The Observer Effect: Creativity and People Pleasing

"Who's the audience?" my husband Tom asked. I froze. I dread that question.

I’d been telling him I’d just started blogging about creativity. (I think he was excited that this might mean he would get a bit more peace and quiet.) His question was practical, but one which I struggle with as a recovering people pleaser (with frequent relapses).

I've noticed something peculiar about my creative process, almost like a quantum physics theory: as soon as I know I’m being watched, my work changes to suit the observer. This chameleon-like quality has been invaluable when working as a consultant. I can effortlessly step into my clients' shoes and help them find clarity in muddy visions; in fact, I love doing that.

But my own work is best when I’m doing it just for me, when there's no imagined audience judging me. I know I’m not alone in this paradox.

A friend from my book club shared her experience recently. Despite having written prize-winning short stories, she now found herself blocked, unable to write. Why? Her work has started attracting the attention of publishers.

This made me wonder: why does being observed sometimes paralyse us? Is it the fear of being truly seen?

The Authentic Self and Creative Power

Making great work demands tapping honestly and authentically into your true self. Your lived experience.

My last blog goes into how your lived experience influences the research you gather and how you interpret it. A secret ingredient that only you have, making your creative output distinctive and valuable.

But exposing your true self is inherently risky, and understanding who you really are can require uncomfortable confrontation with yourself. Frankly, it's a lifetime's work (for both you and your therapist). Using your authentic self in your work means being seen as you are, not as how you think you should be.

When faced with this vulnerability, we often default to conforming to our environments, audiences, or preconceived notions of what others want. It’s more comfortable than being seen and less dangerous to the ego.

To come up with authentic and rich ideas, you need to feel comfortable and safe enough to express what you want to say without being concerned you about disappointing or upsetting someone. The ability to make the work even if you know it’s going to be received with raised eyebrows.

Awareness of our Patterns

My guess is that for most of us, conforming to others' expectations happens unconsciously. Breaking this cycle begins with noticing these patterns. Awareness. It requires paying attention to the moments when we hesitate, when we hold ourselves back, when we tell ourselves a story about what we think people want to see from us.

As I’ve got older, I’ve learnt to recognise this type of self-sabotage in my behaviour. Call it conforming, call it people-pleasing; fitting in has benefitted me in many ways, but it’s taken something too.

For years I couldn’t figure out why I felt blocked with my own projects while at the same time working to burnout for clients. Why do I find myself frantically cleaning on the 23rd of December before the guests arrive? My sisters do this too. We’ve found the funny side of it though. 

These habits stem from placing others' expectations and opinions above our own. From seeking validation externally.

Your strength as a creative thinker comes from using your authentic self and lived experience as a unique lens through which to view the world. This perspective allows you to identify problems, ask meaningful questions, and experiment with forms, tangible and intangible.

People-pleasing forces you to consider other viewpoints ahead of your own. You simply cannot develop your own lens if you’re drawing primarily from external sources and expectations.

Work created through a lens of others' expectations lacks clarity of vision. The resulting work becomes diluted and empty of soul. Or it doesn’t get made at all.

Creativity and People Pleasing: The Cost of Conformity

Coming up with innovative ideas and executing them takes time. A lot of time. You need to hone your craft and become an expert with the materials you choose to work with. Much of that time, you will feel like you’re doing things wrong, but this messy learning process is necessary for growth.

If you’re someone who struggles with putting others' expectations above your own, you might find yourself removed from the work you care about. Going out for drinks with that friend who has gone through another breakup when you’d far rather be up to your elbows in printing ink. Acting out of social convention or the fear of letting people down will eat away at the time that should be spent making productive mistakes.

Creativity demands space to experiment, fail, and refine. Conformity shrinks that space, pressuring you to prioritise obligations that don’t necessarily serve your growth. Creativity and people-pleasing cancel each other out.

It can feel awkward to choose your practice over others' needs, especially if the “work” at the desk is a load of failed attempts and half-formed ideas. But it doesn’t have to be selfish or thoughtless. It’s more about defining boundaries, learning when to say no, and being truly present in the situations you say yes to.

