The Hidden Cost of Fawning at Work: Why People-Pleasing Hurts Your Career

Have you heard about fawning as a trauma response in the workplace? Fawning trauma response is the fourth trauma response, following fight, flight, and freeze, characterized as an act of pleasing and taking care of others.

Moreover, the fawning trauma response is now highly common among people in the workplace, whether a person is doing it to please managers, leaders, employers, or even other colleagues, as an effective fawn mechanism to avoid conflict.  

If you are interested in learning more about fawning response as a trauma response to avoid conflict, then you need to continue reading our article to discover more about fawning signs, the pleasing and fawning impacts on people's careers, and how to stop the fawning trauma response effectively.

What Is Fawning at the Workplace?

Fawning is a trauma response or reaction at the workplace during times of threat and conflict as a way to fawn, so we can say that fawning refers to consistently abandoning your needs and opinions to please other individuals.

So, as we said, fawning is a people-pleasing response where a person goes out of their way to avoid conflict or disapproval and pleasing others as a coping technique to avoid conflict and emotional harm, and feel safer in the work environments, especially toxic ones.

When people fawn, they agree on everything and flatter everyone instead of expressing their true opinions and emotions. This appeasing or pleasing trauma response often comes from people with a fear of rejection, abandonment, criticism, or job insecurity.

What Are the Key Signs of Fawning at the Workplace?

Noticing these fawning signs at an early time reflects the importance of HR training courses for your team to gain skills, take the right actions, and ensure people safety.

People Who Cannot Say No:

Fawning people usually fear rejection in relationships or disappointing others, so they agree and prioritize every request, even when their workload is already overwhelming, as their way to avoid conflict, seek attention, and fawn over other individuals.

Overworking Employees:

So, fawning is taking care of other individuals, no matter what the person's situation, therefore, that person could push themselves beyond limits and take on extra tasks, leading to exhaustion, nervousness, and stress in their attempt to get approval and please others.

Never Share Opinion:

Fawning trauma response describes a safety behavior or survival tool, so fawning people tend not to say their opinion, never share reactions, stay quiet, and simply agree as a mental way to fawn and stay safe during defined conflicts and danger situations.

What Are the Bad Impacts of Fawning on Your Career?

Fawning trauma response at the workplace could impact even the top economic growth strategies for a flourishing society, and that is why all HR specialists advise individuals not to fawn when experiencing what could be called unhealthy, codependent, or complex behaviors and ask for proper health care instead.

Lack of Work-Life Balance:

Not all people are angels, and when a fawning person constantly say yes, anyone could try to hand them their work, leading to work spills into personal time, leaving little room for rest or self-care, causing stress, burnout, and reduced overall effectiveness and productivity.

Doing Tasks for Others:

Fawning makes you take on responsibilities that are not included in your job description just to keep other people happy. This fawning trauma response will for sure leave you stuck with excessive tasks that are not yours, instead of prioritizing your work and role responsibilities.

Limiting Career Development and Promotions:

Simply, when you fawn and do not share your ideas to avoid conflict, your true skills and ideas will remain unnoticed, which will keep you unnoticed and deprive you of any growth opportunities, and keep you in the same position despite your hard work.

What to Do to Stop Workplace Fawning as an HR?

There are many benefits of skills-based hiring for both employees and employers, which is why, as an HR specialist, you need to work effectively to stop fawning as a trauma response in the workplace.

Professional HR training courses in London will help you level up your own career and handle this people-pleasing act effectively. However, keep in mind that you can also find professional human resources training in all regional LPC offices, including London, Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Dubai.

Notice Employees’ Behaviors:

As an HR professional, you need to do early and effective recognition by observing patterns like employees overcommitting, avoiding disagreements, or staying silent in meetings to help that person before burnout or quitting.

Help Fawners Put Boundaries:

Providing workshops or coaching for people to help them feel more confident and safe will, for sure, encourage employees to set healthy limits, say no to overtasking, and stop fawn-coping to appease other people.

Recognize and Celebrate Achievements:

One of the biggest fawning trauma responses is not feeling safe and noticed, thus, when you acknowledge employees’ contributions and hard work, they simply will not feel the need to over-please for validation.

To sum up,

Fawning is a trauma response at the workplace that will lead to many impacts on the personal and professional levels, including but not limited to not getting promotions, career development, or growth opportunities.

Thus, effective HR training will help the HR department solve such cases and help employees to avoid fawning and set clear boundaries.