37. Displease with Ease and Say No with Confidence
Leadership roles come with an uncomfortable truth: saying yes to everything means saying no to your own growth. The most respected leaders aren't the ones who keep everyone happy. They’re the ones who can deliver hard truths with calm clarity. This skill separates those perceived as "nice but not ready" from those seen as strategic leaders worth following.
I'm introducing you to one of the most underrated skills in modern leadership, especially for women leaders: to displease with ease. This approach transforms how others perceive your leadership presence and builds the respect necessary for real influence.
This week, the framework I share will help you honor your personal truth while demonstrating strategic thinking that benefits your entire organization. Through real examples from my clients and my own life, you'll see how this skill shifts you from being overlooked to becoming undeniable.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why constantly pleasing others leads to burnout and keeps you stuck in fixer roles.
How the zoom-in, zoom-out framework helps you speak truth while building influence.
The difference between being agreeable and being respected as a strategic leader.
Why displeasing with ease is emotional maturity, not rebellion or disrespect.
How to identify the internal narratives that keep you from setting boundaries.
The real cost of ignoring your feelings to avoid rocking the boat.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Here's the truth no one tells women leaders. If you're trying to please everyone, you'll burn out. If you're trying to be liked, you'll be overlooked. The leaders who rise the fastest are not the ones who say yes to everything. They're the ones who've mastered the art of saying the hard thing with calm, clarity, and confidence.
Today, I'm introducing you to one of the most underrated skills in modern leadership, especially for women leaders: displeasing with ease. It's the difference between being perceived as nice but not ready, and being respected, trusted, and taken seriously at the table. You'll learn how to do it using a powerful zoom-in, zoom-out framework, one that shows your personal truth and your strategic mind. And I'll share with you a few real-life stories that will have you thinking, "Wow, that's me." Let's dive in.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hello podcast listeners, welcome to today's show. This is episode number 37 and it is all about displeasing with ease. I know many of you are hearing that word, displease with ease, and you already feel uneasy about it. And I have something to share with you. Even when I think about displeasing with ease, it doesn't feel easy, and that's really the truth of it. It doesn't feel easy. We have been conditioned in so many different ways to please other people and to not rock the boat and to not want to disrupt things and for everybody to feel happy and nice and for everything to be tied in a nice bow.
But the reality is that's not life. That's not your personal or professional life. A lot of people have lots of feelings. You have lots of feelings too. There's a lot of things that need to get done, and it doesn't always feel easy. But if we hold this for ourselves that we can displease with ease, and the more we practice it, the more we understand it for ourselves and the value of it, the more it will feel easy. There are things that now feel easy for me to say and do, and it didn't always feel that way.
I'm pretty good now at just saying, "No, that's not going to work for me" or "No, that's a hard no for me." But there are still things in my life where I'm like, "Ugh, I don't know." I feel confused. I feel mixed up. I'm not sure what to do. So I'm going to share with you today how important this skill is. We're going to dive into why it's important for you personally. I'm going to share with you a way to do it that will help you zoom into what is your personal truth and get you clearer and closer to yourself and that little girl inside of you that has feelings too.
And I'm also going to show you how to zoom out and see the bigger picture and see the wider picture for yourself so that you will have these two ways to understand yourself both internally and both externally bigger in the world and how you want to position yourself in a way that works for both that zooming in and zooming out piece, because that will give you more context and it will allow people to understand you in a deeper way.
So you're going to have a mindset shift in this episode around displeasing with ease and a framework for expressing what you need without guilt and using your leadership presence. We'll dive into all of that. And why this is so key is that being respected isn't about being agreeable, but willing to displease with ease.
Living a life that's for you, that is one that satisfies you, fulfills you, challenges you, is really being able to displease with ease because that is about you choosing yourself and you choosing what you want in the wider scope of your life versus what might feel easy in the current moment in the short term.
So, let's dive into this more because this is such a big topic that I coach hundreds of women on all the time. And it is important that we understand what we're up against because often times when we feel uncomfortable, I actually just had a client say this to me where she said, "I'm lacking confidence." And I said, you know, your lack of confidence may be just practicing a new skill, feeling like you're questioning yourself. When you're doing something that's different, something that's risky, your survival brain might say, "Ooh, let's not do it." Like this is dangerous. But this is how we learn and grow. This is how we create more capacity for ourselves to be bigger and bolder in the world by actually practicing new skills, new ways of being, and new thoughts.
Let's first start with why displeasing feels dangerous. We've been socially conditioned, especially as women, as little girls, to people-please, you know, to really please people and to over-function. And over-function means that you're overdoing it. And a lot of times, to be honest, we learned this from our moms or our grandmas who do everything, who not only cook and clean, but sometimes they're also managing their own businesses or they're bringing money in and they're also taking care of the wider family context, making sure everyone's happy, making sure that grandma and grandpa have what they need, worrying about their brothers and sisters, worrying about their kids.
As little girls, we're watching our moms do this over-functioning. And I know this isn't all parents, but often times the context of the way we see ourselves is in seeing other people that are older than us, that look like us, that are very similar to us. And so we start thinking that this is the way it should be. So we're socially conditioned in many ways to people-please and to over-function as a way to survive, as a way to get attention.
We start getting this social conditioning really between the ages of 0 to 7 when we start learning about the world, what we can expect. And there is some fear, this false belief that a lot of women hold, that if I displease others, that it's dangerous in some way or I will lose connection or I will lose opportunity or I won't be respected.