The Risk-Taking Barrier

Let's say you’ve found your unique viewpoint. You’ve made it to your workspace regularly enough to make some terrible work, and now you’ve got something good going on. The pressure to conform can still rear its ugly head and manifest as creative paralysis, an inability to take risks.

This could take the form of a block where you seem unable to make any work, or it could mean that you hold back what you do make, fearing a poor reception. You delay sharing your vision until you believe your audience has evolved enough to appreciate it, dreading the vulnerability of being the first to present unconventional thinking.

Recognition of Ideas

At its worst, conformity can prevent us from recognising our ideas at all.

“Very often the first glimmerings of a new approach or idea are subtle and effervescent at the fringes of consciousness to the extent that individuals who rely on others for guidance on how to think and behave may lose the ability to recognise and grasp such glimmerings within themselves.” 

K M Sheldon :The Encyclopedia of Creativity

The more we look outside ourselves for approval, the less we listen to our intuition or notice the sparks of ideas at the edges of our awareness. We may become so conformed, so disconnected from ourselves, that we are no longer able to recognise the sparks of an idea.

The fear of being seen has a lot to answer for.

Don’t Worry, It’s Natural: Our Evolutionary Bias for Safety

We have an evolutionary bias towards conformity, an ingrained instinct that has shaped human behaviour for millennia. It's how we get along and maintain social cohesion. It's been crucial for survival.

"Given the importance of maintaining cohesive functioning within the small groups in which our ancestors lived, there is good reason to believe that evolutionary pressures selected for a strong motive to be approved of by the group. People's fears of being rejected by social groups if they do not conform are often justified... many experiments have demonstrated that those who persistently flout normative opinion are punished by and finally excluded from the groups of which they are a part."

K M Sheldon :The Encyclopedia of Creativity

In early human societies, defying the group could be fatal. Those who stood out risked exile. When survival depended on the protection and resources of the collective, the instinct to conform, then, isn’t a weakness; it’s an evolutionary safeguard.

People who stuck their neck out often got it chopped off.

That’s why embracing your unique perspective feels dangerous. It’s primal. Social conditioning reinforces this fear, amplifying the pressure to please others rather than carve out space for self-expression.

In this light, people-pleasing is an intelligent adaptation. It’s how we secure approval and maintain connections.

But we don’t live in an Iron Age settlement anymore. For a lot of us (but not all), this evolutionary mechanism is redundant.

If you want to create work that is truly yours, work that is pure, uninfluenced, and honest, you need to feel safe enough to defy those ingrained survival instincts. Feel safe enough to be seen.

Finding Safety to Create

If you want to show up honestly in your work, you need to feel safe. This might come naturally to some people, but for others, it requires intentional effort.

But what if it's not that simple? What if accessing your authentic self is dangerous, triggering, or seemingly impossible? What if where you live isn’t safe, or you suffer from PTSD?

This is where the conversation shifts from "anyone can be creative" to acknowledging barriers to creativity and how privilege plays a significant role in our capacity for imagination.

Marginalised communities are often called upon to come together and envision new futures. But what if the creativity needed is impaired by a fundamental lack of safety?

This topic deserves deeper examination than I can offer here, and I'll revisit the idea of safety and imagination in wider society in another blog in greater depth as I develop my thoughts and research.

Transforming People-Pleasing into Empathy

For now, let's consider how we can harness our people-pleasing tendencies.

Those with people-pleasing instincts possess a remarkable gift: heightened sensitivity to others. We detect subtle shifts in tone, expressions, and emotional undercurrents that many miss. Rather than using this awareness to anxiously self-adjust, what if we redirected it towards deeper understanding?

Instead of wondering, "Am I saying the right thing?" try "What's truly being communicated here? What remains unspoken?"

When grounded, knowing who you are and what you value, you can genuinely enter another's viewpoint without losing yourself. Maintaining creative integrity while developing meaningful empathy.

The next time that the people-pleasing impulse arises, pause. Reconnect with your core self. Then listen with curiosity. Your sensitivity doesn't need to be a creative weakness; it's empathy, perhaps the most essential skill for transformative design and authentic connection.