Too many of us don’t step in to give real feedback, call out issues as we perceive them, or offer help when needed. Instead, we go for being “nice” to keep everyone comfortable in the moment.
Two days ago, my 5am alarm came early. I was staying in Anacortes, WA and about to do a very challenging scuba dive for the first time. The four of us, all dive masters and instructors nervously began putting our equipment together. We had just received word that our guide wasn’t going to make it. This is the kind of site that you can only dive a few times a year. None of us wanted to miss it.
I hadn’t been home in over a week, but you would have been hard pressed to talk me out of this dive. But it was early, and I was a bit distracted. In my morning haze, I forgot to hook up my inflator hose to my dry suit. This is what controls my buoyancy while diving. Without it, I’d sink to the bottom in a very strong current. Fortunately, one of us caught it and called me out. I’m glad they weren’t being nice and keeping quiet so that I’d feel good in the moment.
Niceness is a mistake
I have made the egregious mistake many times in my life of being nice. I hate nice. Nice is lazy. Nice is inauthentic. Nice does not serve my team members, my employees, my family, or myself. Nice is a dangerous and slippery slope that leads to failed relationships, failed projects, and failed companies.
Nice means glossing over the important issues for superficial happiness. It means sacrificing big future discomfort for low levels of immediate fake comfort. The future versions of me hates nice, but my current self wants to embrace it. My future self would also prefer I don’t eat that double layer chocolate cake while my current self sends gluttonous middle fingers forward through time.
Then, why the heck is it that I find myself still fighting the urge to be nice all of the time? Because I’m lazy. It is easier to be nice than to have the authentic conversation. When was the last time you saw someone with their fly unzipped, backpack open, shirt tag showing and you did nothing? It is easier not to engage. Btw, if you are one of those brave few who gives the rest of us a heads up, Thank you! You are doing God’s work.
I’ve damaged relationships in the past because I wanted to be nice to team members. The catch is my poker face sucks. Seriously, if we are ever in a poker game, congratulations, you will win my money. I would sit in meetings and stew when we were talking about things that I didn’t like or thought were plain wrong. It was easier than confronting people. Of course, my position was obvious and, naturally, I blew up after a few months when I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Kindness is where it’s at
I feel like the authors of Crucial Accountability were writing directly to me, when they wrote, “When you observe a broken commitment, feel bad about it, and then decide to say nothing, your feelings don’t manifest themselves only in your facial expressions and other nonverbal behaviors; they also escape in the form of biting sarcasm, cutting humor, or surprising non sequiturs.”
I am working hard to choose kindness instead of nice. I feel that the difference is that kindness means having that hard conversation. It means sharing my truth in a way that honors both of us. It means approaching conversations with facts and not attacks. It means being gentle and honorable but not superficial. And it also means putting the work in to figure out what my concerns actually are. I have to prepare for a conversation by doing the difficult work of figuring out what the real issue is, if the issue is inside or outside of me (or both). It also means honoring myself and others by sharing this work instead of just letting it stew inside of me.
Photo credit: Me! I snapped this picture just before we jumped into Deception Pass.