To cut to the chase, yes – you should be nice (and kind) as a manager. But it needs to be balanced against the need to ensure that your team performs well.
Being too nice as a manager can lead to a number of problems, preventing high performance and making your job much harder in the long term.
Let’s have a brief look at the biggest ones first and then we’ll look at how to strike the right balance.
The biggest problems with being too nice as a manager
You avoid confrontation and hard conversations
This is probably the most obvious problem but also the most common one. As managers, we have to have conversations with our team every single day and a good number of these are going to be difficult or challenging.
The root problem of being too nice here is that you avoid having these hard conversations. This is probably because you don’t want to upset or disappoint someone. Of course, this is understandable – most of us don’t want to upset or disappoint others. But as a manager, it’s pretty much inevitable that you’ll have to do this at some point.
You take too long to make decisions
Being too nice can lead to you always seeking support and acceptance from others. This is most prevalent when you’re making decisions that affect individuals or your team as a whole. Ultimately, you don’t want to make a decision that leads to people being upset or unhappy with you.
This leads to you taking longer than you should to make decisions. This can happen partly because you are taking time to check with people first and gauging their reactions – perhaps even changing your decision or thinking as a result. It can also happen because you are simply putting off the decision because you know that some team members may not like it – it’s a form of procrastination.
You blur the lines between work and personal issues
When you are perceived as a nice person, people tend to open up to you more. Generally, this is a good thing as a manager because you want your team to communicate openly with you and share what you’re thinking and feeling. This information can help you to be a better manager for them.
However, when the topics that a team member talks about veer towards personal issues, things can get a little messy. It’s tricky because you probably don’t want to be perceived as a robot who doesn’t engage in non-work conversations, but you also want some boundaries here. Being too nice can blur these boundaries and mean that you end up being treated more like a counsellor than a manager.
You give too many second chances for the same bad behaviours
It’s pretty fair to give someone a second chance when they make a mistake. We all make mistakes and the key is to accept responsibility and learn from them. If someone does this, then giving them a second chance is fair.
However, when you’re too nice, you can find yourself giving multiple chances when someone is making the same mistake or exhibiting the same bad behaviours over and over. This is because you don’t want to escalate the conversation to one where you perhaps need to give more of a formal warning or more serious consequences.
I’m a big believer in seeing the best in people and assuming that everyone has the best intentions. The truth is, not everyone will have the best intentions and in this example, being too nice can sometimes lead to someone consciously taking advantage of that niceness and repeating the same mistakes or behaviours because they know that they can. This is a great example of where a lack of accountability can take hold and cause damage to a relationship and the wider team.
You prioritise being liked over high performance
As we’ve talked about, being too nice can stem from a need to be liked by everyone. As a result, you will prioritise this need over the need to drive high performance from your team. High performance only occurs in a culture of open feedback and being prepared to have difficult conversations. A need to be liked prevents these and the ultimate consequence is a lack of high performance.
Ironically, a team that underperforms is going to end up in a position where no one is actually happy or engaged with their work.
How to strike the right balance between being nice and high performance
Now that we’ve clarified some of the core problems with being too nice as a manager, let’s look at how you can avoid these problems and actually do the opposite – use your niceness and turn it from a potential weakness into a real strength.
Below are a few behaviours and approaches to manage your team that will help prevent you from falling into the trap of being too nice and experiencing the consequences mentioned above.
Give clarity and clear expectations
The first step here is to be very clear on what you expect from your team in terms of their role, responsibilities and behaviours. This should be a given anyway, but in this context, it’s even more important. The reason is that it’s far easier to have difficult conversations and confront underperformance if you’ve already been clear on what good looks like.
You’re far less likely to avoid giving someone difficult to hear feedback if you’ve already set a standard that you expect and you’re talking to them about not meeting that standard. Not to mention, the reaction from the individual may still be tricky, but shouldn’t be a complete surprise.
This is how you also embed a culture of accountability in your team. You set a standard and tell your team that they are expected to work to that standard. It’s then up to them to take accountability and responsibility for working in a way that does so.
Think carefully about how you need to do something, but don’t avoid doing it
When you know that you need to do something or have a conversation that triggers that feeling of avoidance, you can improve your likelihood of actually doing it by thinking carefully about the approach that you use.
This is where empathy and kindness can play an important role in being a manager, without taking over and becoming a weakness.
To give you a concrete example, last year, I needed to tell a number of people at my agency that their roles were being made redundant. No matter what, this is going to be a hard conversation and the people on the end of this conversation would understandably experience and express a range of negative feelings towards me.
My approach was to make something that is difficult to hear, as least difficult as possible. So I spent a lot of time planning the conversation, thinking about the consequences for them, imagining common reactions, pretty much everything.
As a result, I planned the conversation and approach to the process so that I attempted to minimise how bad the situation was for them.
It worked well and the majority of people in this conversation actually gave positive feedback on the process itself.
Now, for you, your conversation isn’t likely to be as bad as this! But the principle stands – take time to plan the conversation and be as kind as possible, but still be direct and clear with what you need to say.
Use empathy to plan difficult conversations
Empathy is a trait that can be a huge strength as a manager and can take time to develop if you’re not a natural. The reason that I mention it in this context is that seeking to empathise with your team means that you can plan difficult conversations effectively, just like my example above.
Part of the reason that we plan difficult conversations is we worry about how someone will react and therefore, what they think of us as a manager.
We can mitigate this by taking time to plan a conversation effectively and therefore, minimising the chances of someone reacting very badly. It may not remove it already, but it will at least make you feel prepared and a bit more confident as you head into the conversation.
Be direct but fair when addressing problems
When you do have a conversation with someone that involves telling them something that may upset them or that they may not want to hear, you need to be very clear with what you say to them.
A hard conversation is hard at the best of times, but it’s even harder if you get to the end of it and haven’t actually achieved the purpose – to help someone improve. This can happen if you skirt around the conversation and go into it underprepared and nervous.
Therefore, be direct and clear with your language so that your message is received in the best possible way. If you’re being fair with whatever you’re saying, that you can have the conviction to say it directly which therefore, leads to clarity.
Finally, be kind
You can always be kind with how you approach working with someone. This applies (and is easiest) when it comes to the positive side of our role as managers. But it’s just as important (but can be harder) to practise kindness when you’re having to deal with a difficult situation. Balancing kindness with saying or doing something difficult is hard and is a key reason why some managers experience problems and are described as too nice or too kind.
In real terms, being kind doesn’t mean that you avoid doing something. It just means that you approach doing that thing with kindness, empathy and clarity.
If you can do this and keep in mind the expectations and standards that you’ve set, then it will put you in a strong position as a manager to confront difficult situations.
