People Pleasing as a Manager | Why It Costs You Respect

Leadership & Executive Coach | David Buirs

People pleasing as a manager. Why being kind and people pleasing are two very different things.

David Buirs, leadership coach in Amsterdam, explains why people pleasing as a manager costs you respect and energy. This article covers the difference between genuine kindness and people pleasing, and offers practical guidance for leaders who want to be clearer without losing connection with their team.

We all want to be liked. There is nothing wrong with that. It is not a weakness or a character flaw. It is simply how we are wired.

As a child, you learn quickly: if I adapt, if I am easy to be around, if I do not cause trouble, people will like me. And it worked. At school, in your friend group, at home. It kept you safe and included.

As an adult, you carry that pattern with you. And in the workplace, especially as a manager, it seems to work too. You say yes when someone asks for something. You postpone difficult conversations. You bend when there is pushback. And people do like you.

But somewhere, it starts to wear on you.

The difference between being kind and people pleasing

There is a distinction here that many managers miss.

Being kind is genuine. You help someone because you want to. You consider others because you care about them. There is no hidden expectation attached.

People pleasing works differently. People pleasing is transactional. You do something for someone with a hidden expectation: I am nice to you, so you will be nice to me. I avoid this difficult conversation, so you will think I am a good manager. I take over your work, so you will be grateful.

And when the other person does not return the favor? You feel frustrated. Disappointed. Sometimes even angry. While they probably did not even know there was a deal on the table.

People pleasing is almost a form of manipulation. Unconscious, well-intentioned, but it places a hidden claim on the other person. And that makes the relationship unequal.

Why we all do it

Let me be honest: recognizing this is easy. Stopping it is hard.

Most managers I coach have a strong drive to help others. That is a wonderful quality. It is often the exact reason they are good at their job. They are empathetic. They sense what is going on. They want their team to do well.

The problem starts when that helpfulness is no longer a free choice, but an automatic response. When you say yes while meaning no. When you swallow feedback because you are afraid of the reaction. When you let someone's poor behavior slide because you do not want to disturb the peace.

A study by Kuang et al. (2025), published in PsyCH Journal, examined people pleasing behavior in over 2,200 participants. The researchers found a clear link between strong people pleasing tendencies and lower mental health. Think higher levels of neuroticism, lower self-esteem, and a persistent sense of emptiness. People who please a lot, it turned out, build their sense of self-worth almost entirely on external validation. And that is a fragile foundation.

What people pleasing costs you as a manager

As an individual, people pleasing drains your energy and self-respect. As a manager, the consequences are bigger. Your team notices. Maybe not consciously, but they feel it.

A manager who never addresses anything slowly loses authority. Someone is consistently late to meetings. You say nothing. A deadline is missed without any communication. You fix it yourself. Someone delivers work that is clearly below standard. You quietly adjust it.

At first you think you are protecting your team. But what you are actually communicating is: rules do not really apply here. And the people who do follow through on their commitments see that. They lose trust. In you, and eventually in the team.

Research by Georgescu and Bodislav (2025) confirms this pattern. They found that managers and employees who struggle to say no are more likely to become targets for colleagues who take advantage of that. People pleasing makes you vulnerable in a work environment where results matter, and it makes you less effective as a leader. (The Workplace Dynamic of People-Pleasing, Encyclopedia, 2025)

The fear underneath the pleasing

Why is it so hard to address someone's behavior? Because there is almost always a fear underneath.

Fear of being rejected. Fear of being seen as authoritarian. Fear of damaging the relationship. Fear of no longer being liked.

That fear is understandable. Especially if you have always learned that your worth depends on how others see you. But in a leadership role, that fear works against you.

As a manager, it is your responsibility to create an environment where people can do good work, feel heard, and know where they stand. That means sometimes having a difficult conversation. Addressing someone who is consistently late. Giving feedback when a deadline is missed. Being clear about expectations. Precisely because you care about your team.

Clear and caring at the same time

Less people pleasing as a manager goes hand in hand with being warm and honest at the same time. Giving feedback when it is needed. Setting boundaries when someone consistently does not meet expectations. And doing that from a place of respect, in the moment, instead of from built-up frustration three months later.

A few concrete situations where this plays out.

A team member is regularly late to meetings. The people pleasing response: say nothing and quietly compensate. The clear response: "I have noticed you have been coming in late to our meetings the past few weeks. I want to check in and see if everything is okay, and at the same time, it is important that we start on time."

Someone misses a deadline without communication. The people pleasing response: pick it up yourself and say nothing. The clear response: "I expected this yesterday and did not hear anything. What happened? And how do we prevent this next time?"

A colleague delivers work that does not meet expectations. The people pleasing response: rewrite it yourself. The clear response: "This is not where it needs to be yet. Here and here I see room for improvement. Can you take another look?"

