#609 Chris Marr: Stop People-Pleasing - Lead Clients with Confidence & Authority

Do you ever feel like you bend over backward to keep your clients happy—but end up feeling resentful, undervalued, or overwhelmed?

In this empowering episode of Talking with the Experts, award-winning host Rose Davidson welcomes Chris Marr, the founder of The Authoritative Coach, to unpack a game-changing truth: people-pleasing is not good business.

Chris dives into the subtle yet damaging ways people-pleasing shows up in professional settings—overcommitting, avoiding conflict, and constantly second-guessing our authority. These behaviours may feel like great customer service on the surface, but they quietly erode confidence, blur boundaries, and hinder business growth.

With over 15 years of experience coaching client-facing professionals and executives, Chris reveals how to spot these patterns—and what to do about them. You’ll learn:

✅ The hidden cost of being overly accommodating
✅ Practical tools to set boundaries with confidence
✅ How to reposition yourself as an expert, not just a service provider

Chris shares his signature People Pleaser’s Path to Authority framework and offers actionable tips you can implement immediately to elevate your client relationships and reclaim your authority.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re working for your clients instead of with them, this conversation will transform how you approach client dynamics.

🎧 Tune in now to reclaim your time, your boundaries, and your business success.

✨ Subscribe to Talking with the Experts — where business insights meet expert wisdom.
🌐 https://talkingwiththeexperts.com

✨ CONNECT WITH CHRIS

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theauthoritativecoach/

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Website: https://theauthoritativecoach.com/

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Transcript

Voiceover | 00:01
Welcome to Talking With The Experts. Here we discuss all things business. By business owners. For business owners. Here is your host, Rose Davidson. 

 Rose | 00:11
Hello, welcome to Talking with the Experts. I'm your host, Rose Davidson from rosedavidson.com.au. And today I'm speaking with Chris Marr about empowering professional people pleasers to step into their authority. And some of the things we're going to be touching on is how people pleasing undermines authority and expertise. 
 Some practical strategies for setting boundaries and asserting authority and how to reset client relationships for long-term success. Chris is a true expert in client communication and authoritative client relationships. He is the founder of the authoritative coach and author of Become Authoritative Coach, Stop People Pleasing, Challenge Your Clients and Be Indispensable. With over 15 years of experience, Chris has helped client-facing professionals from small businesses to nine-figure enterprises navigate tough conversations, build stronger relationships and position themselves as indispensable experts. His mission is to help professionals overcome people-pleasing habits, troubleshoot high-stakes client situations and gain the confidence to thrive. He's the creator of the People Pleases Path to Authority Assessment. A tool that helps professionals identify and break free from habits that hold them back. Yes, he's Scottish. He is engaging in his advice. 
 So get ready for his insights, strategies and actionable tips. I'm really looking forward to speaking with him. Welcome, Chris, to Talking With The Experts. 

 Chris | 01:54
That's great to meet you Rose, thanks for having me today I'm excited to get stuck into all of these topics I'm not sure if we'll have time to do all of that but I look forward to seeing where our conversation goes. 

 Rose | 02:03
We'll do our very best. Tell us a little bit about why people are people pleasers. 

 Chris | 02:11
Why people are people pleasers. 

 Rose | 02:13
Yes. Right. Breaks them people, please, is what I'm saying. 

 Chris | 02:16
Right. I think there's something about being When we're growing up, right, I think there's just something that like, I don't know if you've ever heard these phrases when you're a child, like, you know, children should be seen and not heard, you know, and I think throughout life we've been told to be polite, to, you know, to dial back our actual character or characteristics. Even to the point where we tell our kids to fake how they feel, right? 
 So for example, let's say you've got guests coming round for dinner, your cousins or your aunties or uncles, and you say, turn that frown upside down, smile like you're pleased to see people. It's like, I think we've been sort of ingrained or trained to mask our... Actual feelings or our actual like what we actually want to say or behave so that we're more polite more acceptable more like you know I mean that's I think that's what's happening there and so the people pleasing naturally kind of drips into our professional work as well where we're supposed to be friendly and nice and fit in and be acceptable. I think that's partly where it comes from. 
 And then there's like how that narrative then goes into like some element of fear or anxiety or any kind of like awkward feeling about maybe the potential to have some type of difficult or awkward conversation with someone about something that's negative perhaps like even just like poor performance or poor quality of work or recognising a behaviour that's getting in the way of someone's success or whatever that might be even the smallest things can be like can trigger this narrative, which is actually, don't say something, it's rude to speak to people about these things, or what, like, fill in the blank with whatever narrative you're saying. And so what that does is it sort of keeps us silent. 
 You know, we don't say the things that we need to say, or we don't say what we see. And ultimately, erodes or diminishes our authority as professionals. 
 So I think there's a sort of unlearning that we need to do from the things that were kind of ingrained into us throughout our life. In order for us to turn up and be a true professional or step into our authority and expertise that, you know, to ultimately help our clients get their the results that they're looking for. 

