Are you too nice?

“Your problem is that you are too agreeable”. This was some feedback I received many years ago in a performance review and what my boss was trying to tell me (in a nice way) was that I was too nice. Having grown up in an organisational culture where the leaders who progressed fastest were those who treated people the best, I struggled to understand this. Basically, I was criticised for trying to help people too much and solve too many of others people’s problems. It didn’t make sense back then, but I think I understand this a bit better now.

Popular author and professor from the University of Toronto, Jordan B Peterson has often discussed the pitfalls of being too agreeable and too nice for ones career and life. In one interview even mentioning that one of the reasons women don’t get ahead in the working world is that they are too agreeable. Honestly, I struggle to agree with much that Peterson writes about, but he is a good modern example of someone telling the world not to be too nice. (As an aside, please read Richard Poplaks review on Peterson’s book available here). Poplak rather “nicely” presents arguments why Peterson’s book and line of thinking is horse manure. Can you tell I’m not a fan?

In business negotiations we are all familiar with the notion that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Meaning that for every winner in an interaction, someone, somewhere is carrying the cost. Having spent a lot of time interacting with retailers I can say that in my experience this has almost always proven to be true. A constant game of attempts to extract percentages of value from each other. Negotiations with the sole aim to extract, but cleverly disguised as joint business plans being the norm. No room for niceness in retail.

If we are predisposed to being nice and agreeable and hate conflict does this mean our values and qualities are irrelevant for the business world we operate in? I really don’t think this is the case at all and believe there must be a case for being nice and agreeable and delivering business value. There is some great literature to support this line of thinking too. Two of my favourite books on this being The No Asshole Rule by Robert I Sutton a Stanford Professor and Give and Take by Wharton Professor Adam Grant.

The fact that both thought it necessary to dedicate research to these topics already shows me that there are some people in society who are fighting back against the disagreeableness snowball. I guess being nice opens one up to being exploited as we are never sure of the other party’s intentions. However, there has to be a way of being agreeable and achieving success at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great if society produced many examples to support this type of behaviour, and less Jordan B Petersons. I think so.