Leadership Ends Where People-Pleasing Begins

by Larisa Pop – Brain Coach & Leadership Practitioner

Ten years in leadership can feel like a lifetime if you actually pay attention.
You learn more about people than you even wanted to, and a lot of more about yourself.

When I look back at my years in leadership, I can say this much with certainty: leadership doesn’t just reveal who you are: it exposes you.

It’s one of the few roles in life where your inner world leaks through every word, every silence, every reaction. You can’t fake it for long. Your team will always mirror back your insecurities, your emotional state, your values, and your blind spots even when you think you’re hiding them well.

When I first stepped into a leadership role, I thought I knew what it meant to lead. I thought it was about being confident, having authority, setting rules, and making people listen. Basically it’s what I always did since general school but without being paid for.

However this doesn’t meant I did it because I had innate leader skills but because I was hiding my insecurities.  And because I wasn’t sure I was good enough, I compensated by being louder, stricter, and faster than everyone else.

It took me a decade, thousands of dollars invested in my own growth, and a few painful lessons to realize that leadership isn’t about control. It’s about credibility. 

The First Face: The Commander 

As I said when I first started leading people, I wore discipline like makeup. Rules, policies, structure  they became my way to hide the fear I felt inside. I didn’t know it back then, but my brain was using dominance as protection. Neuroscience calls it the “threat response.” When the brain senses uncertainty, it reaches for control not to lead better, but to feel safer.

So I became the kind of leader who shouted first, moved fast, and believed that firmness equaled authority. I was confident, driven, self sufficient, and organized. I delivered results. But beneath that confidence, I was terrified of being exposed as inadequate or even worst, as incompetent. Every mistake felt like proof that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be here. That’s how impostor syndrome hides in strong personalities not through self-doubt, but through overcompensation.

My team respected me.
But they didn’t love me.
Actually if I’m honest, they didn’t even like me.

They obeyed. They performed. They met targets. But they walked on eggshells.

People who could work under pressure did well with me; they grew and they grew well. But the others, the quiet ones, the ones who needed encouragement more than discipline, I broke them without realizing it. I labeled them as weak, unfit or incompetent. What I didn’t see then was that I wasn’t leading, I was projecting. I was passing down my own unresolved fear of being seen as soft or incapable.

Eventually, even results stopped feeling rewarding. The atmosphere I created  all pressure, no oxygen began to suffocate me too. The tension, the constant push, the emotional exhaustion, it all started to feel heavy. I realized I was admired by some, but rarely remembered.

Therefore, I made a decision. I would change. So I quit my job.

I invested in training, in coaching, in therapy. I read everything I could find about emotional intelligence, motivation, neuroscience, and leadership behavior. I wanted to evolve. I wanted to lead differently, more human, more open, more connected.

The Second Face: The Connector 

In my search to become a better leader, I tried to become one of them. I lowered the walls. I laughed more. I listened more. I shared more. I wanted people to feel seen, supported, safe. I wanted to build trust through kindness, not authority. I didn’t wanted to be a tyrant anymore. But in that process, I fell for one of the most dangerous traps in modern leadership: the idea that constant empowerment equals good leadership. 

It sounds noble; praising people, highlighting their potential, giving endless validation. But here’s what no one told me: when you overfeed people’s egos, you starve their self-awareness. 

I am not sure if you noticed but in the last decade, the professional world has been flooded with messages like “You’re worth more than they say,” “You’re better than they see,” “You deserve more recognition.” 

And while some of those messages have value because yes, some workplaces do undervalue talent, they’ve also created a subtle epidemic: people who believe they are more competent than they actually are. 

When you tell everyone they’re exceptional, no one strives to become extraordinary. When you constantly praise average work, you don’t promote growth but mediocrity.

That’s exactly what happened when I started over-validating my team. In my attempt to make everyone feel valued, I inflated their self-image beyond their performance. I gave excessive credit, softened every correction, celebrated every small win like it was a milestone. I thought I was motivating them but I was actually disorienting them.

They started believing they were operating at a higher level than they were. Their self-perception outgrew their actual results. And that’s when something shifts in human behavior. When people believe they are better than their performance proves, they stop learning.

And when a team collectively overestimates its own competence, the leader’s authority starts to feel unnecessary. This is how I found myself explaining things I shouldn’t have to explain, negotiating for compliance, and almost begging people to do their jobs.

So what started as a genuine effort to connect slowly turned into a hunger to be liked.  I wanted so bad to undo the image of the strict leader I used to be, to show I could be warm, friendly, approachable that I became too accessible. Too open. I shared too much, tolerated too much, forgave too much. I praised mediocrity to maintain harmony, inclusion and confidence .

It’s the same mistake a parent makes when they try to make their kids their best friend. You start sharing too much, trying to connect, trying to show you’re not “above” them. And in doing so, you blur the hierarchy that gives the child a sense of safety and direction. They may like you more but they will trust you less when things get hard. Because to trust someone in a crisis, the brain needs to perceive authority, stability, and power.

Human nature thrives on structure. The brain craves clarity: who decides, who guides, who carries responsibility when things go wrong. When a leader becomes too approachable, they unconsciously transfer that responsibility to the group. And most people don’t actually want it.

People think they want freedom, but what they really want is direction.  And leadership is the psychological permission to stop guessing. It gives people order, focus, and protection from the chaos of indecision.

So the more approachable I became, the less authoritative I felt. I replaced assertiveness with empathy, thinking they meant the same thing. They don’t.

I crossed invisible lines I didn’t even know existed.

That’s what happens when validation replaces accountability, you build people’s confidence, but not their capacity. And once that happens, leadership becomes a burden and the leader becomes just a disposable commodity.

For me that was the hardest pill to swallow; realizing that while I still saw myself as a leader, they didn’t. They saw me as overly soft, inconsistent even naive.

And when your reputation and your identity stop matching, the dissonance is brutal. You know who you are, but the world no longer believes it.

It’s not just disappointing  it’s disorienting. Because leadership doesn’t exist in your mind; it exists in perception. You’re only a leader if people still see you as one.

That was my reality check: my desperation to be liked had blurred my authority and diluted my impact. And strangely, it felt worse than the times I wasn’t liked but was still respected.
Because being disliked for holding your ground still gives you a sense of integrity, you know who you are, and what you stand for.
But losing respect while trying to be liked leaves you with nothing solid to hold on to.

The Question That Changed Everything 

That’s when I faced the question that every serious leader must answer at some point:

Do I want to be respected or liked? 

I had been both. I had seen both. And after 10 years, I knew my answer. I’d rather be respected than liked. Because I learned the hard way that leadership isn’t a popularity contest; it’s a responsibility.

And now i know that respect isn’t about admiration it’s about credibility. People don’t respect you because they like you; they respect you because, on a nervous system level, you make them feel safe. When people perceive consistency, strength, and self-control, their nervous system categorizes you as a stable reference point, someone safe to follow.

So here I am now.
I’m done trying to be liked.
I’m done trying to make everyone feel good when they’re not doing good enough.
This isn’t nursery, and not everyone deserves a medal just for showing up. Some people aren’t there yet, and that’s fine. Growth starts with seeing where you actually stand, not pretending you’re already there.

Leadership, for me now, means holding a firm line even when it looks harsh to those who prefer comfort over accountability.

So I’ll leave here a question for you too:

How much mediocrity are you tolerating in the name of being “understanding”?