Some entrepreneurs/founders see their people-pleasing behavior as a badge of honor. Giving the investors, team and other stakeholders what they think they need. Yes, sometimes sacrifices (against ourselves) need to be made for the sake of business success. But it shouldn’t be the normal behavior we leaders and entrepreneurs have. While being nice and staying on speaking terms is what we want to achieve by doing so, often it has a counter effect. And that is hurting your business.

For instance:

• The hard conversation about a disagreement is not held between you and another founder. Avoiding it makes matters worse. The elephant in the room is blown up, while it could’ve easily been solved.
• You don’t want to lose your position, status or pride by communicating something, while that is exactly what is happening behind your back.
• Your team member is not doing his/her work right. That causes your customer to get low-quality service. You avoid the conversation as you believe feedback can only be done in a harsh way and that would hurt him/her personally.

So the question of today’s episode is: Why is only people pleasing as an entrepreneur/founder bad for your business?

Things David & Rachelle talked about:

• The kind of culture that comes from a people-pleasing leader
• The inevitable disagreements between founders/leaders is good
• Why some co-founders don’t talk about the hard stuff (anymore) and the effects of that
• Why not being open, honest and authentic hurts your business results
• How people pleasing is choosing others over yourself and knowing better
• How to stay in connection with the other party while in that hard conversation

David Foster & Rachelle Leerling are founder and entrepreneur coaches. We have weekly thought-provoking discussions about how to thrive as an entrepreneur. No fluff.

New episodes are published every Friday.

We also go live on LinkedIn every Thursday 10:30 EST / 16:30 CET

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling