“He gave me one sentence: "Pull something together for the offsite." I nodded and said, ‘On it,’ and walked out without asking basic questions I'd have asked literally anyone else. What the heck?!” 

— Inner dialogue of an exec who's sharp in every room… but one. 

When I was in seventh grade, there was a cool kids' lunch table. They would decide (by some esoteric logic) who could sit with them. I’d hover as close as possible, trying not to do anything that would count against me, hoping that this might be the day the “popular circle” widened by one and let me in.

It never did. But I never stopped trying. 

If one of them had turned around and asked me for anything, “Carry this. Do that. Say you agree with me,” I would have said yes before she finished the sentence: “Of course! Whatever you need.”  

You'd think this version of you fades when the teenage acne does.

But fast-forward a couple of decades: You’re a high-powered leader with experience and influence. And yet, in certain rooms, that Middle school-style affect pops up out of nowhere. This phenomenon has come up in some of my coaching sessions with clients who are, by any measure, excellent at what they do:

These people are confident and brilliant. And they have the CVs to back it up. So, what’s happening in these specific situations?

This phenomenon slips under the radar because it’s tricky to label: 

None of these quite fit. I prefer to think of it as an appeasement response. It’s a habit we learn to adopt when relating to others, when some part of you clocks that this person's approval matters, and that losing it would be hurtful.

The appeasement behavior is most common and most identifiable among pre-teens. Somewhere between ages 10 and 12, our brains become exquisitely tuned to social approval, and being liked feels more like oxygen than a nice-to-have.

As we develop a sturdier sense of self in later years, that attunement dials down. But it comes roaring to life in a situation that feels relationally risky. The CEO who influences your professional standing, your pay raise, and your advancement trips the same wire as the Queen Bee who controlled the lunch table.

These situations cue your nervous system to switch on a natural, trusted defense: tag in Middle School Self, run the appease-and-self-abandon protocol. In this mode, your superpower is to quickly interpret whatever the Queen Bee/Boss Man seems to want, to be as agreeable as possible; your personal preferences and needs be damned.

For many of us, the appeasement response runs deep, feeding off multiple sources:  

Something this layered can’t be flattened into, "You just need to be tougher, get more executive presence, prep harder." Such advice seems straightforward, but it ultimately falls flat because it treats a nervous system problem as a discipline problem: wrong key for this lock. 

The less straightforward the solution, the more likely you are to wonder…

On any given day, appeasement behavior looks like a virtue: Diligence, loyalty, and being easy to work with. It’s rewarded early and often, because it reads as safe, agreeable, and low-drama. 

Even if you’ve honed self-awareness, chances are slim you’ll catch yourself thinking “I'm avoiding conflict and misreading direction.” You’re more likely to land on, “I'm the reliable one. I'm the one who makes things happen. How do I keep doing that, but better?”

So it's fair to ask: if this behavior looks like competence, gets rewarded like competence, and you still deliver, then where's the problem?

Picture doing your job as driving a car down the highway, where the whole point is not to crash. 

(Crashing in this metaphor is your boss deciding you were a bad hire and all the fallout that follows.) 

When your Middle School Self grabs the wheel and starts in with "I should already know this, I should just say yes and figure it out," what they're really doing is frantically scanning the inside of the car: looking for a deficit within yourself and scrambling to fix it. 

That inward-looking is the very behavior that causes you to drift toward a crash. You’re worried they’ll doubt your competence. Yet you undermine that competence by pointing your attention everywhere but the road ahead.

An exec who won’t push back or speak up teaches the rest of the team that deference is what’s required, that speaking up is risky, and that you should keep your ideas to yourself. 

Multiply that reflexive deference across the organization, and it compounds into a culture where confusion, fear, and misspent resources are the norm. At McKinsey, there's a value they drill from day one: the obligation to dissent. Because a room full of yes-people makes worse calls. 

Remember how the middle-school fawning quiets down as you grow a sturdier sense of self? Leadership runs the same arc. The more clearly you know who you are as a leader, the less you need the gold star from the person across the table. 

Every time you drop doing the truer, harder thing, you skip the rep that would have taught you who you are as a leader. You stay fluent in reading what they want, and a little illiterate in how you want to show up (especially in moments when “going along” collides with what you stand for). 

For example, I was once at a company that prized "swagger" and held it up as a value. Every time it came up, I felt uneasy: That’s just not how I cared to show up. Which prompted the question, “How do I want to show up?” That type of self-examination is the gateway to unshakeable confidence in your role. 

Say, instead of asking “How do I want to show up?” I asked, “How can I become more… swaggerful?”  Say, little by little, or all at once, I morph into someone with enough “swagger” to survive on that team long term. I can’t help but laugh derisively at that version of me. No, thank you. Hard pass. 

This is the mechanism by which "being a team player" morphs into self-erasure. And when you spend your days shaving off your authenticity, capitulating on what matters to you, you shatter your relationship with yourself. Which is (to put it mildly) not sustainable.

Early in my consulting days, I found myself in rooms with people whose clout and experience dramatically eclipsed mine. The whole time, my head was screaming, “Say something smart! Something that justifies why you're in here.” My anxiety was through the roof. 

A senior partner, trying to be helpful, pointed out: “You may be the most junior person, but that means you’re closest to the work, so you have the most insight.” That only added fuel to the fire of perfectionism. 

I knew I had to get out of my own head, and the only way I could do that was to get into someone else's: The client's. When I shifted my focus from my own performance to the client’s problem, the noise quieted. 

The same challenge came right back when I was an executive; youngest in the room, the only woman, an HR leader who hadn’t formally studied HR. Middle School Self had plenty of opportunity to grab the steering wheel. Each time, the only move that helped was to shift my focus outward. 

Years of this dance—losing agency to middle school self and wrestling it back—coalesced into one question: 

What's driving me in this role? Is it getting their approval, or is it something else? (“They” being your CEO, the board, whoever owns the popular circle.)

This is a vulnerable question; a tough one to answer honestly when you successfully project confidence and competence in most situations. For me, the honest answer was that a significant part of me was driven by approval. 

To be clear, it’s really helpful when your boss approves of you. (I spent a lot of digital ink explaining why in the May issue: “What’s Your Relationship Status?”) It’s helpful, but it’s not the source of your value.

When you’re optimizing for approval, however subconsciously, every room with a powerful person in it becomes a referendum on you, and Middle School Self has a standing invitation.

The antidote is to identify the “something else” in the question above. Find something else to anchor your value.  Name it as specifically as you can. Maybe it's the mission. Maybe it's the impact you want to have on the world. Maybe it's even the financial win.

Almost anything beats approval as an anchor; not just morally, but functionally. An executive driven by approval becomes a yes-person, a rubber stamp, which is quite useless on a leadership team.

That's what staking your claim on the driver's seat really means. Not white-knuckling more confidence, but deciding, on purpose, what you're driving toward, so your eyes have somewhere to be other than on yourself.

The good news? Acknowledging your appeasement response exists is half the battle won. It gives you the opportunity to brace yourself in advance of potential triggers and sharpen your awareness so you can notice and interrupt the hijacking as it’s happening. 

Interrupting this autonomous response is easier said than done, and (at the risk of making this a Left Hand Column cliche) there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Think of the ideas below as arrows in your quiver, or buttons on a command panel. Pick what fits you and the situation, or use them to inspire an entirely unique approach. 

Now hang on, before you shoot me that how-dare-you email, this is a tactic that works wonders for my most humble, down-to-earth clients. 

The play here is to notice who’s actually the center of attention as you’re thinking, “I'll just carry this so I don't waste their time” or “their thinking matters more than mine.” It sounds like deference or generosity, but when you play it back, notice how the star of that show is you, tapdancing for accolades and laurels. 

Meanwhile, the actual problem, the work, the responsibility that rests with you, sits in the corner unattended. How selfish! 

This framing is brusque on purpose, a splash of cold water to jolt you out of the inward stare. 

One of my clients is a thespian, and he inspired this tactic: “Try to feel more confident” never works on cue. Instead, step fully into a character whose confidence is baked into their story. Pick someone whose psychology you can slip on like a coat: a version of you, a couple of years out from retirement, who has genuinely seen it all and done it all.

This version of you doesn't feel the weight, because none of it is personal anymore.  There's nothing left to prove. To anyone. The CEO across the table isn't the CEO; they're just the latest in a long line of so-called bosses who’ve come and gone. You'll raise your objection once. Twice, if they're being stubborn about it. After that, it's their call. No skin off your back. You’d rather get out of here in time to hit the links, anyway.

Aaaaaand… SCENE!

This one’s for the mission-driven; those lucky enough to have their work overlap with their passion, who believe they’re making a difference. 

I know a former TV news reporter who had crippling anxiety and would freeze on camera. What finally helped: visualizing the person on the other side of the screen who really needs to hear this message. Focusing on another person’s genuine need left no room in her head to fret about her looks. 

Do the same. Before you walk into the meeting, remember a specific person and what they need from you in this moment? It might be a customer, your team waiting on a clear call, or the version of this company that exists a year from now. Aim at them, and your own performance stops being the headline.  

One of the wonders of the world is a 4-year-old’s complete lack of self-consciousness. Execs should take note. 

Years ago, my sister and daughter were chatting on FaceTime while my daughter sat at the dining table, drawing. My sister asked, "What are you working on?" 

My daughter replied: “A table.” 

🤣🤣🤣

She didn’t waste effort trying to decode what my sister really meant; there was no overfunctioning; just the clean, obvious truth right in front of her. 

This is typical of children aged three to five; they say what they notice, feel, or imagine without editing for approval. Their creativity isn’t constrained by “the right way” to think or respond, and they ask questions freely, without worrying about sounding smart.

So when the Middle School Self grabs the wheel, recruit your four-year-old self to grab it back. Optimize for the most honest, simple thing you could say in the moment. Borrow their directness ("I don't know yet." / "This doesn't make sense to me.") and their fearless curiosity ("What if we tried it this way?"). 

Sometimes there's no warning. The question hangs in the air, all eyes swing to you, and you feel Middle School Self lunge for the wheel before you can run a grounding exercise or get into character. 

What you can do is buy time in a way that looks nothing like stalling.

Have a few lines pre-loaded, so you're not composing them while your heart's in your throat. 

The best ones hand you a breath while pushing the actual work forward: 

While they answer, the spotlight slides off you and onto the problem; your nervous system settles a notch, and you're back behind the wheel without missing a beat.

We usually hear this truism from Brené Brown in the context of leaders communicating with direct reports, but it also applies to dealing with your boss. 

When you swallow the clarifying question, nod at the vague brief, and walk out to go build the wrong thing rather than risk one moment of friction, you're not being generous. The genuinely kind move, the generous one, is to say the clear thing: I need more detail to do this well. That's not what we agreed on. I wasn't in that meeting. 

As you do, Middle School Self might reach for the wheel. Simply reassure them, point them to the back seat, and hand them the Tamagotchi. 

From here on out, you decide who drives. 

Keep reading, keep leading,

Jess

P.S. If The Left-Hand Column has resonated with you, consider supporting my work by clicking on one of the ads below. It's a small action that has a big impact!

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