There is something internally that we are telling ourselves. And the cost of constantly pleasing other people or over-functioning both in our personal and professional life is burnout, resentment, and not being seen as a strategic person, especially in the professional sense. You're not really strategically planning your career because you're not putting yourself first or your career first, and you are more trying to do what's best in the moment for the company.
I see this happening a lot to very strong, successful leaders where they are rolling up their sleeves and doing what they need to do in the here and now because they know they can make a difference. And that's great. That's actually one of the reasons why women are so powerful. They are there, they are able to get the thing done. But where we overuse the skill is where we're not thinking about the longer-term picture or the bigger picture. And we deal with the stuff that's in front of us.
And often times I see women getting stuck in positions where they are the fixer, they are the cleaner-upper. They're not working on the strategic things because people are asking them to clean up things, and that's where they add value, which is great. But they're also not saying no enough and they're not making enough space to do the bigger strategic things that are actually going to get them to run a bigger team, to have more responsibility, to have more impact, to have more influence, to have more income, right?
So this is what the cost is when you are over-pleasing, over-functioning, over-fixing things. And this happens in women's personal lives too. I've worked with women who are like the breadwinners. They're the ones bringing in the money. But they're also the ones that end up planning a lot of the kids' activities and doing a lot of those roles at home that, you know, typically fall on the mom.
And I'm not saying this is always what happens, but this is typically what happens because we live in the context of our own social conditioning and we also live in the context of the world expecting a lot of women to take care of this work. As things, I think things are balancing out, things are rebalancing, but that's not truly what's happening now, right? There are still a lot of ways that we ourselves see ourselves as the main caregiver, the main, you know, person that does X, Y, and Z.
And so, there's a lot of pressure and a lot of cost on women. I even worked with a client who had a really hard time leaving her job even though she was miserable in it and felt like she didn't enjoy it and felt like there was not a lot of upward mobility for her. But the financial impact that it would have for her family for her to make this other decision to move to a smaller company, make less money but make a bigger impact, enjoy her life more, enjoy her work more. And you know, for her, it was difficult to make that answer because it would mean displeasing everybody in her family to please herself.
And that's not easy. That's not easy. But guess what the cost is when you don't do that, right? If you don't do that, you could be burnt out, overworked, really not loving what you're doing, and bringing all of that home and not really being present with your family. So there's a cost to these things. And I think a lot of times when we are in it in the moment and we're only looking at it from a zooming in perspective of what we need for ourselves and what other people need, that it's difficult to make that decision.
So, displeasing does feel dangerous. It is normal. But I want you to understand that displeasing with ease, what it actually means, it's not about being difficult. It's actually about being more clear, grounded, and emotionally honest with ourselves.
Ease is about confidence, clarity, and calmness. And displeasing isn't disrespectful. Often times it can feel disrespectful, especially if somebody else is feeling uncomfortable, or if it is somehow disrupting or rocking the boat. Of course, it can feel uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean necessarily that it's disrespectful. In a lot of ways, it's respecting the person more by telling them the truth, by you showing up authentically and trusting that they are somebody that's capable of hearing the truth.
So, displeasing doesn't mean disrespecting. It's about alignment and boundaries, and it's more about truth-telling. A way that I help my clients deal with this and work with, you know, when they're thinking about their own experience and the wider experience, I created this framework for myself called zooming in and zooming out. And it really helps us to speak to the truth that we're living in, like what you're feeling.
Zooming in is really about what am I feeling? What do I want? Why does it matter to me? Because often times we're feeling some sort of emotional upset that is causing us to question ourselves and could potentially put us down the cycle of second-guessing ourselves, feeling not super confident.
And it's important to understand first how you're feeling about a certain situation before trying to solve the problem for everyone else. The next piece is the zooming out piece, and this is where you get to understand the contextualized truth that you have within the bigger picture, how it impacts others, contributes to the mission, and demonstrates foresight.
It's really blending and building your emotional maturity and helps people take your feedback seriously. This is how this balances trust and influence and builds stronger connections. You're learning how to show up authentically with people. See, the authentically is zooming in with you understanding yourself, but then when you're thinking about with people, that's the zooming out part, understanding the bigger context, the bigger picture, but within understanding how you show up in it.
So I want to share some real-life examples so you can see how this works for you and what might come up for you and how this does build more trust and influence and authentic leadership when you are using this method to displease with ease and get more and more clear with your story. So this actually just happened to me recently where I was chatting with one of my good friends and she said, "Hey, do you know our friend Candy is about to get married this fall?" And we're so excited.
And she said, "Hey, why don't we offer to throw a bachelorette party or a bridal shower for her and like see what she thinks, you know?" And I thought, in the moment, this is a great idea. Let's move forward with it. I feel like, of course, I want to celebrate her more and I want to spend more time with her, not just at the wedding, but beforehand.
And then afterwards, after I got off the phone, I felt some uneasiness. I felt something inside myself that was like, I'm not so sure. And instead of just ignoring it and moving forward and saying like, let's just ignore my feelings, I decided to explore it. I decided to get deeper inside and say to myself, what's really coming up? And what came up for me, and I've been doing this work for a while, so it was easier to come up with me quickly was that I really am not planning to go to Chicago for this one-off event.
So I'm going to Chicago in July for my mom's 70th birthday, and I'm going for my friend Candy's wedding in September. And I'm excited about all of those things. But I am not going to go to Chicago in August as well. So I noticed myself being like, "Ooh, this is not what I want to do." So part of me was like going to just come back to my friend and say, "Actually, let's not do it because I can't figure out a way for it to work."