In all of these cases, the message is the same: I take you seriously enough to be honest with you.

Start by noticing

Less people pleasing does not start with becoming tougher. It starts with looking honestly at yourself.

Where do you say yes when you mean no? Which conversations do you postpone? With whom do you adapt more than necessary? And what do you hope to achieve by doing that?

That last question matters most. Because if the answer is: "I hope they will like me," then that is people pleasing. And then you also know where the opportunity is.

It does not have to happen overnight. You do not need to have a confrontational conversation with your entire team tomorrow. Start small. Say something you would normally keep to yourself. Give feedback you would normally swallow. And notice what happens. Usually, the answer is: much less than you feared. And you feel a lot lighter.

Being kind is a choice. People pleasing is a habit.

The leaders I work with get noticeably better at this. Not overnight. But session by session, conversation by conversation. They learn that clarity and warmth go together. That you can address someone's behavior in a way that still makes them feel seen. And that is something you can learn. Every conversation gets a little easier than the last one.

It starts with the honest realization that being liked and leading well do not always go hand in hand. Sometimes you have to choose. And the best managers choose clarity. Not because they enjoy it. But because they know their team deserves it.

If you notice that people pleasing is a pattern that holds you back as a leader, it can help to look at it with someone. In leadership coaching we work on exactly these kinds of patterns. You learn to set boundaries without losing connection. For leaders at director level, executive coaching for directors is a natural next step. And for organizations that want to support their leaders in this structurally, management training delivers measurable results.

Sounds familiar? Or just curious? Let's talk. Zero obligation, just a good conversation.

How to Connect With Your Team Through Real Listening

David Buirs | Leadership Expert

How to Really Connect With Your Team

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach based in Amsterdam. This article explains why most managers think they’re listening to their team while their team experiences it differently. You will read about the gap between reactive and real listening, what that gap costs you, and which concrete questions open up the conversation.

Your team has noticed something about you that you haven’t.

In most of the conversations you have with them, you’re not fully there. Not gone. Just somewhere behind your own eyes, three sentences ahead, ready with your answer. They feel it. Most of them won’t say it.

That’s the gap between thinking you connect with your team and actually doing it.

Two monologues pretending to be a conversation

In most workplace conversations, two people take turns talking about themselves.

Someone tells you something about a project. You wait politely until they’re done, then jump in with something similar from your own experience. Or worse, with a solution they hadn’t asked for. Or worse still, with the next agenda item you had ready before they walked in.

Everyone has talked. Everyone has the impression a conversation took place. Nobody has learned anything.

Why you think you’re listening when you’re not

Listening is a skill almost everyone thinks they’re good at. In practice, most managers listen mainly to respond. Actually understanding comes second, if it comes at all.

The difference is where your head is. With real listening, you’re with the other person. With reactive listening, you’re with your next sentence. With your judgment. With the solution. With how it fits into your schedule.

To you, both feel like listening. To the other person, only the first feels like being heard.

What it costs your team

People only bring problems to someone who actually listens.

If a team member tries three times to put a vague beginning of something in front of you, and you keep responding before they’re halfway through, they won’t try a fourth time. They’ll tell you when it’s too late. Or not at all.

Same goes for feedback about you. For doubts about a decision. For the real reason someone has quietly been putting less energy into the work over the past few weeks.

What a team doesn’t tell you is almost always the most important thing happening.

What listening actually is

Real listening is different from being quiet while someone else talks. Being quiet is waiting your turn. Listening is emptying your head and letting the other person in.

That doesn’t work when you’re thinking about three other things. That doesn’t work with a phone on the table. That doesn’t work when you have to be in the next meeting in two minutes.

It requires a kind of slowness most work environments don’t reward. But it’s the basic condition for everything that falls under leadership.

Questions that open up the conversation

A few questions I often give people:

What makes that important to you?

How did you end up there?

What would a good outcome look like for you?

What are you actually trying to say?

That last one is underrated. Someone comes to you with a long build-up. You feel something underneath it. Ask.

What happens when you practice this

In the beginning, not much. A conversation runs a little longer. Someone doesn’t consciously notice you’re different, but they tell you a bit more.

After a few months, something happens. People come to you with problems earlier. They’ve sensed somewhere, without consciously thinking about it, that it’s worth talking to you.

The senior person on your team starts pushing back at you. They used to do that only with peers. Now they do it with you too, which actually means you’re being seen for the first time as someone who can handle it.

Someone comes to you about workload pressure two weeks earlier than they normally would. That saves you a good employee.

What it asks of you

An uncomfortable amount of slow attention.

You’re not going to make it to your next meeting through your one-on-ones anymore. You’re going to have to let moments of silence stand without immediately filling them. You’re going to have to sit in something uncomfortable sometimes, without smoothing it over with a quick “yeah, got it, so what you can do is…”.

