The High Cost of Popularity: Why You Must Stop Being a People Pleaser at Work

The “Chameleon” Effect in Management

We all want to be liked. But being liked by everyone is a Pyrrhic victory: a win that feels like a success on the surface, but actually costs you everything.

To have everyone like you, you have to distance yourself from who you actually are. You end up forgetting your own desires, opinions, and truths.

Being liked by everyone is impossible anyway. People have such differing preferences and morals that catering to all of them requires you to be a chameleon every minute of the day.

• One person wants directness; another wants diplomacy.
• One values honesty; another prefers office gossip.
• One person is very optimistic and the other pessimistic  

Constantly tailoring yourself to these preferences and noticing people liking you gives you a short-term hit of dopamine, but it leaves you directionless and hollow long-term. Where is your center? Who are you, really?

Lessons from The Courage to be Disliked

The Japanese writer Ichiro Kishimi explores this in his book, The Courage to be Disliked. His conclusion is simple: if everyone likes you, you’ve deserted yourself.

Whether someone likes you often says just as much about their own preferences as it does about you.

So, what is the alternative?

Choosing Authenticity Over Approval

Try to live in a way that you actually like yourself. This doesn’t mean being selfish or unkind. Absolutely not. It just means you stop trying to constantly impress others, cross your own boundaries, or agree with things that don’t sit right with you.

If people like you for who you are, that’s great. But if you are being genuine and they don’t like it, that’s okay too.

It’s better to be disliked by some, for who you are, then to be liked by everyone for who you are not.

This is especially powerful in leadership. Leaders who are authentic and honest outperform those who are just trying to be popular.

Helping people define how they want to live and act is a core part of how I help my clients.

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