And then I zoomed out. I zoomed out. This is the importance of zooming out. I zoomed out and thought about how could I make this work for her and for us? Like, how can I make this something that still holds to my value and my truth that I want to spend time with her, I want to celebrate with her, but I'm unwilling to go in August.
And so I actually came back to my other friend and said, "Listen, I know we talked about doing this whole thing together, and I realized like I'm not going to make a separate trip for it." I actually thought about offering to do something in July, but because it's my mom's 70th, I know I'm going to be full capacity with my family with planning this 70th party, and it's like a family reunion. So I'm actually not really seeing friends during it.
So then I said, "Hey, what if I fly in earlier for the wedding in September?" So it'll just be a day earlier and we could do something that Thursday night. What do you think?" And my friend said, "That's an amazing idea. I think that's great." And so by zooming out, I could see a way for it to work all together, right? And then of course, zooming in allowed me to understand myself and then to also displease with ease and say, "I'm not willing to do August because I'm just not willing to do that."
So when I went to my friend, Candy, who's getting married, I just called her and I said, "Hey, listen, what do you think about this plan? If we come a little earlier, we do like a dinner, we do something for you, how do you feel?" She was so excited and happy. And she said, "That sounds amazing. Let's do it."
But what my purpose of explaining this story is that displeasing with ease doesn't need to be like terrible. It can feel easy. It's really because I checked in with myself and I didn't offer August. If I offered August and she said yes to August, I would have been sitting in my own upset and anxiety over how to make it work and probably guilt because I'd be like, I'm going to be away from my family again. I didn't really decide to do that ahead of time. So I want to show how that zooming in, right, it helps me be true to myself, but zooming out, I could see a win for all of us. I could see how it could be a win for me and how it could work for my friends and of course my friend Candy who's getting married.
So that is one example. Of course, this is a personal example, but I want to show that this shows up personally and professionally all the time. I'm going to share a few other examples with you that is going to show how this shows up when we are in a professional setting and how it could really serve us because sometimes what happens with women is they zoom in so much. They feel frustrated, sad, ashamed for their emotions, and they just cut it off.
So instead of doing that next zooming out piece to make the world work for them, they often times are, you know, just pulling up their good girl pants and white knuckling it through, right? Getting it done. But what happens is over time you will grow more resentful, you'll burn out, and you're really telling yourself that you don't matter when you ignore your feelings.
You're telling yourself that other people matter more, and this is a vicious cycle, especially for women, because you're not going to get satisfied and you're not going to be seen, and people are going to feel like you're more of a doormat than a strategic leader that they want to be led by. Or when a promotion comes up, they might say, "Wow, Sarah is a great leader, and she gets a lot of things done, but I don't trust her to stand up to the corporate people when we have a policy that doesn't work for us being pushed down to us."
This is where practicing and having that muscle for displeasing with ease is actually beneficial to you, but also for your organization. People are not just looking for yes women all over the place. We need to learn how to challenge ourselves, speak up for ourselves, and challenge the wider organization in a way that is better for everyone.
So let's dive into a work example, and this comes from one of the clients that I'm working with right now. So she's having a really tough time because she realized that there are people in her company that are at her level that have certain perks that some people don't have, especially her and other people don't have. And there's no transparency, there's no policy around it. And this really matters because she's the CFO of the organization.
So on one level, for her, she's like, "Well, I'm a senior leader. How come I don't get this perk like all of the other senior leaders do?" And by the way, it's not all one for one. It's all kind of disproportionate, and there's no real rhyme or reason around why certain people get certain perks or not.
So there's that feeling, her feeling really disappointed, undervalued, not treated fairly, upset. And she's gone to her boss to ask for more clarity, and he has said, "I'm not going to give you clarity. I want you to be happy with your salary and your compensation and your specific perks that are also different than other people," which some of that stuff is true. And then there is the wider company need.
So first when I'm working with her, I'm like, it makes sense for you to be upset and disappointed. And it also makes sense for you to be even more disappointed when you ask for a criteria or for understanding of how this policy works to realize that there is actually no policy.
And then let's zoom out as a CFO who is building a scalable company that is really focused on sustainable growth and expansion and why would this particular thing matter also? Because as you expand, as you have new leadership come in, you want to be able to explain policies and you want those policies to make sense from a business perspective, and you want to have clarity around them. So from a CFO bigger perspective, she's like, "Yeah, this matters as well."
And so this really helps having that zooming in for herself personally, but then also zooming out for the wider organization. Because when she goes back to her boss, she's not just talking about her upset, her disappointment, and it's all about her and her, you know, ego, which is what a lot of leaders will think. They're like, "Oh my gosh, this person is self-obsessed." You know, this person is just focused on themselves. But by bringing it to the bigger picture as well, I want you to notice that it's not either or. It's you and it's the wider organization, right?
And this is how displeasing can be more easy when we think about it in this context. So when she goes back to her boss, she can say clearly, "Hey, I'm disappointed to learn that there's no policy, and I'm also disappointed that you don't want me to ask any more questions about it." And that's one piece. And I'm here to also tell you that even though I'm disappointed, I'm still going to show up, work really professionally, and give this job all I have because this is what matters to me and this is who I am. So she's sharing what she is unhappy about, but also sharing how she is planning to show up. And then sharing what it means to the wider organization.