What you build over time is a kind of calm inside yourself. Techniques don’t get you there.

How you develop that calm internally is a different story. I wrote a separate piece about how to develop leadership presence from a quieter internal place. For this article, what counts is this: the decision to listen better, and the practice of it, does more than any communication course.

The leaders I work with through management coaching often struggle with exactly this. Their team describes them as solid communicators. The real work sits deeper. They have never learned how to actually be present in a conversation. For organizations that want this addressed across their leadership layer, leadership training offers the team version of the same principle.

Plan a free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Why Can’t I Switch Off From Work? A Coach’s Perspective

Incompany Management Trainer | David Buirs

Why Can't I Switch Off From Work?

David Buirs is an executive coach based in the Amsterdam region, working with senior leaders on identity, pressure, and authentic leadership. This article explores why many leaders cannot switch off from work, even when their external workload is reduced. It covers the difference between outside pressure and inner patterns rooted in identity, and what tends to help in each case.

A manager I worked with cancelled her sabbatical twice. The third time she actually went. She came back after eight weeks rested, and within two weeks was working the same hours as before. Same emails at 11pm. Same restlessness on Sunday afternoons.

It puzzled her. The break had been genuine. The rest had been genuine. So why did the old pattern come back so quickly? Why couldn't she switch off from work, even when she finally had the chance?

Workload pressure or inner pattern?

I've seen this from both sides of the table. As a leader, I've absolutely given people more than they should have had on their plate. Workloads creep, deadlines collide, and you don't always notice until someone is drowning. When that's the cause, the fix is clear. Take work off the plate, redistribute, hire, adjust expectations. The relief arrives quickly.

But I've also seen people where reducing the workload didn't help. Where their managers genuinely tried. Where the calendar opened up and the pressure stayed. Where the person filled the new gaps with more.

That second pattern is harder. And it's the one I want to talk about here.

The doer identity

A study from INSEAD, recently published by Preeti Varma and Jennifer Louise Petriglieri, looked at knowledge professionals who described themselves as working excessively. The researchers specifically sought out people who said: I'm doing this to myself, at least partly, and I don't know how to stop.

What they found is worth pausing on.

Every person in the study carried what the researchers call a "doer identity." Being someone who is always doing something. Not for the money. Not for the promotion. The doing itself had become part of who they were.

And in almost every case, this identity has its roots in childhood, where the researchers identified three patterns.

Three roots in childhood

The first came from homes where doing was held up as the supreme virtue. Hard work was the family value. Nobody said "you must achieve." They modelled it, lived it, talked about people who didn't work hard with a small note of disapproval. Children in these homes learned: I am worthwhile when I am producing. Stop producing and something is wrong with me.

The second came from harder environments. Homes where emotions weren't safe, where children learned early that they were on their own. Doing became a way to escape feeling. Books, schoolwork, projects, anything to be functional rather than vulnerable. As one participant put it: work became a hiding place.

The third came from homes with explicit expectations. The 8 out of 10 that needed explaining. The grandparents whose achievements you were measured against. The recognition that came when you delivered and felt absent when you didn't. Children in these homes learned: I am visible when I perform.

None of this is about blaming parents. The researchers are careful about that, and so am I. Most caregivers in these stories were doing their best with what they had, often working through their own versions of the same patterns.

The point is what the doing did. In childhood, it worked. It helped a child manage distress, feel safer, feel seen, feel adequate. It was a genuine adaptation to genuine conditions.

But what works at six doesn't always work at thirty-six. The pattern stays. The need underneath it stays. And it puts you in workplaces where you produce constantly, achieve consistently, get praised regularly, and still can't relax on a Sunday. Eventually this may lead to burnout.

How to tell which one you're dealing with

So how do you know which one you're dealing with? Workload from the outside, or pattern from the inside?

A useful question to ask yourself: have you experienced this feeling only in your current job, or has it been a constant throughout your career? If reducing your hours, taking a holiday, or moving to a calmer team brings genuine relief that lasts, the pressure was probably mostly external.

If none of that fully works, something else is going on. The vacation feels uncomfortable. The praise gives a brief lift and then dissolves. A quieter week creates anxiety rather than relief. You catch yourself manufacturing the next thing to be busy with.

Most senior leaders I work with are dealing with some mix of both. The workload is genuinely high AND there's an inner driver making it feel even heavier. The job needs adjusting AND the inner pattern needs attention.

Why a lighter workload isn't always enough

Here's the hard part. If the inner pattern is part of why you can't switch off from work, your manager cannot solve it for you. A lighter workload won't reach it. Better policies won't reach it. They might give you breathing room, but the same pattern will fill it.

