Think back and find the source of your weakness

The root cause of my people pleasing attitude - by Phil

I'd like to think of myself as Frank Underwood (from House of Cards), or Alan Shore (from Boston Legal), or even for someone that's real, I'd like to think I have the characteristics of Richard Branson, or Elon Musk. Maybe even Steve Jobs - though I feel sorry for Tim Cook. As the CEO after Jobs, it doesn't really seem to matter what he does, there's just no comparison. I'd read biographies of Richard Branson and Steve Jobs and think that I embody (not just display but genuinely embody) some of the traits that have made them successful. But the reality is, embodying some of their characteristics is not enough. It's like baking a bake. You might want to make a Black Forest Cake, but even with the right recipe, if all you have are just "some" of the ingredients, then it's not likely that you will have a tasty Black Forest Cake. In fact, it's not likely that you'll have a cake at all. You might have ingredients that not only don't make the cake you want but actually completely ruin the taste and eliminate any hope that some combination of the right ingredients might just create a passing resemblance and not make the consumer have to go to hospital (or see the contents of their dinner again).

I don't think I can list all the ingredients that I lack which successful people have. That list would be way too long and the entire purpose of starting myCorporateDiary is to share with you what I discover along the way. What a let down it would be if I just let it all out in one blog post. However, as I was talking with one of our Core Contributors; Courtney G, we both landed on the fact that we are "people pleasers". We both agreed how detrimental this people pleasing attitude was to our professional lives and no doubt personal lives as well. In particular, how angry it makes us internally when we know we're being taken advantage of, or we're not strong enough to say "no". While the purpose of myCorporateDiary is to help us get over this attitude, we both started to wonder how, when, and why did this attitude develop? Could it be something we're born with, was it something in our environment (e.g. the way our parents raised us), and are there ways to get over it?

So I started thinking about where my people pleaser attitude came from. The first thought was my background. As an Asian kid growing up in a military family, it was not hard to imagine the tight regime I grew up in. It was almost one step away from having to address my dad as "Yes sir, no sir". Also, in the Asian culture, you are taught that respecting your elders is the same as not challenging them (which became a big problem for Asian airlines where the co-pilot would not say anything should the Captain make a mistake, which can sometimes result in disastrous circumstances). In an Asian office, rank mattered. There is no diversity of thought. The boss is always right. You arrive before the boss and you don't leave the office until the boss has left. In Japan, people are known for working late into the night. But their productivity is rubbish. The staff don't leave until the boss leaves but then the boss doesn't leave because his/her competitor hasn't left. So it becomes a game of who can stay the latest. Don't believe me? Ask someone who works in Japan and they will tell you the same.

I shared this thought with my mentor at work. He pondered this for a while and agreed with me that it's a factor. BUT, he hit me with single sentence that knocked me out flat "Great but useless thought. You live in the Western world and work for a 100% Western organisation. That kind of thinking doesn't really help your situation". That's very true. I haven't lived in Asia since I was eight, thereby the Asian culture in me should've been well integrated with my Western upbringing. I grew up a Western kid, heck I can't even fake a Chinese English accent even if I wanted to (and how handy that would be in some awkward meetings). So I went back to the drawing board and started trying to relive my past and went all the way back to my childhood.

I'm not saying this is right, but one event jumped out at me. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense (and explains another annoying trait I have - see if you can pick it). It was Year Five in Primary School. By then I was well and truly westernised. No accent, no social awkwardness, etc. I had lots of friends. All of them were guys. The girls in the class loved to organise plays. I'm not sure what triggered this trend but they'd create a story line, pick out students in the class for roles in the play and then perform it for the class during lunch breaks. Usually, me and my friends would not be picked for the play and we were ok with that. It's normally the cool boys who were chosen. We'd be in the audience enjoying the play and being secretly in love with some of the girls (at that age, it's never one girl). It was the age where you knew you liked girls but didn't know what to do and desperately wanted to get their attention. But the security I had in knowing I'm not the only one who's always in the audience was shattered one day. The girls were creating a big play and they picked every single guy in the class for roles, except me. The fact that I'd be the only one in the audience was beside the point. At that age, who'd think about logistics. What kind of play would go well with only one member in the audience?!!!!!!! Nonetheless, I was shattered! While I didn't show it and congratulated my friends for getting picked, deep inside, I felt like a loser. What did I do to not get picked? Why was I left out. Eventually, one of my friends begged the girls to give me a role, which they grudgingly did. I had the role of a monster for two seconds. All I needed to do was lean over one of the girls menacingly and that's it. Yup, that was it. Eventually, the play was cancelled because the girls realised that there's nobody in the audience. 

I reckon it was this experience that set the scene for the people pleaser attitude in me. Like most Asians at the time, I was great a maths, great at science, and ironically, great at English. But the girls didn't care, the popular kids didn't care. I didn't know what would make the girls want to notice me, let alone talk to me. That "play" event solidified in my mind that being smart made no difference. I incorrectly formed the view that I had to be someone different. Then one day after the event, my grandparents had given me a little extra cash and I bought two bags of Twistys. I can't remember why. But I do remember that as I was heading back to class, I chanced upon one of the more popular girls in class. In my mind at the time, she was the most gorgeous girl I have ever seen. Her name was Sue-Anne and she was a brunette and had the cutest dimples on both sides of her cheeks when she spoke or smiled (I remember her surname too but I won't reveal it here). Boy, what a difference a bag of Twistys made. I gave her the bag and she followed me around for the entire 45 minute lunch break. She wouldn't stop talking to me, telling me how nice I was. I think it was from that moment that I started to think being nice would get the girls' attention. The bag of Twistys told me so! A bag of cheesy, twisty, yumminess. How could it be wrong?

So what's the point of telling this story? Because 30 years later, I am hopefully wiser and know more of the realities of life than when I was in Year 5. When I look back at this event with the benefit of hindsight, I started to see how wrong that perception was. Without parents to teach me about girls at that time (they'd say girls are a distraction, be a doctor first then you can have any girl doctor you want - that was their logic), and not being a man to talk about what I'm thinking and my "feelings", I didn't know that being nice to people in order to get their attention was wrong. To sacrifice your self worth in order to get their attention was not a sustainable approach.

Now that I think I've found the trigger, I can use the benefit of hindsight to destroy the false myths I've been telling myself. I can start to deconstruct the poor logic in my brain and like theme of the book "You are not your brain", I can start to substitute my existing thoughts that trigger people pleasing actions with different thoughts. Perhaps over the course of the next few months, by continuously deconstructing this event and correcting my actions, hopefully I can become a more balanced individual, start thinking for myself, and remove one of the wrong ingredients I have in the pantry and swap it for the right one to finally make that Black Forest Cake. 

Credit: Blog photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash.