#530 Why It Is More Important To Be Respected Than To Be Liked: Danny M Goldberg in Conversation with Niels Brabandt
Why It Is More Important To Be Respected Than To Be Liked: Danny M Goldberg in Conversation with Niels Brabandt
A leadership interview on boundaries, credibility, over-reliance, and the costly habit of being endlessly agreeable.
Executive Summary
In this leadership interview, Niels Brabandt speaks with Danny M Goldberg about one of the most underestimated tensions in modern business life: the difference between being kind and being constantly available, compliant, and liked. The conversation challenges a popular assumption in professional culture. Being nice is not always the same as being effective. Being agreeable is not always the same as being trusted. Being liked is not always the same as being respected.
Danny M Goldberg argues that kindness remains valuable, but kindness without boundaries becomes an invitation to overuse, exploitation, resentment, and declining performance. Niels Brabandt frames the discussion from the perspective of leadership, decision-making, and workplace culture: how can professionals set boundaries without becoming rude, how can leaders avoid over-relying on the most reliable people, and how can organisations build healthier expectations around workload, credit, responsibility, and respect?
The result is a direct and practical interview for decision-makers who want to build organisations where people perform at a high level without being punished for their reliability.
The Interview Context: Kindness, Boundaries, and the Price of Being Too Available
Niels Brabandt opens the interview by addressing a familiar leadership mantra: be kind, be nice, be courteous, and become the person others enjoy working with. The question, however, is whether this advice becomes incomplete when it ignores power dynamics, workload distribution, and the reality of people pleasing in organisations.
Danny M Goldberg responds by making a careful distinction. He does not reject kindness. He rejects the idea that professionals should optimise their behaviour for being liked at all costs. In his view, people who cannot set boundaries risk losing their identity because they focus so strongly on the expectations of others that they neglect their own needs, priorities, and professional judgement.
This distinction matters for business decision-makers because modern organisations often reward the language of collaboration while quietly relying on the overextension of the most dependable people. The culture may say teamwork, but the operating model may say, give the urgent task to the person who never refuses.
Danny M Goldberg on the Difference Between Kindness and People Pleasing
Goldberg explains that people pleasers often want to make others happy, yet this desire can become professionally expensive. If people repeatedly say yes in order to avoid conflict, they may become the default solution for every difficult, urgent, or politically sensitive task.
In the interview, Goldberg makes the point that kindness needs an edge. That edge is not aggression. It is clarity. It is the ability to signal where one’s boundaries are, what is acceptable, and what cannot continue. In business terms, this is not merely a personal development issue. It is a governance issue. Teams cannot operate sustainably when expectations are negotiated through guilt, flattery, urgency, and informal pressure.
Niels Brabandt connects this to the everyday workplace: the person who intends to say no in the morning often says yes the moment someone arrives with an urgent request. The phrase “I owe you one” may sound appreciative, but if it is never followed by recognition, resources, promotion, or genuine reciprocity, it becomes a mechanism for extracting extra labour.
Why Boundaries Are a Leadership Issue, Not a Personality Defect
A central insight of the interview is that boundaries are not a sign of weakness, selfishness, or disloyalty. They are a condition for sustainable performance. Goldberg argues that professionals must understand their own limitations and clarify what they are prepared to accept. This applies in private life, but it becomes particularly consequential at work because careers, bonuses, workload, reputation, and promotion decisions are involved.
For leaders, the message is sharper. When employees feel unable to set boundaries, organisations should not interpret this as commitment. They should ask whether the culture has made refusal unsafe. A workplace where people can never say no is not a high-performance culture. It is a pressure system that may eventually lose its best people.
Niels Brabandt’s questioning keeps the discussion grounded in practical business reality: people do not always fear the work itself. They fear the consequences of refusing it. They fear being labelled difficult. They fear being excluded from opportunities. They fear that saying no once will outweigh years of saying yes.
How To Say No Without Becoming the “Difficult Person”
Goldberg does not present refusal as a simplistic rule. He stresses the importance of context and judgement. If a direct manager makes an urgent request once, the answer may reasonably be yes. If the same person repeatedly uses urgency, vague promises, and emotional pressure without recognition or reciprocity, the professional response changes.
One of the strongest points in the interview is Goldberg’s advice that people often over-explain refusal. They feel the need to defend themselves with long justifications. Goldberg suggests that, in many situations, a clear and calm no is enough. A professional can say that they cannot do something, that they have commitments, or that they are unavailable after a certain time. The key is not hostility. The key is finality.
For executives and managers, this has a direct implication. If a team member says no, that response should not automatically be read as a lack of commitment. It may be the first sign that the person is finally protecting the quality of their work, their health, and the sustainability of their contribution.
The Hidden Risk of Over-Reliance on Reliable People
A particularly important part of the conversation concerns the reliable high performer. Goldberg notes that some people are overused precisely because they are competent. Leaders may not always act with malicious intent. They may simply know that one person will deliver better, faster, and with less supervision than others.
Yet this creates a dangerous leadership pattern. If a manager chooses person A over person B every time because person A is more capable, person A may eventually feel used, not valued. The organisation may believe it is rewarding excellence with trust. The employee may experience it as punishment for competence.
Niels Brabandt brings this into a vivid business scenario: a highly capable engineering team lead in a mid-sized company is asked several times a day to take on the most important tasks personally. The team lead works extreme hours while others stay within normal limits. The reward is often little more than thanks.
Goldberg’s answer reframes the problem through project management and leadership responsibility. A team lead cannot build a team while doing the team’s work. If the manager keeps asking the lead to act as an individual contributor, the manager undermines the purpose of having a team in the first place.
Respect Is Built Through Clarity, Not Constant Availability
The interview’s core message is not that leaders or professionals should become abrasive. It is that respect is built when people are clear, consistent, and capable of holding a line. Being liked may depend on immediate emotional approval. Being respected depends on reliability, judgement, accountability, and boundaries.
A person who says yes to everything may initially be popular. Over time, however, that person risks becoming invisible as a decision-maker. They become the person who absorbs pressure, not the person who shapes priorities. This is precisely where many careers stall: the professional becomes indispensable operationally but under-recognised strategically.
In the interview, Goldberg’s position is highly relevant for executives, founders, HR leaders, and senior managers. A healthy organisation should not require people to choose between kindness and self-respect. It should create conditions in which people can be cooperative without becoming endlessly available.
What Decision-Makers Should Learn From the Interview
The conversation between Niels Brabandt and Danny M Goldberg offers several strategic lessons for decision-makers.
• Do not mistake endless agreement for engagement. People may say yes because they are committed, but they may also say yes because refusal feels unsafe.
• Do not overuse reliable people. Competence should lead to development, recognition, and influence, not silent overload.
• Make the purpose of additional work explicit. If an assignment supports someone’s career, explain how. If it does not, do not pretend it does.
• Reward boundaries when they protect quality. A clear no can be a sign of professional maturity.
• Build teams rather than heroic individuals. Sustainable organisations do not depend on one person constantly absorbing complexity.
From Personal Boundaries to Organisational Design
The most sophisticated reading of the interview is that the topic is not simply personal assertiveness. It is organisational design. If teams depend on a few people who never refuse, the system is poorly designed. If managers rely on guilt, urgency, or flattery to get work done, the culture is poorly managed. If high performers are rewarded only with more pressure, the talent strategy is broken.
Niels Brabandt’s interview with Danny M Goldberg therefore reaches beyond the familiar conversation about saying no. It asks a deeper leadership question: what kind of organisation are we building when respect is less rewarded than availability?
For business decision-makers, the answer should be uncomfortable. Organisations that treat boundaries as inconvenience are often the same organisations that later struggle with burnout, attrition, poor succession, and a lack of accountability.
A Practical Framework for Leaders
Leaders who want to apply the insights from the interview can begin with five practical questions.
• Who in the organisation is repeatedly asked to rescue urgent situations?
• Which high performers receive more work but not more recognition, authority, or compensation?
• Where do people say yes because they genuinely agree, and where do they say yes because saying no feels risky?