What does help, in my experience, is work that goes a layer below the behaviour. Coaching that examines where the doing comes from, not just how much you do. Honest conversations with people who can see what you cannot. Sometimes therapy, depending on how deep the roots go. Mindfulness and reflection practices that help you observe the need to constantly produce with a bit of distance, which is hard to do when you're caught up in it.

And underneath all of that, the slower work of disentangling your sense of self and self-worth from your productivity. Of learning that you are a person before you are an output.

It's slow work. But definitely worth it. For yourself, for your company, and your team. You start being able to do a lot AND stop. Which, for many of us, is the harder skill.

If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear what you recognise in your own story. For senior leaders looking at this pattern in themselves, executive coaching is the kind of work that goes a layer below behaviour. For organisations where this shows up across the management layer, management training can address the wider culture of always being on. Either way, if you'd like to talk about what tends to help, plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

The full research paper by Varma and Petriglieri is available here on ScienceDirect.

Self-Awareness In Leadership: The Real Foundation

Incompany Management Trainer | David Buirs

Leadership Begins With Self-Awareness

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach based in Amsterdam. This post explains why self-awareness is the foundation of every form of leadership development and why trainings without that foundation often fail to stick. The reader learns about the role of self-inquiry in lasting behavioural change as a leader.

There are managers who take a new leadership training every two years. They know all the models. They can draw Covey's quadrants from memory and explain how feedback works on paper.

And yet on Monday morning, they do exactly what they always did.

Why? Because the foundation is missing that all that knowledge is supposed to land on.

Knowledge versus self-knowledge

Leadership is only a small part knowledge. It's mostly about knowing who you are when the pressure rises.

A manager who finds feedback difficult doesn't need a new feedback model. What she needs first is insight into why feedback feels so heavy. Is it an old belief that conflict is dangerous? A conviction that being liked matters more than being clear?

Without that insight, you learn a technique. With it, you learn to recognise a pattern.

Know thyself

Above the entrance of the oracle at Delphi stood the words "know thyself". Centuries later, Jung put it more sharply. The person who doesn't look inward keeps wondering why the same problems follow him around.

Every experienced leader recognises this. The manager who doesn't know her triggers keeps reacting instead of leading. The director who doesn't know where his insecurity sits covers it with political games.

Those patterns can change. Just not before you see them.

The paradox of self-awareness

Here is where things get interesting. Organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich ran a multi-year research programme on self-awareness involving thousands of people. The finding was striking. Around 95 percent of people believe they are self-aware. In reality, only 10 to 15 percent actually are.

This connects to something more familiar from psychology: the Dunning-Kruger effect. The less you know about something, the more you tend to overestimate your ability in it. Not from arrogance. Simply because you are not yet skilled enough to see what you cannot see.

For leadership, this is uncomfortable. The one skill that makes the biggest difference is also the skill we most often misjudge in ourselves.

This is no reason for cynicism. It is a reason to stay curious. A leader who keeps questioning herself and actively asks for feedback belongs to the small group that genuinely grows.

Why so many trainings don't stick

This is why many leadership trainings fade within a month. Participants learn skills and apply them on top of patterns that were never examined. A thin layer of varnish on old wood.

A good leadership training starts with self-inquiry. What are your blind spots? When do you fall back into old patterns? Which beliefs about authority, conflict or success sit so deep you barely notice them anymore?

Once those questions are answered, feedback models and coaching conversations get real traction. They become extensions of who you are.

What this means for organisations

The same applies to an entire management team. An organisation that invests in leadership development without self-awareness as a foundation is investing in technique without context. The training itself can be solid. Without serious self-inquiry, behaviour change stays surface-level.

For organisations looking to work on leadership structurally, a leadership development program that integrates self-inquiry is a sensible choice. For individual managers, coaching for managers offers the space to do this work one-on-one. For directors at board level, executive coaching amsterdam is a natural place to ask the same questions at that level.

An invitation

Self-awareness is not a destination. You learn who you are by acting, bumping into things, looking back, and moving on.

If this speaks to you and you're curious what this work could look like for you or your team, a free introduction is a good first step. No sales. Just a conversation.

Should You Compliment Team Members? The Honest Answer

Leadership & Executive Coach | David Buirs

Should You Compliment Team Members? The Honest Answer

David Buirs is a leadership coach based in Amsterdam. This article addresses the common worry managers have about complimenting their team, whether recognition leads to complacency, and what specific, honest appreciation actually sounds like. You learn why the discomfort of giving compliments is often a useful signal about your own leadership.

When someone at work tells you they really appreciated something you did, what do you actually do?

A lot of us mumble "oh it was nothing" and move the conversation along quickly. We brush it off before it can land. The spotlight feels uncomfortable, even when it's a kind one.

If receiving appreciation feels this awkward, no wonder we rarely give it either.