 Rose | 04:45
Yeah, a lot of us, as you say, are people pleasers in some way, shape or form. You know, we overcommit to avoid those difficult conversations and, you know, it depends. It does weaken our confidence and it does weaken our business success. But, you know, what are some of those strategies for setting those boundaries that can help us? 

 Chris | 05:07
Yeah, I think you can set yourself up for success here, right? So I think what I found is, I think there's a really key learning I've seen from both leaders and client facing professionals, coaches, consultants, is that when we talk about these different. Potentially difficult conversations even calling them difficult conversations can trigger people's kind of anxiety around it but these High stakes conversations or discussions we need to have with our clients. They Or our team members if we're leaders people think that people aren't willing to risk the relationship that's ultimately it and They think that if I have this conversation, it's going to push them away, but actually the opposite is true What I found is that the more? 
 Sort of high stakes conversation or difficult things you've been through with people is actually strengthens the relationship. Right. 
 So there's a correlation there, I think, between how much difficult, how many difficult conversations you've had with someone and the strength of that relationship. And so I think we need to see it as a role to actually step into it. And so how do we do that? You're asking. Right. 
 So I think. I talk a lot about like where can we start with this and I think the first place to start with our clients is how do we set the conditions for success with our clients? 
 So we might call this boundaries. But I call it setting the conditions because really it kind of leads it's a better way of saying this isn't just about me setting my boundaries so I can do my best work it's us Me and you, if you're my client or a potential client, it's like, how do I, what is it that I know based on my experience and the work that I've done, that the conversations that we need to have right now before we start the work to make sure that we are set up for success, that your expectations are managed, that you're coming into this with your eyes wide open and that we have a really good working relationship. People pleasing can show up here with " just signed this new client they're paying a lot of money, I must get started" and so what we do is we sort of jump right into the work And think that that's what we should be doing. But actually what we need to do is just slow down a little bit there at the beginning. And have these conversations. I talk about, there's actually 16... Different types of conversations that you should have with your client kind of as they're signing the deal, as we're onboarding and kicking off and as we sort of launch into the work. I've got a playbook that... That goes through all the top tracks for these 16 conversations, but I can give you a snippet of what they might look like. 
 Like some of the ones that we miss perhaps, right? One of them would be, have you ever worked with a coach before? Or have you ever worked with a graphic designer before? Or have you ever worked with a website development team before? And what you're doing there is you're saying, right, let's make sure that you and I both understand what this relationship is supposed to look like, right? 
 So what went well when you've rolled out a project like this before in the past? What didn't go so well? 
 So well and what does our relationship need to look like in order for it to be successful and of course I'm looking for certain things here I want you to say things like I want you to point out the mistakes I'm making I want you to challenge me you know I'm looking for essentially you to give me permission not that I need it but because you say it as the client it actually means that I can do a great job And I'm like, yes, that's exactly what those relationships going to look like. And here's what you need to expect. I might even follow up by with two other things and say something like, based on the project work you've done in the past, it's similar to this. What knowing your culture of your organization or understanding yourself clearly, how could you get in the way here? What could be a reason why we might lead to failure here? Right. In other words, what I'm saying is. 
 Like what's culturally within your company could prevent us from being successful here and how do we get ahead of that and then I might follow up and just make sure that they truly understand what we're doing here which is that for 90% of the time of the work that we're doing together I'm not going to be patting you on the back I'm going to be pointing out the mistakes that you're making the things that you're doing wrong the things that you need to improve okay are we okay with that and so what we're looking for is like let's have a let's talk about all the things that could go wrong let's make sure we get ahead of them and then we can manage our expectations and understanding around all that that's just one of those 16 conversations that's the relationship conversation there's 16 other conversations that we need to have to make sure that we're communicating well that you know what you need to be doing and the expectations are managed what to do when things go wrong and that's really the sort of umbrella question is based on everything that you know about your experience with working with clients, what are the things that tend to go wrong, the friction, the frustrations, three months, six months into the work that you're doing together? And how can you essentially bring that to the front end of the relationship and actually have those conversations so that it eliminates it and or just minimizes the impact that might have in the future? 
 So that's just an example, Rose, of what I call setting the conditions for success so that I can be the best person version of me so that you can get the best results whilst we're working together and everybody wins. The opposite of that is recognising that your need to be liked actually hold you back from doing both of those things right number one is if you need to be liked and you've got those people pleasing behaviours you aren't doing your best work and as a result your client isn't getting the best results. 