• How often do managers use urgency instead of prioritisation?
• What would change if respected boundaries were treated as a sign of professionalism?
These questions move the conversation from individual behaviour to leadership accountability. They also align closely with Niels Brabandt’s broader work on sustainable leadership, organisational development, professional training, coaching, consulting, mentoring, and executive decision-making.
Conclusion: Being Respected Is Not the Opposite of Being Kind
The interview with Danny M Goldberg, conducted by Niels Brabandt, makes one point unmistakably clear: respect and kindness are not enemies. The problem begins when kindness is confused with compliance, when professionalism is confused with permanent availability, and when leadership rewards the people who never protect their own limits.
For decision-makers, the lesson is direct. If you want resilient teams, you must build a culture where people can say no, explain priorities, delegate responsibly, and remain respected. The future of leadership will not belong to the leaders who are merely liked in the moment. It will belong to those who create clarity, fairness, accountability, and sustainable performance.
Niels Brabandt’s conversation with Danny M Goldberg is therefore not simply an interview about personal boundaries. It is a leadership discussion about how modern organisations can stop exploiting reliability and start building respect.
Summary
In this interview, Niels Brabandt speaks with Danny M Goldberg about why it is more important to be respected than to be liked in leadership and business. Danny M Goldberg explains that kindness without boundaries can lead to people pleasing, over-reliance, and professional exploitation. Niels Brabandt connects these insights to leadership, team management, organisational culture, and sustainable performance. The interview is especially relevant for business decision-makers, executives, HR leaders, managers, and professionals who want to build healthier workplace relationships and stronger boundaries.
Niels Brabandt
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Mehr zu diesem Thema im dieswöchtigen Podcast und Videocast: mit Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
Das Transkript zum Podcast und Videocast befindet sich unter diesem Artikel.
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Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Hey, let's just be kind, shouldn't we? Maybe you heard that phrase and maybe you said, well, I'm going to be kind and I'm going to be the nice person. And maybe you wondered, does this actually leave me behind sometimes? Is this becoming one of my problems? And we are going to talk about exactly this today. We have an expert on the matter with us today. Hello and welcome, Danny Goldberg.
Danny M Goldberg
Thank you for having me.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Thank you very much for taking the time. We get straight into it. You wrote a book with a pretty straightforward title, a little bit of A-hole, here we are. So what motivated you to write this book right now when mostly, especially when you see motivational speakers usually say, be kind, be the nice person in the room, you always have to be courteous to people, kindness goes a long way. We all heard these phrases all over the place. What was your motivation to write this book right now, which has a very different tone?
Danny M Goldberg
Yeah, you know, the title is purposely provocative because I think there's a lot of people out there. And again, I agree with the thought of being kind. I don't know I don't know if I agree with the thought of being light, if that makes sense.
Danny M Goldberg
And, you know, you grow up— my parents were immigrants to the United States, and growing up they always said, you know, to be nice to everybody, be nice. Well, what I found is it doesn't matter how nice you are, people are going to take advantage of you. In the dating world, if you're too nice, women don't like you.
Danny M Goldberg
So there's got to be a balance. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be a kind person, but you've got to have that little bit of an edge to you where people understand what your boundaries are And you have to understand how to say no to people because if you're a people pleaser like me, you want to make people happy, but you lose your identity by focusing only on the others and not your own needs. And that's what happens to a lot of people pleasers and they get taken advantage of.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Absolutely. Well, when we now talk about setting boundaries, because that's a huge topic at the moment, people say, okay, look, either in private life or at work, you, you somehow should set boundaries. On the other hand, you have especially the very indirect British or American corporate culture, say yes to everything, please people, always step up first, always say yes to the first thing someone offers you. How do I set boundaries that actually stick?
Danny M Goldberg
You know, I think you've got to understand what your limitations are and what you're looking for. For me, when I can give you the example of working with my son, he's a freshman in college now, and he was spending a lot of money, spending a lot of money of my money on his girlfriend. And I was getting very frustrated with him. So I gave him a budget. I said, look, here's how much you're going to spend every month. If you can't do it, then you're going to have to figure it out. That's not my problem anymore.