Won't it make my team lazy?

A worry I hear often from managers: won't complimenting my team make them lazy? Won't people stop pushing themselves if they feel too good about their work?

It sounds logical on the surface. Comfort breeds complacency, right?

But notice what's underneath. The fear assumes that people need to feel slightly short of good enough to keep trying. That the absence of recognition is what keeps performance high.

The opposite is closer to what I see in practice. People who feel genuinely seen at work tend to raise their standards over time. They work harder, not softer. Because they're no longer spending energy wondering if anyone noticed.

How you talk to yourself is how you talk to your team

Think about how you talk to yourself after finishing something good. Most of us don't pause to feel good about it. We go straight to the next item on the list.

We're wired to be tough on ourselves. The inner critic is always on. For many leaders, self-assessment borders on self-interrogation.

So being warm with someone else about their work can feel strange. It's not the language you speak with yourself. If your inner dialogue is dominated by what still needs to be better, a moment of warmth to someone else can feel off-brand. Almost dishonest, even when it's completely real.

This is why the work of giving compliments often starts with looking at how you treat yourself. The generosity you can't give inward is hard to send outward.

What actually happens when you do it

From my own years as a manager, and from working with managers who try this deliberately: it works. People start caring more. Connection increases. Engagement follows.

But something more human happens too. People feel less alone at work. They bring a bit more of themselves to the team. They're more willing to take risks, try things, speak up without hedging every sentence.

You notice they show up with more weight, not less. More ownership, not less.

What a real compliment sounds like

Here's where many managers get stuck. "Great job" doesn't land. It's too generic. It could apply to anyone. The brain processes it as background noise, the same way it processes "how are you" in a hallway.

A real compliment is specific. It names what the person did, why it mattered, and what you noticed about how they did it.

"I saw how you handled the question from finance yesterday. You stayed calm, gave them the data, and didn't get pulled into the drama. That took discipline."

That lands. Because it proves you were paying attention.

Most people have never been told something like that at work. Not once in their career. The first time you do it, you may see them not quite know what to do with it. That's how rare this kind of recognition is.

The discomfort is the signal

If giving compliments like this feels uncomfortable, that's useful information. It tells you where you've been playing small as a leader.

Joseph Campbell wrote about the cave you fear entering holding the treasure you seek. Around compliments, this pattern shows up often in coaching. The conversation that feels slightly off is often exactly the one that would move everything.

Step outside your comfort zone this week. Your team needs to see a bit more of what you already think about them.

Where this shows up in coaching

One of the patterns we often work on in management coaching is this exact gap. Managers who see their team clearly, who care deeply, whose team has no idea. Because the care stays inside.

For leaders at director and board level, the dynamic gets sharper. Senior leaders often become less visible emotionally as they climb, not more. Teams read silence as indifference. In coaching for executives we work on how to stay warm and present without losing the composure the role demands.

Organizations that want this kind of culture across the whole management layer need more than individual work. That's where leadership training comes in. Building recognition and feedback skills into the team structurally, instead of hoping one manager at a time figures it out.

An invitation for this week

Pick two people on your team. Tell them something real about their work. Specific. Concrete. No agenda attached.

See what happens to your own energy afterward. Notice what happens to the conversation. Notice what happens the next time you see them.

If you want to work on this kind of leadership more deliberately, you can always plan a free introduction. Zero obligation. Just a conversation about where you are and where you want to go.

When an Employee Won’t Accept You as Manager

Leadership & Executive Coach | David Buirs

The one single factor that separates great leaders from mediocre ones

David Buirs is a leadership coach in Amsterdam who works with managers on influence, authority, and team dynamics. This article identifies the single factor that determines leadership success and what to do when an employee won't accept your authority. The reader learns how to apply root cause analysis and open the right conversation.

Someone in your team doesn't accept you as their manager.

You see it in the eye contact that breaks a second too early. In the way they respond to your decisions. In what they don't say in meetings when everyone else does.

You've been watching it for a while. And somewhere in the back of your head, a thought keeps surfacing.

I'm the manager. They should listen. If they won't, they need to go.

Hold that thought for a second. Because before we get to what you should do, there is something worth understanding. Something that changes how you read this entire situation.

The success of your leadership is determined by your team's willingness to follow you.

Not your title. Not your experience. Not the quality of your ideas. Whether people actually choose to follow.

Why that one line matters more than most leadership advice

In 2024, psychologists Alex Haslam, Mats Alvesson, and Stephen Reicher published a paper in The Leadership Quarterly that cuts through a lot of what gets taught about leadership. They called it 'Zombie Leadership': beliefs that have been repeatedly debunked by research yet keep circulating anyway.

The most stubborn one: that leadership is about the leader.

Their finding is direct. Leadership is proven by followership. Without it, the title means nothing.

