Is Your Need to Be Liked Destroying Your Effectiveness as a Leader?
Date - April 17, 2019
By Jennifer R. Farmer
In Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, each of us has an innate desire to belong and to be loved. Once that need is met, an individual can move along their respective path to self-actualization.
While the desire to be loved is natural, managers desperate for their team’s approval may compromise their effectiveness and inflict harm on their teams. Perhaps, you can understand why; a manager who is driven by a need to be liked may shy away from delivering constructive feedback that could help an employee improve. A manager fearful of upsetting the apple cart may tolerate behavior that is harmful to the work environment and culture. A leader desiring to stay in his team’s good favor may say “Yes” when they really should be saying “No.”
In his April 7, 2014 Harvard Business Review article, “The Problem with Being Too Nice,” Michael Fertik said “Few people want to be the bad guy. But leaders are also expected to make the tough decisions that serve the company or the team’s best interests. Being too nice can be lazy, inefficient, irresponsible, and harmful to individuals and the organization.”
For these reasons, leadership can be a solitary experience. When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive, he earned many enemies challenging the status quo and insisting on civil rights for African Americans. We lavish praise on him now, but were he dependent on the approval of others, he would not have championed racial and economic justice.
He understood that leadership requires a willingness to do what one believes is right, even when “right” is unpopular. It requires a willingness to make decisions independent of the approval of others.
A painful lesson from my own career underscores this point. I was leading a team of communicators. I’d hired most of them personally and was extremely proud of what they each brought to our organization; they were smart, outspoken, hardworking and cutting edge. To this day, they remain the team whose memory leaves me beaming with pride. I desperately wanted to honor their accomplishments. I’d requested that two members of my team receive pay increases; in my estimation, they were under paid and I knew we would pay more to replace them. I reasoned that the average candidate would not mirror their level of talent, passion and experience. I lobbied hard for pay increases for these two staffers and thought I was successful. Before the process was complete, I notified not only the staff members in question, but the rest of the team, that these two individuals would receive pay increases. Imagine my horror when weeks later, I learned that while my own bosses were sympathetic to my request, they didn’t believe the organization was able to reward increases at that time. I must tell you that even as someone with significant crisis management experience, I was shook about how to resolve the mess I had created.
In that moment, it was clear to me that the process was riddled with mistakes; my mistakes. Rather than waiting until the review process was complete, I prematurely announced pay raises. I wanted to be celebrated by my team and I wanted them to know that I fought for them. My desire to be liked overshadowed common sense. I ultimately had to go back to the two staffers in question, and then the entire team, apologize profusely and deliver the bad news.
“Anger” does not begin to describe my team’s reaction. Days later, they ran an action on me and filed into my office, one by one, to explain how disappointed, hurt and angry they were. As a leader, this was one of the lowest points in my career. By humbling myself, acknowledging my error and vowing to continue fighting to reward the team with pay increases, we somehow recovered. While the experience is long gone, the lesson is fresh.
Perhaps your approval-seeking behavior wasn’t in the same form as mine. But if you are motivated by the affirmation of others, and desperate for external validation, you may unwittingly put yourself or your team in a bad situation. These days, I am increasingly asking the question, and encouraging clients to the question, ‘How does what I am about to do or say, serve my team?’ The query will enable you to power through difficult conversations or withhold information that is unhelpful. This Psychology Today article includes helpful tips on overcoming the dependence of external validators, including identifying the advantages and disadvantages of seeking approval, identifying the underlying thoughts that drive one to seek external approval and examining the evidence and logic of one’s thoughts.
The need to be liked can drive managers to do quite foolish things. Offer me as Exhibit A.
Jennifer R. Farmer, aka The PR Whisperer, is an author, lecturer and strategic communicator for organizations, leaders and celebrities committed to social and racial justice. Follow her on IG/Twitter using @pr_whisperer.