 Rose | 10:32
Having great conversations, Chris, is really important, I think, you know, and you need to know. You know, the limitations within how the relationship's going to work. 
 So, you know, you need to, I guess, nut out... What type of person you're working with or what type of organisation you're going to be working with. And ultimately, you know, the client needs to know what type of person or organisation they're going to be working with. 
 So asking those really great questions is really important. And, you know, sometimes... It's hard to ask those questions so how do we get the confidence to do that? 

 Chris | 11:15
Right, well I think number one, it's when you realise that this is about setting the conditions for success, I think that's usually one of the shifts. So even just yesterday I was speaking to a client about this who said, I used to think that when I was starting a client off that everything was administrative and it honestly felt like a waste of time. But as soon as I sort of got a different mental framing for this conversation and it became less about... 
 Like where things are and how we're going to communicate became much more about setting the conditions for us to be successful that was one of the big shifts for him was just to think actually this is a really important period for us like this moment of truth here before we start the work that we need to set the conditions for success and ultimately there are a lot of problems that come up in the client relationship that are frustrating and do waste of time and slow us down. So if we can get ahead of those. 
 So I think that's the first thing is like just that mental shift of recognizing that this is actually a really important part of the work is to set the conditions for success. And of course, well, We're just... I think confidence is an outcome of actually doing the work. 
 So when I think about the people I work with, they're all experts at what they do, right? They're all confident in their expertise. But when they want to have these more challenging conversations, these conversations that actually... Proactively create tension in the relationship to see if there's if we're definitely going to be able to do our best work together. It is about the top tracks, it's about practice, and it's ultimately about reps as well. I don't think there's any way to shortcut this, that there's a gap between... Where you are and where you want to be. A lot of people call it imposter syndrome, but the way that I tackle that Rose is like, Okay, when's your next new client coming on board? All right. Okay, so we've got what somebody coming on board in the next 10 days fantastic, right? You're going to go away. You're going to prep the kickoff. You're going to practice that we're going to roleplay it and then you're going to do it You're going to record that session online and then we're going to review it together and it's like part of it is like if you want to be more confident in a particular area you have to step into it and practice it with the skills. 
 So I When I think about how do I help people to become more confident, to become more authoritative in these circumstances, it's through the skill acquisition that they become more confident. And skill acquisition is, let's practice it together. You go away and practice it. You go away and do one. Let's look at it together. Let's improve. 
 And then let's do it again. And it's like, I'm almost holding them together. Holding their hand as they walk through acquiring these skills and it's just like any thing that you do in life where it requires a skill it could be playing guitar or piano or running or whatever it's all about training people with the skills so that they become more confident as a result so that's my that's like my philosophy when it comes to helping people feel more confident in these areas so for anyone listening it's thinking to yourself well what is what's one What's like pick one really important conversation that you need to have with your clients before you start the work? What's like a big problem that comes up in the client work that you'd love to get ahead of? 
 Like it could be scope creep for example What happens if you come up with a new strategy that you want to put into our plan? And it could be that your clients never meet deadlines. 
 So how do we talk about that? Or it could be that your clients and don't treat as accountability with the right respect how do we have a conversation about that pick one and then think well who can I practice this with get it all out figure out what the best way to do it and then review it that's how I would tackle each one of these it's just literally about action moving toward the thing. 