When someone on your team won't accept your authority, that is not just an awkward personnel issue. It is a signal that your leadership, in that specific relationship, is not functioning. And a non-functioning relationship does not fix itself by being ignored or by being forced.

Most managers respond to that signal with defensiveness. The best ones get curious.

Getting curious means asking the right question first

The right question is not: how do I get this person to fall in line?

It is: what is actually driving this?

There are four causes that come up most often.

Your reputation. How do people in the organization see you, before you even walk into the room? Sometimes a perception has formed, quietly, that works against you. Knowing that is not comfortable. It is useful.

Something specific that happened. A decision that landed wrong. A comment in a meeting that wasn't received the way you intended. People file these moments away and draw conclusions from them they never share out loud. The leader who finds a way to surface that gains real information.

Unprocessed loss. Did this person want the role you now hold? That kind of disappointment rarely shows up as disappointment. It shows up as resistance. Leaders who recognize this respond with acknowledgment rather than pressure, and that changes the entire trajectory of the relationship.

Frustration that was never really about you. Sometimes you are the nearest visible face of an organization someone has grown to resent. Mediocre leaders take that personally. Great leaders ask what is underneath it.

Getting clear on the cause is what makes the next step possible. Without it, you are solving the wrong problem.

The conversation that great leaders don't postpone

Once you have a read on what's driving the resistance, you have the conversation.

Crucial Conversations, the book by Patterson and Grenny, offers a principle that applies directly here: before you name the problem, name what you both want. Shared purpose first. Then the difficult part.

"I want this team to work well. I think you do too. And I've noticed something between us that isn't working. I'd rather understand it than leave it."

Then you name it. Directly, calmly, without loading it with accusations.

This takes more courage than escalating to HR. It also builds something that authority-on-paper never could: genuine influence. The kind that doesn't depend on your title.

Teams notice when a manager faces something uncomfortable with curiosity and courage. That noticing changes how they see you. And over time, it changes how willing they are to follow you.

The impact of this over time

Every leader faces this at some point. The ones who handle it well come out with something the others don't: a clearer sense of how influence actually works.

Because influence is not the goal. It is what makes the goal possible. When people genuinely follow you, you can start doing what you actually became a leader for: guiding your team toward something meaningful, helping them grow, or any other positive goal worth achieving.

If this is something you're in the middle of right now, you're welcome to think it through with someone who has been there. Start with a free conversation at davidbuirs.com/en/contact/.

Managers who want to build this kind of capability more structurally will find a good home in leadership coaching. For organizations that want to make it part of how their managers operate, a leadership training program tends to be the more lasting investment.

Source: Haslam, Alvesson & Reicher (2024). Zombie Leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us. The Leadership Quarterly.

Leadership Consultancy Amsterdam

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

The Leadership Gap That Shows Up When You Start Growing

David Buirs is a leadership consultant and coach based in the Amsterdam region, working with managers, executives, and organizations in both Dutch and English. He offers one-on-one leadership coaching, in-company management training, and strategic advisory for HR and senior leadership teams. This article explores why leadership development gets deprioritized during periods of growth, what the data says about the cost of that choice, and what it looks like to close that gap in practice.

There is a specific moment most scale-ups can recognize.

It is not a crisis. It is quieter than that.

It is when someone says: "I do not know who to talk to about this anymore." Or when a decision that used to take 20 minutes now involves four meetings. Or when a manager comes to you because they do not know how to handle someone on their team, and you realize you do not quite know either.

The company grew. The structure did not keep up.

The people managing teams in the middle are doing their best with tools that were designed for a smaller, simpler organization.

From everyone-does-everything to actual departments

In the early days of a company, the flatness is an advantage. No one waits for permission. Information flows because everyone is in the same room. The founder knows everyone by name.

Thirty people in, that changes.

You need specialists. You need structure. You need managers who can actually manage, not just coordinate tasks or relay information up and down.

The problem is that most of those managers grew up in the culture where none of that was necessary. They were promoted because they were great at their work. Because they delivered. Because people liked working with them.

And suddenly they are responsible for performance reviews, conflict resolution, motivation, feedback conversations, and figuring out why someone is not performing. Without a handbook. Without real training. Often without much support from above.

That is not a personal failure. That is a structural gap. And it shows up in established organizations just as much as in scale-ups. Leadership development is rarely treated as a strategic priority until something breaks.

What Gallup found

Every year, Gallup publishes its State of the Global Workplace report. The 2025 edition made headlines in the HR and leadership world, and the findings are hard to ignore.

Global employee engagement fell to 21% in 2024. The main driver: managers are disengaging, and that disengagement cascades. Seventy percent of team engagement is directly tied to the manager. When managers struggle, their teams follow.

The cost came to $438 billion in lost productivity. Globally. In a single year.

