8 Very Bad Things That Happen When Companies Are Too Nice

Someone sent me a good post from Software Advice about the importance of honesty in the workplace (a subject near and dear to my heart, as most of you know).  The author, Halley Bock, makes a great case for the benefits of being honest, and then goes on to offer 4 useful rules of the road for being honest, specifically when it comes to giving people corrective feedback.

One sentence in particular caught my eye: "Our survey uncovered a disturbing statistic: 37 percent of respondents felt their organizations suffered from the malady of “terminal niceness,” valuing politeness over the pursuit of the best ideas and perspectives."

I've long seen the negative impact of 'terminal niceness' (great phrase) in organizations. In such organizations, people think the way to support and respect each other is to be polite at any cost: not to disagree, give people tough news, hold them accountable, or let them know when they're not succeeding.

Though it may feel superficially good, it creates all kinds of problems. Here are 8 of the most significant:

1) Employees don't get the feedback they need to grow and improve. None of us see ourselves entirely clearly.  We all need to get an unbiased third-party perspective about our strengths and weaknesses. In an overly nice culture, it's as though employees are flying blind, with no way to find out how they need to improve. It's a huge opportunity cost; most employees don't achieve their potential because they don't hear about what they're doing well and badly.

2) Bad ideas get implemented because no one pushes back. In 'nice' cultures, everyone thinks they need to be supportive by not disagreeing with each other.  So when someone has an idea that won't work, or that can't be implemented - no one says anything, and tremendous time and effort can be wasted pursuing it.

3) Lack of healthy debate makes it difficult to build new processes and products. When you're trying to change things, you have to be willing to openly discuss and debate the pros and cons of various possibilities.  If people are more concerned with being polite and not hurting each others' feelings than they are about figuring out how to do things differently - innovation is impossible.

4) The "real" conversations happen offline, rather than face-to-face.  If people can't say what they really feel in public, they'll still say it - but to third parties.  In other words, if person A has an issue with person B, they'll tell persons C, D and E about it.  It creates a culture of gossip, secrecy, and clique-ishness...making it nearly impossible to have a trusting and truly supportive environment.

5) Senior Execs are seen as weak - and not trusted.  When bad things happen in the organization, and senior execs respond by being politically correct and evasive...no one is fooled.  It just makes the execs look bad - and it makes employees get self-protective. "If our leaders can't stand up and be honest about the big things that are going on,"  they reason, "what else aren't they telling us?"

6)  People aren't required to own their mistakes, and so don't develop responsibility.  In a culture where people are praised, but aren't held accountable for failures, nobody has to say, I'm sorry, and here's how I'll fix it.  This leads to an environment of passivity and avoiding of responsibility:  i.e., "The project wasn't successful" vs. "We didn't succeed."

7) Issues build up, poisoning relationships.  When people don't have a chance to get their issues with each other out in the open and resolve them in an honest and mutually respectful way, those issues don't go away - they fester.  Over time, the weight of unresolved issues can turn good working relationships into superficial, polite interactions without joy or trust.

8) Business-destroying problems don't get resolved.  This is the biggie.  If the highest value in a culture is to be 'nice,' no one stands up and says,"Such-and-such is a huge issue - and if we don't address it, we're in big trouble."  That's way too brash and confrontational.  But if you don't acknowledge those business-killing problems, you can't resolve them.

Don't misunderstand me: the alternative to 'nice' isn't 'mean,' or 'heartless.'  The best alternative (and antidote) for too much niceness is honesty offered with a positive intent.  If companies can cultivate that kind of culture - they can avoid all these problems, and many others as well.




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