop the ‘try to’. Maybe it is that ‘control’ word that sticks for me. Have to acknowledge that reality though. The dynamic discord that occurs when the customers redirect the vision is also a sticking point. How much profit is too much? Probably won’t answer that one today.
Can the second question be either/and? Makes for a dialogue of whose needs have priority at any moment in time. Sometimes it is an ‘either’ and other times it is an ‘and.’ However, I think even an ‘either’ can be a win-win if taken longitudinally. Builds networks and weaves a stronger connection.
Hey Dan, does mediocrity create putrid cowardice too?
Years ago, I worked for an internal IT support group. We had a poster in our department titled something like, “When saying yes means saying no.”
The gist was, if we kept responding immediately to (customer perceived) emergencies that superseded our existing commitments, we were violating our agreements already made to other customers. Some of our people pleasing employees struggled with that idea.
Liked this one Dan. Thanks!
This one is good. It reminds me of a manager who once told me that he had to manage the performance of certain members of his staff politically… even among low-performing colleagues. That simply doesn’t work for long.
What you describe as the repercussions are completely accurate. The entire business and organization suffer when your efforts to please are pointed in the wrong direction. You become a hostage to these individuals and it becomes increasingly difficult to actually draw the line when you REALLY need to manage them.
Excellent post. I easily fall into the trap of pleasing people. But I know that success requires focus. Challenging