 Rose | 15:18
Yeah, so when you're first starting out in business, sometimes these questions are a bit challenging to ask. I mean, because you're not sure about the order to ask them or, you know, or are you know, asking the right type of question? Are you being too... 
 You know, it sounds like you're being too bossy or too forceful or, So, you know, what advice would you give people starting out to ask those initial right questions? 

 Chris | 15:50
Okay, so I think this is like a like we're going into a sort of meta level here, which is how do you then? So what the word that comes to mind is disarm or disarmament so how do you then set yourself up to actually have this conversation with your client right so for example like i think you're going to become absolutely more confident the more you do it there's no question about that and it probably happened a much faster than you think a couple of thoughts here would be something like Well, first of all is that I think internally you Your client... Having these conversations is immediately going to be a signal to your client that things are going to be different working with you than maybe other professionals I've worked with in the past. They're going to get immediate sense of that. Now, Before we start the work, so I might have a talk track around this, like it's really important, critical in fact, that before we get into the work that we're doing together, that we make sure that we're on the same page, that we're aligned on our expectations and that we're set up to do our best work together. That's really important. Do you agree? - Absolutely agree, fantastic. 
 So what we're going to do over the next 40 minutes is that the focus of or the purpose of the session is to make sure that everything's aligned and our expectations are all on the same page, okay? By the end of this session, we're going to know exactly how we're going to work together and we're going to be set up for success going forward. My role today is to ask questions, to start conversations, to make sure that those things are true for us. 
 So, and then once we're ready to, once we've had this conversation, we'll get stuck in, to the work that we're going to do together how does that sound so what I'm doing there is like in my head I have this structure which is the which is an FOR structure which is focus outcome role what's the purpose of the session what's true by the end of the session and what's my role in the session today and so really what you're doing there is you're setting that condition and or you're setting the rules or the expectation for what's happening right now. And so why the value proposition, right? Why is it important that we have this discussion? You might even do, like one of my favourite phrases, Rose, is what we don't want to have happen is... 
 So what we don't want to have happen is not have these conversations. We get stuck into the work and then two, three months from now, we start to get a lot of problems, missed deadlines, things slow down. We don't want that, do we? We want to be successful. We want to get this work done in a timely way on budget. Now, if we want those things to be true, we have to make sure that we're aligned on our expectations and what work we're going to be doing. 
 So let's make sure we're set up for success today and then we can get started. Something like that, right? You might choose different words. You might tackle it differently, but essentially what you're doing is you're again You're giving yourself permission to have this really important conversation with the client and you the way that you phrase it, all the sort of talk track that I just provided there is about helping the client to Lean into your. Process and to not push back or resist it because ultimately resistance and pushback is actually them not learning they're not involved in the process you know they're just fighting it so what you want to do is disarm and then get ahead of problems before they become problems. 
 So that's how I would tackle it from a sort of practical perspective. To help the client lean into this critical conversation that we need to have. 

 Rose | 19:22
And it's really important to make the prospective client or the client feel absolutely comfortable with the conversation that you're having and to, you know, conversation with the whole process. So as long as the process is, you know, set out in a like a timeline fashion, you know, there can't be any mistake in how. The project's going to be moving forward. 

 Chris | 19:47
Yeah, I think everybody wants to know where we are, where we're going and what's next. So as long as you can continue to say, here's where we are, here's why we're doing this, here's what's next. And there's a plan. They understand that there's a plan. I don't think the So the other part of this is like when you were talking about confidence was thinking to myself that... When you think about these critical conversations at the beginning of a client relationship, there's really two types. There's the sort of statement plus agreement, right? 
 So for example, I might say, I might say something like, look, one of the challenges that we have when we're working together is accountability. Everyone has a different understanding of what accountability is. 
 So here's what accountability looks like when you're working with me. And I'll tell them what that is and say, Are we on the same page? We're like, yeah, we're absolutely on the same page. Great. Right. 
 So that's like statement plus agreement. The other type of conversation that we talked about earlier, which is that relationship conversation is much more what we call a question first approach. 
 So I'm asking a question to get you to tell me what you're. Ideas around this relationship should look like for us to be successful and then I'm going to manage what you're I'm going to manage that expectation around what it actually is going to look like and so there's those two different types of conversations and I think if you're nervous about it or anxious about it try I think you really need to Make sure you're clear on why these conversations are important. 
 That's why I think it's important for you as the client-facing professional to really believe that the problems that come up in client relationships can actually be prevented by having conversations at the beginning. So, for example, if your clients, if you have the sense that or you've had experience where your clients tend to... Missed calls or missed deadlines or don't seem to prioritize your work you're like well how do I have a conversation with this at the beginning and it might sound something like hey look one of the things I’ve experienced is and what we don't want to have happen here is like a couple of months down the line you guys get really busy with something else there's other priorities i get it there's lots of distractions but what I want to make sure here is that we're all making sure that we have the time for this work that we're going to do together. And so based on my experience, having worked with dozens of clients just like you, what's typically required is a 90 minute block on your calendar every week. And so my challenge here for us today is before we start that work, I want you all to look at your calendar and tell me when do you feel like you would have that time to do that work? Once we've locked that in, what would be a reason why you might push that out or not get around to it? 
 So you're really leaning into, you want to lean fully into what does... It look like to truly set the conditions for success for our clients so that we can do our very best work knowing that every new client is another new opportunity for you to do that even better than you have in the past so as long as you're bringing on new clients you're going to continually get better and better at this and once you've done it once or twice I think once you've bought into the idea yourself and once you've done it a couple of times you're You really get excited about it. You get excited about having this conversation. And doing... The thing is... You can't expect the client to do this piece. They don't know the work that you do like this is our job to do this right and so that's yeah i think those are the kind of things I think about I get excited about talking about it as well as you can probably tell but I think this is a big it is a big gap and a lot of client facing professionals work, coaches, consultants, they don't do this deep enough. And it does lead to friction, and problems in the future, which could be as extreme as clients just We're done here. We don't want to continue working, it's too much hassle, it's too much work, whatever it might be. And so we need to make sure we have these critical conversations at the beginning. 

 Rose | 23:52
I could have thought while you were talking, what happens if the client is a people pleaser and just says to you, well, I just take the lead from you and, you know, whatever you say I'm happy with. And then, you know, months down the track, they don't like what you've done and they don't like, you know, the path. Projects Tycoon. How do you do with that? 

 Chris | 24:15
Yeah, it's a good question because the first thing that pops to mind is that don't just because a client looks like they behave well, like they might look like they're well organized. They might look very accepting of you. They might be look as if they're ready to lean in. You might be tempted to skip some of these critical conversations that you would have otherwise. And I would say never skip them. Even if the client is presenting as the best client ever, you still want to set the conditions for success because Things happen. People change. Things, the stakes increase or there's added pressures, you know, and things like that. 
 So I would say never skip anything. These conversations that you have with your clients that you need to have with your clients it's like an insurance policy that you're taking out you're like and we need to have these conversations I hope it never these things never happen but I’m going to have them anyway as a sort of insurance policy against it happening in the future hoping that it never does come up but at least if you've had that conversation you then it doesn't come up never really going to know if it's because the conversation took place or not, but ultimately, you're sort of ahead of this. 
 So I think that's a major, like, factor. Thought for me when it comes to this is like clients can present themselves as quite well behaved quite. Saying all the right things. But As time goes on, I think you start to see that those things aren't consistent. They might just be really excited to get started and work with you so I would say just make sure you don't skip those critical conversations just because a client looks like they're presenting in a sort of idealistic way so that'd be my first thought does that help or do you. 

 Rose | 26:02
Absolutely that pretty much answered the question yeah because you know you have to continue asking the questions that you always ask and you need to ask those hard questions even if the client is you know all agreeable and all of those things and you know gives you the carte blanche to do whatever it is that you're doing and they're not asking questions but you as the client facing person has to ask those questions regardless I think because you're not going to be able to have a clear outline about what's going to happen. 

 Chris | 26:35
Yeah, I think this is good because if a client presents like this, you might actually change your tact as well. So let's say, for example, I'm a graphic designer and I'm doing a brand logo or design for you or something like that. And the client's saying, you know, hey, look, I just want you to get started. I'm like ready. Anything that you do is perfectly fine. I'll be saying, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. But. What's likely to happen though, based on my experiences, is that I'm going to go to work and I'm going to present you with some ideas and here's what could happen. Now I know that you don't think that will happen for us here, but we need to talk about what happens when I present you with your final design. And so in other words, you're not going to let the client reduce your standards for what success at our highest potential looks like. And I think that's the people-pleasing tendency there is to allow somebody else to... To reduce your standards and expectations. And what we don't want to be. Is like dragged into other people's like chaotic way that they work. I've had this sort of debate with other sort of business coaches before where I talk about my clients are coming into my world. And other people will say, but you're going into their world. I'm like. That's not what's happening here. They're coming into my world. Now, based on my experience, I'm more organized than they are. I am many steps ahead on this work because I've done it many more times than they have. I know what we're doing. I know why we're doing it. 
 You know, I know all of that stuff. So I don't want to come into your Asana or Basecamp. I don't want to be treated like an employee. And I don't want to be as disorganized as you. I want you to come into my world and be more organized. I want you to come into my world and communicate more professionally. 
 So I think that as much as we might be working together on... Graphic design you're going to learn how to communicate better you're going to be more organized you're going to do better work you're potentially going to do the best work you've ever done in this area whatever that might look like and so I think we teach implicitly other things to our clients by bringing them into our world our professional space for doing this work I think that's sort of like an underlying sort of theme and everything that we're talking about here. 

 Rose | 28:52
Absolutely. No, I really like that analogy. I think that's really great. If you want to find Chris anywhere, you can find him on Instagram at The Authoritative Coach. He's on LinkedIn with The Authoritative Coach and his website is theauthoritativecoach.com. Tell me a little bit about your score at theauthoritativecoach.com. What is that all about and what can people expect? 

 Chris | 29:16
Well, there's two things, right? We've got, well, Instagram's a great place for anybody to go. It's like, that's got all my recent videos and stuff like that. Stuff going up there all the time. And if you DM me on Instagram, you'll get me, right? 
 So I sort of live on that platform. It's our main platform. The second thing is obviously the book. When you go to the website, you'll see a page about the book, which is Become an Authoritative Coach. And that's a good place to start with some of this practical stuff. People treat it like a handbook. And so when you go there, you'll see in the book and on the website, there's a short assessment that you can take to find out where your highest people-pleasing behaviours are. 
 So this is the type of assessment where the score's high, that's not good, right? So you want a low score. 
 So if you take the assessment, it will highlight over five areas where your biggest people-pleasing gaps are, and then automatically puts you into a five-day... Coaching program as well for free so you're going to get like five videos from me five emails from me to help you improve in those particular areas which is things like just you know charging the right rates for your services and not like not diminishing your authority when you're under pressure from your clients setting i think the conversation today was great i don't i haven't really covered this on a podcast before but like just really deliberately setting those conditions for success with clients which we call boundaries so that's covered in the assessment as well so a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today the assessment sort of shines a light on those behaviours and helps you to figure out what you can do to improve in those areas. 

 Rose | 30:52
Wonderful. Have you got anything else you'd like to share with our audience today, Chris? 

 Chris | 30:57
I don't think so. I think it's just, I'd love for, and I want this for my clients as well, is to think more deeply about your communication skills. I think once we move on from like the tools, you know, maybe we started off as a very technical person in the work that we're doing. But even then, I would argue that I would love for more people to just prioritise the skill acquisition and development around communication, understanding that that's possibly one of the most important things that you can work on if you want to influence people, if you want to gain more respect, if you want to get buy in and people to take on your ideas for what success looks like. 
 So I would love that for more people just to be more deliberate and prioritise that. Development of their communication skills. 

 Rose | 31:45
Great advice. I think we all need to communicate a little bit better. It doesn't matter who how great your communication skills are. And there's always room for improvement. Chris, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to sharing this with our audience and perhaps having you on another time we can talk about this a little bit more. 

 Chris | 32:06
Brilliant rules, thanks very much for having me. 

 Speaker 4 | 32:09
You've been listening to Talking With The Experts, hosted by Rose Davidson. Make sure you have a look at our back catalogue over at talkingwiththeexperts.com. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss out on any episode. We look forward to your company next time.