Quick Win: How Laura Henshaw broke free from destructive people-pleasing

Giving feedback to someone else is hard, especially when it involves constructive criticism or even outright bad news.

For those who have a need to be liked, we often end up beating around the bush, hiding the feedback in praise, or avoiding the conversation entirely.

Naturally, this can have some pretty poor consequences, often worse than if we had just been honest in the first place.

This is something that Laura Henshaw knows all too well and has worked incredibly hard to overcome.

Laura is the co-founder and CEO of the highly successful KIC App and co-host of the chart-topping KIC podcast.

Laura shares:

• Why you’ll never succeed at getting everyone to like your decisions.
• The one thing you should prioritise over kindness when giving feedback.
• Why giving feedback as a "shit sandwich" doesn’t actually work.

Listen to the full interview with Laura here.

Connect with Laura on Instagram, subscribe to KIC APP and follow KIC Pod

 

My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at [e-mail]

 

Credits:

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Giving feedback to someone else is hard, especially if it's
constructive criticism or even outright bad news. For those of
us who feel a strong need to be liked, we
often beat around the bush, soften the feedback with praise,
or avoid the conversation entirely. Naturally, this can have some
pretty severe consequences, sometimes even worse than if we had

(00:24):
just been honest in the first place. This is something
that Laura Henshaw knows all too well and has worked
incredibly hard to overcome. Laura is the co founder and
CEO of the incredibly successful kick app and the co
host of the chart topping podcast Kickpod. I had Laura
join me to explain why you'll never succeed at getting

(00:46):
everyone to lack your decisions while giving feedback as a
shit sandwhich really doesn't work, and the one thing you
should prioritize over kindness when giving feedback. Welcome to How
I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for

(01:07):
optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. Early on,
Laura recognized that her people pleasing tendencies were causing a problem,
so she sought out help and took steps to work
on herself to start. I wanted to know which practical

(01:29):
steps made the biggest difference for her.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
We work through this in one of my I think
it was almost my first session with Janie, which was
why do you want to be liked?

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Why is that important? And is that actually what is
important to you? And what we came out to is, no, don't.
It's not really about being liked per se, but it's
about being respected. And I think that was kind of
rooted in a lot of stuff for me. I know
we might touch today on imposter syndrome and kind of
being a young female leader. Also because of where my

(02:03):
career started was with social or part of it was
social media, and so for a very long time I
felt that I wasn't taken seriously. Well I wasn't. Actually,
I can not just what I thought. I was not
taken seriously by a lot of people that I worked with.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
How did you know for sure?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, I mean there were times when I was in
rooms with people that I worked with that would describe
so often Steph and I as the marketing girls, and
it's like, no, we built this brand, we run this business, etc.
There's been multiple occasions where that has happened in different ways,
and I think at that time I felt like I
just had to prove myself. And I think because of

(02:44):
that kind of I've definitely worked through that and now
I know that like that's on them, I don't have
to prove myself to anyone. But that definitely was a
big cause of why I then felt that I had
to kind of lead that way. And so for me,
it was kind of thinking about, Okay, I need to
be respected, that's what's important, and then it's unpacking, Okay,

(03:05):
how do you get respect with your team? How do
you get respect with the people around you by being
a good leader and knowing that you can still lead
with empathy, because that's very, very very important to me.
But I think it was also the realization that it
is impossible to be liked by everyone because no matter what,
like I know that, you know, in running a business
and everyone that's listening that does most decisions you make,

(03:28):
there is going to be someone that's not going to
like the decision. It's very very rare we make decisions
where everyone agrees on it and is going to like
the outcome, right, especially when you're running a business. And
so it was also that realization that I was, well,
I'm setting myself up to fail because I can't actually
achieve this and I'm not driving the business, and in
my role as CEO of if I'm not driving the

(03:49):
business for then I shouldn't be in the role.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Have then, because I feel like one of the hardest
areas where this plays out is when you have to
have those tough conversations. And I mean I hate calling
them tough conversations. I try to think of them as
important conversations as opposed to difficult conversations because it changes
the mindset. But they're hard. If you've got a high
need to be liked and you are delivering news that

(04:16):
someone else is going to find tough or confronting or
hard to take on board. How did you change your
approach to those kinds of conversations.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I think realizing that in going in to be liked.
So there was one instance I remember I delivered something
to the team and Janie was there and she said,
because I had always thought like I have to do
like a sandwich, I think this is something I don't
actually get shit sandwich. I don't agree that I should
be I don't think it's the best way to approachings.
But I used to and the feedback I got was

(04:47):
it was almost like I made a sandwich, but it
was like with the thinnest slice of ham in the middle,
which is what I had to deliver, and then it
had like a hundred pieces of bread on both sides.
So no one got the message no one's tasty because
I put so much stuff around it in the fear
that of the thing I was delivering. What that then

(05:08):
means is, I think, when you're delivering out of a
place of fear, if you don't believe in what you're
saying or feel that it's fair or whatever it might be,
how the heck is your team going to find it
also fair and believe in it back. So that's number
one thing. But what I then was able to navigate
through time was realizing the biggest I think one of
the biggest realizations for me was feedback is a kindness.

(05:30):
Being clear is kind.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
I hope you enjoyed this little quick win with Laura.
If you would like to listen to the full interview,
you can find a link to that in the show notes.
If you like today's show, make sure you git follow
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the Warrangery people, part of the Cooler Nation