Gallup also found that fewer than 44% of managers worldwide have received any formal management training. Among those who have, active disengagement rates drop by half.

The two clearest recommendations from the report: train your managers, and teach them to coach.

Managers who learn coaching skills see their own engagement rise by up to 22%. The engagement of their teams goes up by up to 18%. Those are not marginal improvements. That is a different kind of organization.

Safety, voice, and why it matters for growth

Here is something worth sitting with.

When people feel safe at work, they speak up. They flag things that are not working. They try approaches that might fail. They bring problems before they become crises.

When they do not feel safe, they go quiet. They do what is asked and nothing more. They save the real feedback for their next employer.

In a company where speed and innovation matter, that silence is expensive.

Psychological safety does not mean a comfortable, frictionless workplace. It means people trust that if they raise a concern, try something that does not work, or say something difficult, they will not be punished for it.

Building that trust is a manager skill. It shows up in how a manager responds when someone brings bad news. How they run a one-on-one. How they handle a disagreement in a team meeting.

These things can be learned. They just need to be taught.

How I work with organizations and leaders

I am a leadership consultant and coach based in the Amsterdam region. I work in both Dutch and English, with individual leaders and organizations across the Netherlands and internationally.

For leaders who want to develop more intentionally, I offer leadership coaching. One-on-one, focused on the real challenges you are facing. Whether you are new to the role and figuring out what it actually requires, or years in and ready to lead with more intention and less friction.

For organizations, I offer management training built around your actual context. A program designed from your specific challenges, with measurable outcomes. Not generic content dropped into a room.

And for HR directors and senior leadership teams, I work as a strategic sparring partner. Someone to think with about culture, manager development, and what is actually driving the patterns you are seeing in your organization.

If any of that sounds relevant, I am happy to talk. Plan a free introduction here. No pitch. No proposal. Just a clear conversation about where you are and what might help.

Management Team Development

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

The Fish Starts Rotting at the Head

David Buirs is a leadership coach and management trainer based in Amsterdam, specialising in management team development. This article explains why organisational problems often start at the top, not in middle management. It covers the power paradox (Keltner), psychological safety (Edmondson, Project Aristotle) and strategic misalignment as core challenges in management team development.

The fish starts rotting at the head.

It sounds harsh. But it is not an attack on leaders. It is an observation about systems.

When an organisation struggles with low engagement or a culture of politics and self-protection, the cause is rarely middle management. The cause sits one level higher.

And yet most development investments go to the managers. Not to the management team itself.

A collection of leaders is not a leadership team

Patrick Lencioni puts it plainly. Most management teams are not teams at all. They are groups of individuals who happen to attend the same meeting.

Everyone defends their own domain. Heads nod, decisions get "made", and an hour later everyone goes back to doing exactly what they were doing before.

That is not collaboration. That is coexistence.

And the irony? Those same people expect their managers to create psychological safety and move forward as one team.

You cannot give what you do not have.

The power paradox

Management team members reached their position because of what set them apart. They listened well. They built trust. They knew how to bring people along.

Dacher Keltner, psychologist at UC Berkeley, describes what often happens next. The experience of power changes behaviour in ways most people do not see coming. Leaders become less empathetic, less inclined to listen, more focused on their own priorities. Not through bad intentions, but through what power does to the brain.

The paradox: the qualities that brought you to the top are precisely the qualities that power slowly erodes.

What else goes wrong

Three things I see time and again.

No shared vision. Research by MIT Sloan across 124 organisations found that only 28% of executives responsible for executing strategy could name three of their organisation's strategic priorities. More than half of senior executives disagree with each other on what those priorities even are. Not bad people. But no shared compass either.

Reward structures that punish collaboration. When someone's performance is measured on their own department's results, there is no rational reason to proactively help colleagues. The system rewards islands.

No time for development. The agenda is always full. Development gets postponed until there is a crisis. But development that only happens in a crisis is not development. That is firefighting at a higher level.

Psychological safety starts at the top

Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, spent decades researching team performance. Her conclusion is consistent: psychological safety is the single most important factor in whether a team functions well. Not talent, not budget, not structure.

Google confirmed this through Project Aristotle, a large-scale internal study into what separates high-performing teams from the rest. Psychological safety came out on top. Above everything else.

But if the management team does not model this itself, it spreads downward. Middle managers sense what is happening above them. They mirror it, even when they are not aware of it.

Two levels of development

Management team development works on two levels. Both are necessary.

The first is individual. Every management team member brings their own blind spots and patterns that show up in collaboration. That requires individual attention. Leadership coaching does this work. It addresses the person doing the leading, not just the role they occupy.

The second is collective. Shared language, shared norms, shared behaviour. You do not learn that alone. You learn it together, in a well-designed programme aimed at the team as a whole. For organisations that want to work on this structurally, management training at the MT level is a logical next step.