So she might say something like, "Hey, I get that you don't want to have this conversation with me about my package and you don't want to get into it. And I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. And I'm disappointed by it," right? So you can still be matter of fact, own your emotions, say what's so. But you can also say, "Hey, from a wider perspective, I want to revisit this because as we scale, as we grow, these things are going to be more and more impactful and important to have clear policies around how we are giving corporate perks away. This is going to be part of our expansion goal, and we need to get clearer about it. So I'm not saying you need it today, but I am saying we're going to revisit this later down the line because this is important for our whole organization. And I want to work with you on it. As the CFO, it's important to have clear policies around this stuff.”
So you see, it's like she's taken herself from that little small thing to that bigger, wider thing and making it all important and also showing why this is important for him as the president of the organization to think about. Because who's going to argue with, you know, we need to scale and expand and become sustainable, right? Who's going to argue with that if those are the strategic goals of the company?
That is a way to expand it out and to displease with ease. So let me share with you another example from a client that I'm working with, and she wants to really create a framework for the board that she is working with. She's the CEO. And she wants the board to be more activated and engaged with the mission. And she wants to hold the board accountable, and she wants their help, and she wants their support because she's feeling alone, and she's feeling fear, and she's feeling a lot of pressure. And that's the zooming in part.
And there's a part of her when we're coaching together where she feels like she's being judged by them and she feels like she's a little girl that has to listen to what they want. And there's like sort of no winning for her. That's kind of like the zooming in and seeing like what's coming up for her. But if we zoom out and we see what really matters to her, which is again to get that board support to create a sustainable organization that continues to strive and to ask the board for help and to recommend things, like how could that serve the bigger organization?
So in some ways, she is struggling with wanting to play nice, be nice, not be disruptive, but she knows she's going to disappoint herself with that, and that's not going to be satisfying. And by the way, if she does that, it's actually not successful for the wider organization because she can't do it all on her own and she's not supposed to. That's why a board exists.
So taking this process of zooming it out and seeing that she's sort of displeasing the part of her that wants to just be like that soldier that get it done, that swallow your own emotions and figure it out. This is really widening it up, going back to the mission of the organization and bringing them on the journey with her. Because what is good for you is typically going to be what's good for the organization.
The part that again, women end up cutting themselves off is that they don't take themselves to that next level, that zooming out level to see how this could all be a win for everyone. They kind of cut themselves off at that like disappointment, that upset part, and then they want to just say game over. Let's throw in the towel and do what we need to. But again, that breathes resentment and burnout.
So what you want to do is take yourself to that zooming out, looking at it from a big picture and seeing why this is important for everyone and seeing how you get to expand as a leader by bringing people into that bigger vision. And at the same time, you know that you're displeasing with ease because this does feel easy. It does feel easy to go back to mission and vision and purpose.
And when we're bringing people on a journey with us, we feel mutual with them. So we move from judgment from them judging us or us judging them to curiosity. Again, curiosity and connection with people. This is how we build relationships. This is how we show up authentically and vulnerably when there is that trust. But we need to start with ourselves. We need to understand how we're feeling about things before we can take people on a journey with us.
So how to practice this skill? First, you can ask yourself this question when you're noticing that unease, that wanting to, you know, displease someone. So the prompt for you could be, "What am I afraid will happen if I disappoint this person?" So you want to ask yourself this because we have some sort of internal narrative that's keeping us from displeasing.
And that narrative could be like, I am a bad friend. I am a bad mother. I am a bad wife. I just had this with my husband on Saturday. He told me that he's unhappy about something, and I made that mean that I'm a bad wife. And I could talk to him openly about it so that it's not storing in my head. And the more that we can put our things on the table, the more we can understand ourselves and question our narrative with ourselves and with other people, the better we're able to actually get clear with ourselves and to be able to displease with ease and not make those stories in our mind that are telling us that we're somehow bad or wrong for having our own thoughts and feelings. Getting to the crux of that and doing that over and over again to get clearer with yourself and to get more connected with yourself, that is the key. That's the first step of zooming in.
Now the second step is, "Here's where I'm coming from and here's what I see from the bigger picture." This is the zooming out. Like if you zoom out, and I'm like, I zoom out. Most of the time I'm like, I'm such a good mom. I'm such a good wife. I am such a good friend, right? When you zoom out and see the bigger context of things. And so then when you're going to displease, you see that bigger picture, that bigger context, it doesn't feel so scary.
Even if you had this with your boss and you're like, "Well, I'm going to tell my boss I'm not happy with this, but if I zoom out, I see this bigger picture. How many times have I been there for him, said yes to him, helped him, right? This is one in, I don't know, 30 times when I'm, you know, going to say something that I'm unhappy about.
So when you give yourself that bigger context, it's easier to displease because you've had so many times where you have shown who you are. So you want to practice this and build this skill for yourself. Learning to zoom in, learning to zoom out and see that big picture. And then moving forward in a way where you are displeasing with ease, where you are not abandoning yourself emotionally or physically, right? Sometimes we say yes to things and we're physically somewhere we don't want to be. So this is about you pleasing yourself.
And displeasing with ease isn't rebellion. It's emotional maturity, and it's strategic leadership. This is how you move from doing the fixing day-to-day work to doing the more strategic work because you're zooming out more and you're constantly noticing yourself if you're resentful for doing the same project over and over, using the same skill sets over and over. And you're noticing your resentful because Tom over there gets to do all of the sexy cool projects.
This is your ability and chance to speak up because Tom is doing all of that, but wouldn't it be great to not just have Tom, but to have Sarah also do that? Isn't that more sustainable for the wider organization? Isn't it better to have leaders that can do a variety of skills, not just one? So this zooming in and zooming out framework can really help and support you with that. And help you bring people on the journey with you.
So, if this hits home, I want you to consider booking a coaching consultation with me and diving into this more. These are the skills that shift you from being overlooked to undeniable, which is exactly what I do in my coaching container with clients. Learning to displease with ease, learning to strategically put yourself first.
All right. Well, have a great week ahead. We have another great episode next week. I'm excited to see you there. Take care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Today, I'm introducing you to one of the most underrated skills in modern leadership, especially for women leaders: displeasing with ease. It's the difference between being perceived as nice but not ready, and being respected, trusted, and taken seriously at the table. You'll learn how to do it using a powerful zoom-in, zoom-out framework, one that shows your personal truth and your strategic mind. And I'll share with you a few real-life stories that will have you thinking, "Wow, that's me." Let's dive in.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hello podcast listeners, welcome to today's show. This is episode number 37 and it is all about displeasing with ease. I know many of you are hearing that word, displease with ease, and you already feel uneasy about it. And I have something to share with you. Even when I think about displeasing with ease, it doesn't feel easy, and that's really the truth of it. It doesn't feel easy. We have been conditioned in so many different ways to please other people and to not rock the boat and to not want to disrupt things and for everybody to feel happy and nice and for everything to be tied in a nice bow.
But the reality is that's not life. That's not your personal or professional life. A lot of people have lots of feelings. You have lots of feelings too. There's a lot of things that need to get done, and it doesn't always feel easy. But if we hold this for ourselves that we can displease with ease, and the more we practice it, the more we understand it for ourselves and the value of it, the more it will feel easy. There are things that now feel easy for me to say and do, and it didn't always feel that way.
I'm pretty good now at just saying, "No, that's not going to work for me" or "No, that's a hard no for me." But there are still things in my life where I'm like, "Ugh, I don't know." I feel confused. I feel mixed up. I'm not sure what to do. So I'm going to share with you today how important this skill is. We're going to dive into why it's important for you personally. I'm going to share with you a way to do it that will help you zoom into what is your personal truth and get you clearer and closer to yourself and that little girl inside of you that has feelings too.
And I'm also going to show you how to zoom out and see the bigger picture and see the wider picture for yourself so that you will have these two ways to understand yourself both internally and both externally bigger in the world and how you want to position yourself in a way that works for both that zooming in and zooming out piece, because that will give you more context and it will allow people to understand you in a deeper way.
So you're going to have a mindset shift in this episode around displeasing with ease and a framework for expressing what you need without guilt and using your leadership presence. We'll dive into all of that. And why this is so key is that being respected isn't about being agreeable, but willing to displease with ease.
Living a life that's for you, that is one that satisfies you, fulfills you, challenges you, is really being able to displease with ease because that is about you choosing yourself and you choosing what you want in the wider scope of your life versus what might feel easy in the current moment in the short term.
So, let's dive into this more because this is such a big topic that I coach hundreds of women on all the time. And it is important that we understand what we're up against because often times when we feel uncomfortable, I actually just had a client say this to me where she said, "I'm lacking confidence." And I said, you know, your lack of confidence may be just practicing a new skill, feeling like you're questioning yourself. When you're doing something that's different, something that's risky, your survival brain might say, "Ooh, let's not do it." Like this is dangerous. But this is how we learn and grow. This is how we create more capacity for ourselves to be bigger and bolder in the world by actually practicing new skills, new ways of being, and new thoughts.
Let's first start with why displeasing feels dangerous. We've been socially conditioned, especially as women, as little girls, to people-please, you know, to really please people and to over-function. And over-function means that you're overdoing it. And a lot of times, to be honest, we learned this from our moms or our grandmas who do everything, who not only cook and clean, but sometimes they're also managing their own businesses or they're bringing money in and they're also taking care of the wider family context, making sure everyone's happy, making sure that grandma and grandpa have what they need, worrying about their brothers and sisters, worrying about their kids.
As little girls, we're watching our moms do this over-functioning. And I know this isn't all parents, but often times the context of the way we see ourselves is in seeing other people that are older than us, that look like us, that are very similar to us. And so we start thinking that this is the way it should be. So we're socially conditioned in many ways to people-please and to over-function as a way to survive, as a way to get attention.
We start getting this social conditioning really between the ages of 0 to 7 when we start learning about the world, what we can expect. And there is some fear, this false belief that a lot of women hold, that if I displease others, that it's dangerous in some way or I will lose connection or I will lose opportunity or I won't be respected.
There is something internally that we are telling ourselves. And the cost of constantly pleasing other people or over-functioning both in our personal and professional life is burnout, resentment, and not being seen as a strategic person, especially in the professional sense. You're not really strategically planning your career because you're not putting yourself first or your career first, and you are more trying to do what's best in the moment for the company.
I see this happening a lot to very strong, successful leaders where they are rolling up their sleeves and doing what they need to do in the here and now because they know they can make a difference. And that's great. That's actually one of the reasons why women are so powerful. They are there, they are able to get the thing done. But where we overuse the skill is where we're not thinking about the longer-term picture or the bigger picture. And we deal with the stuff that's in front of us.