Danny M Goldberg
And I cut off all the credit cards. I gave him a certain amount every month, and it was pretty generous, but he still spent it all within the first 2 weeks. And so then he's calling me and asking me, hey, can I get this? Can I get this? I said, no, I'm sorry, you've got to figure this out. And, and it got to a point where it was— it made me almost feel sick because he was, he was taking advantage of me.
Danny M Goldberg
And I had that with my girlfriend as well. You know, you get to a point where if I don't do this, it's going to hurt our relationship greatly. You know, if I just give in to that person at work and I say yes to them, am I going to get credit for the work? You know, are they going to appreciate it? Can I live with the work that I just did? Is this the right decision for me, for my career? And I think you've got to go through all those thoughts before, while you're setting those boundaries, in order to set those boundaries. Because boundaries are healthy for any relationship. When you don't have boundaries, people take advantage of you.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah, absolutely. And saying no is something you said before. Let's talk about that. Many people say, look, I always think about saying no. And this always works in my head until someone steps up to my desk and says, look, this is really urgent. The company needs that. I'm going to be forever thankful if you do. I owe you. Maybe you heard that phrase. I owe you if you do. And then they say, look, when I say no right now, I am going to be the bad person in the room. It's going to be held against me. It's going to be against my promotions, it's going to harm my career.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So here are they in the morning, they said, today I'm going to say no. And the first moment someone steps up, they're like, ah, but I think this situation is special, so I'm going to say yes here again. And that happens all the time. How to find out when to actually say no?
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And second question, how to actually say no without coming across as a completely rude, ignorant person?
Danny M Goldberg
I think you've got to pick your battles. You know, the scenario you just said, if that's my boss, I'm probably going to say yes to that. If I continue to say yes to that every time he asks, it's urgent and it's not really urgent. I owe you one. He never, you know, he never takes care of me, never gives my bonus. Then I'm gonna start shutting it down pretty quick. I'm gonna say, no, I'm working until 5 o'clock today, and I'm sorry, I've got commitments, period.
Danny M Goldberg
Because you gotta understand, you know, are they really truly looking out for you or taking advantage of you and looking out for yourself? So those situations, I think you've got to just understand what's the right time to say no.
Danny M Goldberg
Now, just saying no, that takes a lot of intestinal fortitude, quite frankly. I, with my girlfriend, she asked me something a couple months ago. And I told her, I said, I said, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm sorry. And at that point, I didn't even explain it to her.
Danny M Goldberg
I think sometimes we feel like we have to rationalize our behavior and go into this long, arduous explanation of why I said no. It's like, no, I can't do that. And then she said afterwards, she said, why not? And I explained it to her real quick. But I knew I had to say no in order to preserve our relationship. Because if I didn't say no, the boundaries were going to stretch and she was going to take advantage of me and I was going to end up ending our relationship. And I told her that. I said, if we don't do this now, we're going to have problems later on. She didn't like the answer, but she accepted it.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah. So that means you would say any healthy— any healthy— let's say, let's, let's stick to the workplace here. When we are in a workplace relationship and you never say no, you will say people definitely always take advantage of you.
Danny M Goldberg
I would say in most cases people will learn to take advantage of you, maybe even not on purpose, but they know you're the go-to person. Yeah. So they know they can rely on you, so they're going to overuse you all the time. So you've got someone else that's doing a decent job, you've got you doing a great job, you're gonna get called on all the time doing a lot more work. What does that get you? It's not more salary, it's not a promotion. If it is, that's a whole different conversation. But in most cases, they're gonna take advantage of that situation because again, being reliable might be a negative in the professional world at times.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah, excellent. Because you now already answered my other question I had in mind because you think that some people take advantage of you without even knowing, they just think you're doing a great job and they don't have any malicious thoughts, they just do it because you're so good at what you're doing.
Danny M Goldberg
I teach a class on, on, on managers, and we talk about this a lot. You know, you can't over-rely on certain people. If I am going to over-rely on them, I'm going to tell them, hey, this is going to help shape your career, this is going to help build your skill set. I've got to give them an opportunity to understand why I'm asking them to do this, and because they're reliable.
