“It's not your job to like me - it's mine.”
Byron Katie
My own story
“I used to think my superpower was making everyone else comfortable, even when it meant swallowing my own voice. As a communication consultant, I had built a reputation as the one who never rocked the boat, who always found consensus, who somehow made the impossible timelines work without anyone feeling the strain. But at one point I hit the wall when I found myself completely burned out because I said yes too often, which left me completely exhausted and hollow inside. My people-pleasing was not leadership, it was a prison I had built with golden bars of approval and validation. The moment I realized I had been performing my entire life and career instead of leading from my core, something shifted. I started asking myself the question that changed everything: what if the very thing I thought made me valuable was actually the thing keeping me small? My burnout helped me see that I needed a shift in mindset to start working from a place of authentic presence rather than anxious accommodation. Fast forward time, I decided to become a Leadership Presence Coach to help others on their journey from fawning to fierce authenticity. A journey that teaches us that real leadership requires the courage to disappoint others in service of a higher truth.”
The jarring realization
You know that moment when you discover something about yourself that has been hiding in plain sight your entire career? That jarring realization when patterns you thought were strengths reveal themselves as elaborate coping mechanisms dressed up in leadership language?
I witness this awakening frequently in my work with leaders who have spent decades perfecting the art of making everyone else comfortable while slowly erasing themselves in the process. They arrive carrying the weight of what trauma researchers call the fawn response, that lesser-known survival mechanism that has them perpetually seeking safety through the approval of others…
The fawn response
This response emerges when fight, flight, or freeze feel impossible. Instead, we learn to please our way out of danger, thinking "if I make everyone happy, I will not get hurt." This becomes particularly insidious in leadership because it masquerades so beautifully as virtue, the executive who never says no, who absorbs every crisis, who smooths over conflict before breakthrough thinking can emerge.
The leaders I work with often share similar patterns: unable to set boundaries, apologizing for things that are not their fault, feeling responsible for everyone else's emotional state. They prioritize consensus over clarity, harmony over truth, being liked over being respected. They ignore their own needs so completely that they sometimes cannot even identify what those needs are anymore.
The impact ripples through everything. Teams become confused about priorities when you cannot say no to anything. Innovation stagnates when challenging conversations get smoothed away. Trust erodes because people sense the performance behind the perpetual agreeableness, the way authentic presence gets sacrificed on the altar of keeping everyone comfortable.
Here is what I have learned: the path from fawning to flourishing is not about becoming someone different, it is about returning to who you were before you learned that your worth was dependent on your usefulness to others.
Recovery begins with recognition
We need to learn to seeing our patterns clearly without judgment. It continues with gentle boundary-setting, saying no to one request when you would normally say yes to everything. It deepens through tuning into your own internal compass, asking yourself what you actually think and feel instead of scanning the room for the most welcome response.
This journey requires building assertive presence
Not forceful intimidation, but the quiet confidence that comes from knowing your values and having the courage to speak from them even when your voice shakes. It means learning that healthy conflict is not something to avoid but something to navigate with skill and grace. Most importantly, it means discovering that your worth as a leader is not measured by how comfortable you make others feel but by how authentically you show up in service of something larger than yourself. When you stop performing leadership and start embodying it, something magical happens: people begin to trust you in ways they never did when you were trying so hard to be perfect.
What leaders discover
What executives I work with discover is that their teams have been waiting for them to show up fully, to make hard decisions, to have difficult conversations they have been avoiding. They learn that being respected matters more than being liked, that clarity serves people better than false harmony.
The most beautiful part of the journey
The most exciting part of this journey is watching leaders rediscover the passion that originally called them to leadership. When you stop spending all your energy managing other people's reactions, you have space for the work that actually matters. When you stop being afraid of disappointing others, you can finally disappoint the right people in service of the right causes.
Your leadership journey from fawning to flourishing
Your journey to becoming your authentic you is not just about changing how you show up, it is about remembering why you chose to lead in the first place, and then having the courage to honor that calling with every decision you make.
What is fawning?
Fawning is a survival mechanism that develops in response to trauma, a fourth response alongside the better-known fight, flight, and freeze reactions. Psychotherapist Pete Walker defines fawning as “a response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat.
What is fawning behavior?
Commonly seen in trauma survivors, fawning is a people-pleasing behavior meant to avoid conflict. In the short term, fawning may prevent arguments and create a feeling of safety, but it can lead to negative mental health outcomes in the long term.
What does fawning look like in adults?
Fawning is a trauma response where individuals prioritize others’ happiness over their own, often resulting in emotional exhaustion and chronic stress. Common signs of fawning include over-accommodating others, difficulty saying no, and suppressing personal values, often rooted in childhood trauma.
What does it mean to fawn at someone?
To praise someone too much and give them a lot of attention that is not sincere, in order to get a positive reaction.
Moving forward together
If this story of moving from fawning to flourishing resonates with something you recognize in your own leadership journey, I would be honored to walk alongside you as your thinking partner. As a recovering people pleaser and Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, I have witnessed how the gentle return of curiosity and authentic presence can transform not just how we show up, but also how we experience our own lives. The path from fawning to flourishing is rarely one we navigate alone, and sometimes we need a trusted companion to help us redirect our attention toward what still holds light and to hold space for the gradual dawn of renewed vitality that emerges when we remember why we chose to lead in the first place.
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