And often times I see women getting stuck in positions where they are the fixer, they are the cleaner-upper. They're not working on the strategic things because people are asking them to clean up things, and that's where they add value, which is great. But they're also not saying no enough and they're not making enough space to do the bigger strategic things that are actually going to get them to run a bigger team, to have more responsibility, to have more impact, to have more influence, to have more income, right?
So this is what the cost is when you are over-pleasing, over-functioning, over-fixing things. And this happens in women's personal lives too. I've worked with women who are like the breadwinners. They're the ones bringing in the money. But they're also the ones that end up planning a lot of the kids' activities and doing a lot of those roles at home that, you know, typically fall on the mom.
And I'm not saying this is always what happens, but this is typically what happens because we live in the context of our own social conditioning and we also live in the context of the world expecting a lot of women to take care of this work. As things, I think things are balancing out, things are rebalancing, but that's not truly what's happening now, right? There are still a lot of ways that we ourselves see ourselves as the main caregiver, the main, you know, person that does X, Y, and Z.
And so, there's a lot of pressure and a lot of cost on women. I even worked with a client who had a really hard time leaving her job even though she was miserable in it and felt like she didn't enjoy it and felt like there was not a lot of upward mobility for her. But the financial impact that it would have for her family for her to make this other decision to move to a smaller company, make less money but make a bigger impact, enjoy her life more, enjoy her work more. And you know, for her, it was difficult to make that answer because it would mean displeasing everybody in her family to please herself.
And that's not easy. That's not easy. But guess what the cost is when you don't do that, right? If you don't do that, you could be burnt out, overworked, really not loving what you're doing, and bringing all of that home and not really being present with your family. So there's a cost to these things. And I think a lot of times when we are in it in the moment and we're only looking at it from a zooming in perspective of what we need for ourselves and what other people need, that it's difficult to make that decision.
So, displeasing does feel dangerous. It is normal. But I want you to understand that displeasing with ease, what it actually means, it's not about being difficult. It's actually about being more clear, grounded, and emotionally honest with ourselves.
Ease is about confidence, clarity, and calmness. And displeasing isn't disrespectful. Often times it can feel disrespectful, especially if somebody else is feeling uncomfortable, or if it is somehow disrupting or rocking the boat. Of course, it can feel uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean necessarily that it's disrespectful. In a lot of ways, it's respecting the person more by telling them the truth, by you showing up authentically and trusting that they are somebody that's capable of hearing the truth.
So, displeasing doesn't mean disrespecting. It's about alignment and boundaries, and it's more about truth-telling. A way that I help my clients deal with this and work with, you know, when they're thinking about their own experience and the wider experience, I created this framework for myself called zooming in and zooming out. And it really helps us to speak to the truth that we're living in, like what you're feeling.
Zooming in is really about what am I feeling? What do I want? Why does it matter to me? Because often times we're feeling some sort of emotional upset that is causing us to question ourselves and could potentially put us down the cycle of second-guessing ourselves, feeling not super confident.
And it's important to understand first how you're feeling about a certain situation before trying to solve the problem for everyone else. The next piece is the zooming out piece, and this is where you get to understand the contextualized truth that you have within the bigger picture, how it impacts others, contributes to the mission, and demonstrates foresight.
It's really blending and building your emotional maturity and helps people take your feedback seriously. This is how this balances trust and influence and builds stronger connections. You're learning how to show up authentically with people. See, the authentically is zooming in with you understanding yourself, but then when you're thinking about with people, that's the zooming out part, understanding the bigger context, the bigger picture, but within understanding how you show up in it.
So I want to share some real-life examples so you can see how this works for you and what might come up for you and how this does build more trust and influence and authentic leadership when you are using this method to displease with ease and get more and more clear with your story. So this actually just happened to me recently where I was chatting with one of my good friends and she said, "Hey, do you know our friend Candy is about to get married this fall?" And we're so excited.
And she said, "Hey, why don't we offer to throw a bachelorette party or a bridal shower for her and like see what she thinks, you know?" And I thought, in the moment, this is a great idea. Let's move forward with it. I feel like, of course, I want to celebrate her more and I want to spend more time with her, not just at the wedding, but beforehand.
And then afterwards, after I got off the phone, I felt some uneasiness. I felt something inside myself that was like, I'm not so sure. And instead of just ignoring it and moving forward and saying like, let's just ignore my feelings, I decided to explore it. I decided to get deeper inside and say to myself, what's really coming up? And what came up for me, and I've been doing this work for a while, so it was easier to come up with me quickly was that I really am not planning to go to Chicago for this one-off event.
So I'm going to Chicago in July for my mom's 70th birthday, and I'm going for my friend Candy's wedding in September. And I'm excited about all of those things. But I am not going to go to Chicago in August as well. So I noticed myself being like, "Ooh, this is not what I want to do." So part of me was like going to just come back to my friend and say, "Actually, let's not do it because I can't figure out a way for it to work."
And then I zoomed out. I zoomed out. This is the importance of zooming out. I zoomed out and thought about how could I make this work for her and for us? Like, how can I make this something that still holds to my value and my truth that I want to spend time with her, I want to celebrate with her, but I'm unwilling to go in August.
And so I actually came back to my other friend and said, "Listen, I know we talked about doing this whole thing together, and I realized like I'm not going to make a separate trip for it." I actually thought about offering to do something in July, but because it's my mom's 70th, I know I'm going to be full capacity with my family with planning this 70th party, and it's like a family reunion. So I'm actually not really seeing friends during it.
