There are certain newsletters that arrive in your inbox and always get read. For me it’s the ‘Provoked’ newsletter from the brilliant Todd Kashdan (follow him on LinkedIn and subscribe to Provoked while you’re there). The heading caught my eye:
“Niceness sucks – the sugar coated plague”
I had an immediate reaction to it – being nice definitely does not suck! I’ve based my whole parenting approach around telling my kids to ‘just be nice’. But the clue is in the title – Todd’s newsletter is called ‘Provoked’, and it often does, which is why I enjoy reading it. But as a polite, well-mannered Brit I felt Todd might have over stepped the mark here… Todd argues that niceness may seem virtuous on the surface but actually encourages us to avoid conflict, suppress our authenticity and means we fail to take action when confronted with injustice.
I’m not convinced but then perhaps I’m not anyone’s definition of nice. Todd then goes on to make the case for kindness which I can definitely get on board with! Kindness is most definitely a super power; a few years ago we did a Reset Show with David Hamilton on kindness and it is still one of my favourites and well worth a watch.
But I have been pondering this over the last few days – does niceness suck? Or am I getting hung up on semantics? And the opposite of nice is surely mean? Which reminds me of a postcard I got given on a long weekend in NYC many years ago which said ‘mean people suck’. That one had pride of place on my fridge for years…I reckon meanness sucks more than niceness.
One thing I know is that workplaces would definitely benefit from more kindness, and probably more niceness and less meanness. And for many people neither kindness or niceness are the first things you think about when considering your experience at work. I’d love to know what you think on this topic
- Does niceness suck?
- Do we need more niceness in the workplace?
- Or is kindness the way to go?
Let me know what you think and be nice be kind 😉
@Emma