Danny M Goldberg
But again, if you have the same person over and over again, it's not necessarily— if, if I have two to choose, I'm choosing A over B every time. But if you choose A over B every time, that person that's A is going to leave eventually because they're going to feel used and abused.
Danny M Goldberg
So I do believe that people, some people don't even realize they're doing it. I do believe a lot of people, though, know exactly what they're doing and take advantage of people.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So they pretend they don't know what they do and they will come across something like, oh, I'm just thinking you're doing such a great job and I think I give it to you because you are so good at what you do. So they basically schmooze themselves into the situation of, and now you have to say yes.
Danny M Goldberg
Yes, yes, exactly.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. So when people now buy the book, how can they expect the book to be written? Like, is it like a scientific analysis with tables and whatnot else? Or how, how is this going to be? What kind of reading experience will people have?
Danny M Goldberg
I think it's— I would describe it as a very simple reading experience. I've been told it takes about a couple hours, 3 hours to read the book, and it's practical skills that you can apply on a daily basis. Yes, there's a lot of different studies in there, but I don't focus on that. I wanted to make sure I created a book that people can use immediately. They could read one chapter and say, okay, I'm gonna apply that today. And then the next chapter and so on and so forth. So it's a very easy reading experience that they can apply immediately.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So people can expect when they read the book, they have an immediate advantage. They don't have to sit down and extract things and then say, oh, how can I apply this? It's reading, application happens immediately, immediate usage.
Danny M Goldberg
100%.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Excellent. So when people now say, maybe you can give us a taste. And when someone says, look, I am that person who maybe, Typical example of one of my clients. Person got an engineering degree, A+ across the board, mid-sized business relying on very few engineers working there, and one person is clearly a tiny bit better than the others, got the team lead.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
However, they always say, look, we know you have team members, but this task is so important, could you just please do that? And that basically happens roughly 2 to 3 times a day, with the result that everyone sticks to their hours, but the team lead works about 80 hours a week. And basically gets nothing else than a thank you.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When this person now says, look, I'm not a naturally confrontational person, I like to appease people, I like to be liked, I know being respected is more important, however, it's difficult for me. What would be your top 1, 2, 3 behaviors they can adapt by tomorrow?
Danny M Goldberg
I think just good project management skills in that case really help out a lot because you can only be as successful as your team. If you're, if you're doing a bunch of the work, you're not focusing on the overall project. So that would be the reason right away I would tell my manager is that the more I focus on this, the more the team is not as efficient and effective. And if I really want to build the skill set of my team, I've got to delegate and I've got to let the team do the work. The ideal scenario is they're working 40, 50 hours a week and I'm working less than that because, you know, again, my focus is different than theirs. So I think it's really breaking it down into good project management steps, meaning timelines, deadlines, making sure everybody understands the expectations. I think that right away is a good idea. B, I don't think you even say no to your manager. It's more, hey, I'd be happy to do that, but I've got to get the team involved in this. You know, I can't do it all on my own or it defeats the purpose of having a team in the first place. I think that's going to be a hard argument to combat from the other person's point of view. Because again, I think it's logical. Why do I have all these other people if you're asking me to do the work? I'm not an individual contributor. But that's what you want me to do.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. One last question I have before I wrap up the interview. When people now say, hey, I think Danny could really help us here as a keynote speaker, as a coach, or as someone who should get into our business, helping us to get actually this implemented in our organization. Very important question. How can they get in touch?
Danny M Goldberg
You can get in touch with me through LinkedIn under Danny M. Goldberg. M as in Michael. You can email me at dgoldberg@goldsamricharddavid.com. I've been speaking professionally for almost 20 years on a wide array of topics and This is one that I'm really, really passionate about. I think can help people immediately.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Brilliant. So you see, if you think you could take an advantage on, you now have the book that actually can help you to proceed in the right direction. At the end of the interview, at the end of the podcast and videocast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Danny, thank you very much for your time.
Danny M Goldberg
Thanks for having me.