So then I said, "Hey, what if I fly in earlier for the wedding in September?" So it'll just be a day earlier and we could do something that Thursday night. What do you think?" And my friend said, "That's an amazing idea. I think that's great." And so by zooming out, I could see a way for it to work all together, right? And then of course, zooming in allowed me to understand myself and then to also displease with ease and say, "I'm not willing to do August because I'm just not willing to do that."
So when I went to my friend, Candy, who's getting married, I just called her and I said, "Hey, listen, what do you think about this plan? If we come a little earlier, we do like a dinner, we do something for you, how do you feel?" She was so excited and happy. And she said, "That sounds amazing. Let's do it."
But what my purpose of explaining this story is that displeasing with ease doesn't need to be like terrible. It can feel easy. It's really because I checked in with myself and I didn't offer August. If I offered August and she said yes to August, I would have been sitting in my own upset and anxiety over how to make it work and probably guilt because I'd be like, I'm going to be away from my family again. I didn't really decide to do that ahead of time. So I want to show how that zooming in, right, it helps me be true to myself, but zooming out, I could see a win for all of us. I could see how it could be a win for me and how it could work for my friends and of course my friend Candy who's getting married.
So that is one example. Of course, this is a personal example, but I want to show that this shows up personally and professionally all the time. I'm going to share a few other examples with you that is going to show how this shows up when we are in a professional setting and how it could really serve us because sometimes what happens with women is they zoom in so much. They feel frustrated, sad, ashamed for their emotions, and they just cut it off.
So instead of doing that next zooming out piece to make the world work for them, they often times are, you know, just pulling up their good girl pants and white knuckling it through, right? Getting it done. But what happens is over time you will grow more resentful, you'll burn out, and you're really telling yourself that you don't matter when you ignore your feelings.
You're telling yourself that other people matter more, and this is a vicious cycle, especially for women, because you're not going to get satisfied and you're not going to be seen, and people are going to feel like you're more of a doormat than a strategic leader that they want to be led by. Or when a promotion comes up, they might say, "Wow, Sarah is a great leader, and she gets a lot of things done, but I don't trust her to stand up to the corporate people when we have a policy that doesn't work for us being pushed down to us."
This is where practicing and having that muscle for displeasing with ease is actually beneficial to you, but also for your organization. People are not just looking for yes women all over the place. We need to learn how to challenge ourselves, speak up for ourselves, and challenge the wider organization in a way that is better for everyone.
So let's dive into a work example, and this comes from one of the clients that I'm working with right now. So she's having a really tough time because she realized that there are people in her company that are at her level that have certain perks that some people don't have, especially her and other people don't have. And there's no transparency, there's no policy around it. And this really matters because she's the CFO of the organization.
So on one level, for her, she's like, "Well, I'm a senior leader. How come I don't get this perk like all of the other senior leaders do?" And by the way, it's not all one for one. It's all kind of disproportionate, and there's no real rhyme or reason around why certain people get certain perks or not.
So there's that feeling, her feeling really disappointed, undervalued, not treated fairly, upset. And she's gone to her boss to ask for more clarity, and he has said, "I'm not going to give you clarity. I want you to be happy with your salary and your compensation and your specific perks that are also different than other people," which some of that stuff is true. And then there is the wider company need.
So first when I'm working with her, I'm like, it makes sense for you to be upset and disappointed. And it also makes sense for you to be even more disappointed when you ask for a criteria or for understanding of how this policy works to realize that there is actually no policy.
And then let's zoom out as a CFO who is building a scalable company that is really focused on sustainable growth and expansion and why would this particular thing matter also? Because as you expand, as you have new leadership come in, you want to be able to explain policies and you want those policies to make sense from a business perspective, and you want to have clarity around them. So from a CFO bigger perspective, she's like, "Yeah, this matters as well."
And so this really helps having that zooming in for herself personally, but then also zooming out for the wider organization. Because when she goes back to her boss, she's not just talking about her upset, her disappointment, and it's all about her and her, you know, ego, which is what a lot of leaders will think. They're like, "Oh my gosh, this person is self-obsessed." You know, this person is just focused on themselves. But by bringing it to the bigger picture as well, I want you to notice that it's not either or. It's you and it's the wider organization, right?
And this is how displeasing can be more easy when we think about it in this context. So when she goes back to her boss, she can say clearly, "Hey, I'm disappointed to learn that there's no policy, and I'm also disappointed that you don't want me to ask any more questions about it." And that's one piece. And I'm here to also tell you that even though I'm disappointed, I'm still going to show up, work really professionally, and give this job all I have because this is what matters to me and this is who I am. So she's sharing what she is unhappy about, but also sharing how she is planning to show up. And then sharing what it means to the wider organization.
So she might say something like, "Hey, I get that you don't want to have this conversation with me about my package and you don't want to get into it. And I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. And I'm disappointed by it," right? So you can still be matter of fact, own your emotions, say what's so. But you can also say, "Hey, from a wider perspective, I want to revisit this because as we scale, as we grow, these things are going to be more and more impactful and important to have clear policies around how we are giving corporate perks away. This is going to be part of our expansion goal, and we need to get clearer about it. So I'm not saying you need it today, but I am saying we're going to revisit this later down the line because this is important for our whole organization. And I want to work with you on it. As the CFO, it's important to have clear policies around this stuff.”
