Daily Archives: 20 March 2015


Is There Such A Thing As Being Too Nice?

Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan has just released their new book “The Coach’s Casebook: Mastering the Twelve Traits That Can Trap You” sharing some of their practical coaching experience and knowledge. In today’s guest post they look at a common trait they’ve seen when coaching:

Is There Such A Thing As Being Too Nice?

by Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan

"Is There Such A Thing As Being Too Nice?" by Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan

Do you know anyone you would classify as “too nice for their own good”? Do you know anybody who struggles to say no? How about someone who is constantly worrying about how people might react to something they have done? Perhaps this even describes you?

One of the most common traits we come across in our coaching work is a strong people-pleasing driver – a desire for others to think favourably of us.

Making sure that other people like us increases our chances of fitting in and developing bonds and rapport with others. We are social animals and being part of a group and being liked is key to influencing others and developing relationships. Everyone likes being around someone who makes them feel good! However this trait can easily become a trap. People with a strong people-pleasing trait tend to put other people’s feelings and needs before their own – often to extremes. This can lead to them being taken advantage of and manipulated by others.

Other symptoms of people-pleasing behaviour include:

  • Being indecisive.
  • Having a knee-jerk ‘Yes’ response to requests.
  • Apologising excessively.
  • Feeling guilty for other people’s feelings.

Often our people-pleasing trait is embedded at a young age. It could be the result of struggling to attain the love or attention of others as children or having had to take on responsibility for family members at a young age. People pleasing can also be a coping mechanism to combat low self-esteem. People with low self-esteem may hope to play on the principle of reciprocity in order to secure compliments, favours and friendship.

As we have already mentioned, pleasing others is a good thing! Being liked by others is a key factor in being successful and the things we do to please others are usually laudable acts and can make other people feel better, build great relationships and generally, make the world a better place.

However, sometimes we have such an extreme desire to be liked that we define our self-worth as a human being by whether we are liked by those around us, In the case of extreme people-pleasing, we need to be liked by everyone – even those people we don’t like or respect. Often the people pleasing behaviours will not be appreciated by the other person and the people pleaser will then feel rejected and strive even harder to please; or alternatively they will resent the other person for not appreciating their sacrifices.

We strive to ensure our coaching clients know that careful consideration of their impact on other people is a good thing. The objective is to help them retain their thoughtfulness and consideration without becoming a ‘doormat’. There are many reasons for developing people-pleasing behaviours as a way of proceeding through life and of course, as coaches, we approach each client as a unique individual. There is no ‘set’ formula for coaching someone with a people-pleasing trait and we always take time to understand the client’s individual history, beliefs, values and behaviours.  Some of the approaches we have used in our work with clients with a people-pleasing trait include:

  • Encouraging the client to examine the costs and the benefits of their people-pleasing behaviour. Often, they have come for coaching because they have realised for themselves the cost of this behaviour to their wellbeing, their self-esteem and their precious time.
  • Encouraging the client to do something which will only benefit them.
  • Working with them to determine some boundaries about what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in themselves and others.
  • Asking them to complete an audit of people in their life, looking at those who treat them with dignity and respect and those who take advantage of them.
  • Stressing the importance of practicing saying no, without offering excuses. Offering excuses or reasons opens the door for people to negotiate with and this ultimately makes it harder to say ‘No’.

When clients learn to master their people-pleasing trait and bring it into balance they find that:

  • their confidence and self-respect increase
  • they are taken more seriously
  • they have fewer misunderstandings
  • they have more time
  • they are more likely to get what they want but even if they don’t, they feel better for having asked for it

QuestionWhat techniques do you employ when coaching someone with a strong people-pleasing trait?

About Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan

Geoff Watts and Kim Morgan are authors of The Coach’s Casebook: Mastering the Twelve Traits That Can Trap You [Amazon UK link]/[Amazon.com link] which looks at the most common traits that are both a large part of their clients’ successes but also one of their biggest limiting factors.

Geoff is a qualified personal and business coach and is a regular keynote speaker about coaching, collaboration and change as well as a leading authority on agile development and Scrum. You can find out more about Geoff at his website http://www.inspectandadapt.com

Kim is Managing Director of Barefoot Coaching Ltd (www.barefootcoaching.co.uk) Barefoot Coaching’s Postgraduate Certificate in Business and Personal Coaching is ICF Approved (ACTP). Kim was Coaching Person of the Year 2012 by Coaching at Work Magazine and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Chester.