In closing

The healthiest organisations I know have one thing in common. The management team functions as a real team. They hold each other accountable, say what they think, and consciously choose shared success over individual scorecards.

That does not happen by itself. But it can be developed.

If you want to explore what that could mean for your management team, let's have a free introductory conversation. No obligation.

Addressing Recurring Performance Issues as a Manager.

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Why won’t he just do it?

David Buirs is a leadership coach in Amsterdam for new managers with 0 to 4 years of experience. This article explains how to address recurring performance issues by first examining your own role before drawing conclusions about the employee. It covers the Golem effect, the right questions to ask as a manager, and when a Performance Improvement Plan is a fair and honest step.

There is someone on your team who has not been delivering for a while.

You have talked about it. Maybe twice. Things improve briefly, then slide back. The same mistakes. The same patterns. The same conversation on repeat.

At some point, the thought arrives: why won’t he just do it?

That feeling is understandable. And it is also exactly the moment things can go wrong.

The Golem effect: how your frustration makes the problem worse

In psychology, the Pygmalion effect describes how high expectations improve performance. Researchers Rosenthal and Jacobson demonstrated this in 1968. Teachers who believed certain students were high-potential saw those students genuinely improve, with no objective difference between them and their peers.

The Golem effect is the opposite. Low expectations lead to lower performance. Not because the person lacks motivation. But because your attitude shapes their behavior.

You ask fewer questions. You explain less. You check in with a slight impatience. You give more critical feedback and less encouragement. Without realizing it, you are sending a signal: I no longer believe you can do this.

And the other person feels it. People are finely tuned to how others perceive them.

The result: the employee pulls back. Takes less initiative. Makes more mistakes. And you see that as confirmation that you were right all along.

Frustration reinforces itself. A performance problem grows while you believe you are addressing it.

The question most managers skip

Before you ask anything of the employee, there is a different question to answer first.

What role have I played in this?

That is not self-blame. It is the most practical question you can ask. Because if you have contributed to the problem and do not address that, nothing changes.

Work through it honestly:

Have I clearly explained what I expect? Not in broad strokes, but concretely. What does success look like? When is something good enough?

Has this person received the right training and resources to actually do this job? Or am I assuming they already know?

Have I given regular, constructive feedback? Or do I only speak up when something goes wrong?

Have I asked how they see their own work? Do they even know I consider this a problem?

Have I asked what they think the reason is? They might see something you do not.

This is not doubt. It is just good management. You cannot change anything in someone else while there are still variables on your side you have not examined.

Curiosity as a tool

The trap of frustration is that you start explaining. You already have a theory. He does not care enough. She is not motivated. He is not cut out for this.

Curiosity asks something different. What is going on for this person? What makes this difficult? What do they need that they currently do not have?

That conversation is uncomfortable to start, especially when frustration has been building for weeks. It feels like walking in the wrong direction.

But it is exactly the conversation that matters. Not to let someone off the hook. But to understand what is actually happening.

Sometimes something personal is going on. Sometimes there is ambiguity you have allowed to persist. Sometimes the person has felt like they are failing for months and does not know how to say it.

And sometimes you discover that the intention is there, but the skill is not. That is very different from unwillingness. And it calls for a completely different response.

When curiosity is not enough

Say you have done all of this. You have clarified expectations. You have offered training. You have had the conversations. You have asked what they need.

And nothing changes.

Then there is an honest question you have to ask: does this person meet the minimum standard for this role?

That is not an attack. It is a professional reality. Every role has a floor. Below that floor, the team does not function, colleagues carry extra weight, and results are missed.

If someone is consistently below that floor, and you have genuinely tried, there is a next step.

The Performance Improvement Plan: a last resort, not a first reaction

A Performance Improvement Plan, or PIP, is a formal process. You document in writing what the expectations are, what the current situation is, and which specific goals need to be reached within a set timeframe. Usually three to six months.

The plan also describes what support you will provide. And what happens if the goals are not met.

A PIP is not a punishment and it is not a goodbye. It is a clearly structured opportunity. With agreed milestones, support, and consequences.

But it only works if the process is honest. If the expectations are realistic. If the support you commit to is real. And if you are using it to give someone a genuine chance, not to build a paper trail for dismissal.

Use a PIP only after months of conversations, feedback, and concrete attempts to improve the situation. Not as a first response to a problem you have not yet fully understood.

Addressing recurring performance issues as a manager starts with yourself. Not because you are always at fault, but because you are the only variable you can directly change.

That takes honesty. And sometimes a conversation you have been putting off.

If you want to work on how you handle situations like this, you can read more about business coaching for leaders or explore what a structured leadership track for your organization could look like. Interested or curious? Let’s chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.