So you see, it's like she's taken herself from that little small thing to that bigger, wider thing and making it all important and also showing why this is important for him as the president of the organization to think about. Because who's going to argue with, you know, we need to scale and expand and become sustainable, right? Who's going to argue with that if those are the strategic goals of the company?
That is a way to expand it out and to displease with ease. So let me share with you another example from a client that I'm working with, and she wants to really create a framework for the board that she is working with. She's the CEO. And she wants the board to be more activated and engaged with the mission. And she wants to hold the board accountable, and she wants their help, and she wants their support because she's feeling alone, and she's feeling fear, and she's feeling a lot of pressure. And that's the zooming in part.
And there's a part of her when we're coaching together where she feels like she's being judged by them and she feels like she's a little girl that has to listen to what they want. And there's like sort of no winning for her. That's kind of like the zooming in and seeing like what's coming up for her. But if we zoom out and we see what really matters to her, which is again to get that board support to create a sustainable organization that continues to strive and to ask the board for help and to recommend things, like how could that serve the bigger organization?
So in some ways, she is struggling with wanting to play nice, be nice, not be disruptive, but she knows she's going to disappoint herself with that, and that's not going to be satisfying. And by the way, if she does that, it's actually not successful for the wider organization because she can't do it all on her own and she's not supposed to. That's why a board exists.
So taking this process of zooming it out and seeing that she's sort of displeasing the part of her that wants to just be like that soldier that get it done, that swallow your own emotions and figure it out. This is really widening it up, going back to the mission of the organization and bringing them on the journey with her. Because what is good for you is typically going to be what's good for the organization.
The part that again, women end up cutting themselves off is that they don't take themselves to that next level, that zooming out level to see how this could all be a win for everyone. They kind of cut themselves off at that like disappointment, that upset part, and then they want to just say game over. Let's throw in the towel and do what we need to. But again, that breathes resentment and burnout.
So what you want to do is take yourself to that zooming out, looking at it from a big picture and seeing why this is important for everyone and seeing how you get to expand as a leader by bringing people into that bigger vision. And at the same time, you know that you're displeasing with ease because this does feel easy. It does feel easy to go back to mission and vision and purpose.
And when we're bringing people on a journey with us, we feel mutual with them. So we move from judgment from them judging us or us judging them to curiosity. Again, curiosity and connection with people. This is how we build relationships. This is how we show up authentically and vulnerably when there is that trust. But we need to start with ourselves. We need to understand how we're feeling about things before we can take people on a journey with us.
So how to practice this skill? First, you can ask yourself this question when you're noticing that unease, that wanting to, you know, displease someone. So the prompt for you could be, "What am I afraid will happen if I disappoint this person?" So you want to ask yourself this because we have some sort of internal narrative that's keeping us from displeasing.
And that narrative could be like, I am a bad friend. I am a bad mother. I am a bad wife. I just had this with my husband on Saturday. He told me that he's unhappy about something, and I made that mean that I'm a bad wife. And I could talk to him openly about it so that it's not storing in my head. And the more that we can put our things on the table, the more we can understand ourselves and question our narrative with ourselves and with other people, the better we're able to actually get clear with ourselves and to be able to displease with ease and not make those stories in our mind that are telling us that we're somehow bad or wrong for having our own thoughts and feelings. Getting to the crux of that and doing that over and over again to get clearer with yourself and to get more connected with yourself, that is the key. That's the first step of zooming in.
Now the second step is, "Here's where I'm coming from and here's what I see from the bigger picture." This is the zooming out. Like if you zoom out, and I'm like, I zoom out. Most of the time I'm like, I'm such a good mom. I'm such a good wife. I am such a good friend, right? When you zoom out and see the bigger context of things. And so then when you're going to displease, you see that bigger picture, that bigger context, it doesn't feel so scary.
Even if you had this with your boss and you're like, "Well, I'm going to tell my boss I'm not happy with this, but if I zoom out, I see this bigger picture. How many times have I been there for him, said yes to him, helped him, right? This is one in, I don't know, 30 times when I'm, you know, going to say something that I'm unhappy about.
So when you give yourself that bigger context, it's easier to displease because you've had so many times where you have shown who you are. So you want to practice this and build this skill for yourself. Learning to zoom in, learning to zoom out and see that big picture. And then moving forward in a way where you are displeasing with ease, where you are not abandoning yourself emotionally or physically, right? Sometimes we say yes to things and we're physically somewhere we don't want to be. So this is about you pleasing yourself.
And displeasing with ease isn't rebellion. It's emotional maturity, and it's strategic leadership. This is how you move from doing the fixing day-to-day work to doing the more strategic work because you're zooming out more and you're constantly noticing yourself if you're resentful for doing the same project over and over, using the same skill sets over and over. And you're noticing your resentful because Tom over there gets to do all of the sexy cool projects.
This is your ability and chance to speak up because Tom is doing all of that, but wouldn't it be great to not just have Tom, but to have Sarah also do that? Isn't that more sustainable for the wider organization? Isn't it better to have leaders that can do a variety of skills, not just one? So this zooming in and zooming out framework can really help and support you with that. And help you bring people on the journey with you.
So, if this hits home, I want you to consider booking a coaching consultation with me and diving into this more. These are the skills that shift you from being overlooked to undeniable, which is exactly what I do in my coaching container with clients. Learning to displease with ease, learning to strategically put yourself first.
All right. Well, have a great week ahead. We have another great episode next week. I'm excited to see you there. Take care.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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